301 



HARRINGTON, JAMES. 



HARRIS, JAMES. 



entitled 'A Collection of Flowery Extracts,' which has not come 

 down to us. 



HARRINGTON, JAMES, descended from an ancient and noble 

 family in Rutlandshire, and the eldest son of Sir Sapcotes Harrington, 

 was born in January 1611. He entered as a gentleman-commoner at 

 Trinity College, Oxford, in 1629, and had there the advantage of 

 Dr. Chillingworth's instructions. At the close of his residence at the 

 university, during which his father had died, he set out on a course 

 of travels ; and going first to Holland, resided for some time at the 

 Hague, where be lived on terms of familiarity with the Queen of 

 Bohemia, daughter of James I., who was then a fugitive in Holland, 

 and with the Prince of Orange. With the latter he visited the court 

 of Denmark ; and the Prince of Orange subsequently confided to 

 Harrington the management of all big affairs in England. From 

 Holland he proceeded to France and Italy. 



On hig return to England, Harrington principally passed his time in 

 retirement, cultivating the family affections and pursuing his studies 

 in political science. But in 1646 he was requested by the com- 

 missioners whom parliament bad appointed to carry king Charles I. 

 from Newcastle nearer to London, to undertake the task of waiting 

 on his majesty, as being personally known to him, and as being no 

 partisan. He complied with the request, and the manner in which he 

 performed the task having pleased the king, he was shortly after made 

 a groom of the bedchamber. The king now became much attached to 

 him. " His majesty loved his company," saya Anthony Wood, 

 " and finding him to be an ingenious man, chose rather to converse 

 with him than with others of his chamber. They had often dis- 

 courses concerning government ; but when they happened to talk of 

 a commonwealth, the kinp seemed not to endure it." On the king's 

 removal from the Isle of Wight to Hurst Castle, Harrington, who had 

 offended the parliament commissioners at Newport, was removed from 

 the king's service, and on hn subsequently refuging to swear that he 

 would not assist or conceal the king's escape, he was placed under 

 arrest, and detained until an application of General Ireton obtained 

 him his liberty. He afterwards showed his attachment to the king by 

 accompanying him to the scaffold. 



"After the king's death," says Mr. Toland, " he was observed to keep 

 much in his library, and more retired than usually, which was by his 

 friends a long time attributed to melancholy or discontent." He was 

 engaged however in the composition of his ' Oeeana.' And when he 

 had proceeded some way in its composition, making no secret of his 

 views on government and of his partiality towards a commonwealth, 

 he found that he had already brought down upon himself the sus- 

 picions both of Cromwell and of the Royalists. His book was seized, 

 while in the press, by Cromwell's order. Harrington, having failed 

 in other attempts to recover the book, bethought himself at last o? 

 an application to Lady Claypole, Cromwell's favourite daughter, who 

 was personally unknown to him, but of whose affability and kindness he 

 had heard much. Being ushered into her room, he found there at first 

 only a child of three years old. " He entertained the child so di vertingly , 

 that she suffered him to take her up in his arms till her mother came; 

 whereupon he, stepping towards her and setting the child down at her 

 feet, said, ' Madam, 'tis well you are come at this nick of time, or I had 

 certainly stolen this pretty little lady.' ' Stolen her,' replied the mother, 

 ' pray what to do with her ? for she is yet too young to become your 

 mistress.' 'Madam,' Raid he, 'though her charms assure her of a 

 more considerable conquest, yet I must confess it is not love but 

 revenge that prompted me to commit this theft.' ' Lord,' answered 

 the lady again, ' what injury have I done you that von should steal 

 my child ? ' ' None at all,' replied he, ' but that you might be induced 

 to prevail with your father to do me justice, by restoring my child 

 that he has stolen.' Bat she urging that it was impossible, because 

 her father had children enough of his own, he told her at last it was 

 the issue of hia brain which was misrepresented to the Protector, and 

 taken out of the press by his order." Harrington's wit fascinated the 

 lady, and through her intercession he succeeded. Cromwell after- 

 wards read the book, which, according to promise, had been dedicated 

 to him, and professed to admire it. 



The 'Oeeana' on ita appearance excited great attention. Answers 

 were published, and those Harrington in turn answered. Richard 

 Baxter's ' Holy Commonwealth ' waa written principally against the 

 1 Oeeana;' but so far was this work from gratifying the party for 

 whose favour it waa designed, that in 1683 it was publicly burnt by 

 a decree of the University of Oxford, together with some of the 

 writings of Hobbes and Milton, and other works, among which how- 

 ever the 'Oeeana' was not included. In 1659 Harrington published 

 an abridgment of the ' Oeeana,' under the title of the ' Art of Law- 

 giving : ' and he subsequently published several tracts, many of which 

 are quite of a temporary nature, and the others devoted more or less 

 to the same subject as the ' Oeeana.' He had also founded a club, 

 called the Rota Club, at which be gnve nightly discourses on the 

 advantage of a commonwealth and of the ballot The club was broken 

 up after the Restoration. But the members of the club had become 

 marked men. 



On the 28th of December 1661, he waa seized by order of the king 

 on a charge of treasonable designs and practices, and was carried to 

 the Tower. He wu at first ignorant of the precise charge against 

 him ; but on a private examination taken by Lord Lauderdale, Sir 



George Carteret, and Sir Edward Walker, it came out that he was 

 suspected of having taken part in a conspiracy to subvert the monarchy 

 and establish a commonwealth. He stoutly denied all cognisance of 

 the proceedings which those gentlemen with great show of circum- 

 stance and detail attributed to him ; but his denial was set down, it 

 appears, to faithfulness to an oath. He subsequently presented through 

 his sisters .several petitions to the king, praying that he might either 

 be released from confinement or brought to a public trial. Having 

 received no answer to his petitions he made application for a Habeas 

 Corpus : and shortly after this had been granted he was removed 

 without previous notice, and without any communication being made 

 to hia friends, to a rock opposite Plymouth, called St. Nicholas's 

 Island. His close confinement here soon produced an effect upon hia 

 health, and upon petition he was allowed to be removed to Plymouth. 

 Shortly after he became deranged, owing, as has been suggested, to 

 a medicine recommended to him for the cure of the scurvy, but more 

 probably from the effect of his severe imprisonment. Lord Bath, the 

 governor of Plymouth, then made intercession with the king, and 

 Harrington was released. On being removed to London, and obtaining 

 the best medical advice, he rallied considerably as regards bodily 

 health, but his mind was never again right. At his advanced age, and 

 in this unsatisfactory state of health, he married. He died of palsy 

 on the llth of September 1677, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. 



The ' Oeeana,' which is Harrington's chief work, is an imaginary 

 account of the construction of a commonwealth in a country of which 

 Oeeana is the imaginary name. It opens with an exposition of the 

 grounds and arguments for a commonwealth ; aud the principles 

 which are there established are afterwards sought to be applied in 

 detail. Harrington lays great stress on a doctrine which he enunciates 

 thus : that dominion follows the balance of property ; by which he 

 means that the form of government in a state must depend on the 

 mode iu which property is distributed therein. Proceeding on this 

 doctrine, he requires what he calls an equal Agrarian law as the 

 foundation of hia commonwealth. Its other chief features are popular 

 election of councillors by ballot, and the going out at certain periods 

 of a certain number of these councillors, which is also managed bv 

 ballot. 



HARRIOT, THOMAS, an eminent mathematician and astronomer, 

 was born at Oxford in the year 1560. . He took his degree of Bachelor 

 of Arts in 1579, and in 1584 he accompanied Sir Walter Raleigh in 

 his expedition to Virginia, where he was employed in surveying and 

 mapping the country, and upon his return to England in 1588 he 

 published his ' Report of the New found land of Virginia, the com- 

 modities there found to be raised, <fcc.' Harriot was introduced by 

 Sir Walter Raleigh to the Earl of Northumberland, whose zeal for 

 the promotion of science had led him to maintain several learned men 

 of the day, such as Robert Hues, Walter Warner, and Nathaniel 

 Tarporley. This enlightened nobleman received Harriot into his 

 house, and settled on him an annual salary of 3002., which he enjoyed 

 to the time of his death, in July 1621. His body w.is interred iu 

 St. Christopher's Church, London, and a monument erected to his 

 memory, which, with the church itself, was destroyed by the great fire 

 of 1666. During his lifetime Harriot was known to the world merely 

 as an eminent algebraist ; but from a paper by Zack in the ' Astro- 

 nomical Ephemeris' of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Berlin for 

 the year 1788, it appears that he was equally deserving of eminence 

 as an astronomer. The paper referred to contains an account of the 

 manuscripts found by Zach at the seat of the Earl of Kgremout, to 

 whom they had descended from the Earl of Northumberland. From 

 it we learn that Harriot carried on a correspondence with Kepler 

 concerning the rainbow ; that he had discovered the solar spots prior 

 to any mention having been made of them by Galileo, Schemer, or 

 Pbrysius : also that the satellites of Jupiter were observed by him 

 January 16, 1610, but their first discovery is generally attributed 

 to Galileo, who states that he had observed them on the 7th of that 

 mouth. A correspondence with Kepler on various optical aud other 

 subjects is printed among the letters of Kepler. Ten years after 

 Harriot's death his Algebra, entitled 'Artis Analytics Praxis, ad 

 .K<iuatioui'g Algebraicas nova, expedite, et General! Methoda, resol- 

 vendas,' was published by his friend Walter Waruer. It is with 

 reference to this particular work that Des Cartes was accused of 

 plagiarism by Wallis, whose admiration of its author was so high, 

 that he could not even see the discoveries of Vieta anywhere but in 

 the ' Praxis ' of Harriot. This charge however has sunk with time, 

 though the French writers still continue to answer it. The geometry 

 of Des Cartes appeared in 1637, six years after the publication of 

 Harriot's Algebra. (Huttou, Dictionary ; Mathematical Tracts, vol. ii., 

 &c. ; Montucla, Hiatoire dot Mathi'matiques, torn, it, p. 105.) 



HARRIS, JAMES, born July 20, 17UU, was the oldest son of James 

 Harris, K.*q., of Salisbury, by the Lady Eliz. Ashley Cooper, sister of 

 Lord Shaftesbury, the author of the ' Characteristics.' He was edu- 

 cated at the grammar-school in his native place, and passed thence to 

 Wadham College, Oxford. In his twenty-fifth year he lost his father, 

 and thereby became independent in fortune, and able to devote his 

 time to studies more congenial to his taste than the law, in which 

 he had been engaged. For fourteen years of his life he did little else 

 than study the Greek and Latin authors with the greatest diligence, 

 and big works show how deeply imbued he waa with their spirit. In 



