At this point the history of the apostle is taken up by ecclesiastical tradition. Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, 106 A.D. (in Euseb., H.E., iii. 31; v. 24), attests that John “who lay on the bosom of the Lord” died at Ephesus; and, though this evidence is weakened by the legendary trait that he “ιvas a priest wearing the π∈ταλoe” or gold plate that distinguished the high-priestly mitre, it is fair to infer that the grave of the apostle was already shown (comp. H. E., iii. 39). Irenaeus in various passages of his works confirms this tradition. He says that John lived up to the time of Trajan, and published his Gospel in Ephesus. Irenaeus also identifies the apostle with John the disciple of the Lord, who wrote the Apocalypse under Domitian, whom his teacher Polycarp had known personally, and of whom Polycarp had much to tell. These traditions are accepted and enlarged by later authors, Tertullian adding that John was banished to Patmos after he had miraculously survived the punishment of immersion in boiling oil. As it is evident that legend was busy with John as early as the time of Polycrates, while Irenaeus’s view that the Apocalypse was written under Domitian is inconsistent with the internal evidence offered by that book, the real worth of these traditions requires to be tested by examination of their ultimate source. This inquiry has been pressed upon scholars since the apostolic authorship of the Apocalypse or of the Fourth Gospel or of both these works has been disputed. See Gospels and Revelation. The question is not strictly one between advanced and conservative criticism, for the Tübingen school recognized the Apocalypse as apostolic, and found in it a confirmation of John’s residence in Ephesus. On the other hand, Lützelberger (1840), Keim (Jesu v. Nαz., vol i,, 1867), Holtzmann (in Bibel-Lex., s.υ.), Scholten {Theol. Tijdseh., 1871), and other recent writers wholly reject the tradition, while it has able defenders in Steitz (Stud. u. Krit., 1868), Hilgenfeld (Eiηl., 1875, p. 394 sg.∙,Z.f. IV. T. 1872, 1877), and Lightfoot {jContemp. Rev., 1875, 1876).

The opponents of the tradition lay weight on the absence of positive evidence before the latter part of the 2d century, especially in Papias, and in the epistles of Ignatius and of Irenaeus’s authority Polycarp. But they also find it necessary to assume that Irenaeus mistook Polycarp, and that John “the disciple of the Lord,” who was known to the latter, was not the apostle but a certain presbyter John of whom we hear from Papias. This view would be at once refuted if we could hold with some scholars that the presbyter is but another name for the apostle. This identification had already supporters in the time of Jerome (Vir. III., 9; comp. Usener, Zeta S. Timothei, Bonn, 1877), but seems inconsistent with a fair reading of the words of Papias. It is therefore very possible that some things which Irenaeus in his later years supposed Polycarp to have related of the apostle really belong to the other John (see Gospels, x. 820); but it is a much stronger thing to assume that he was mistaken in supposing that Polycarp had conversed with the apostle at all. An altogether independent and apparently inconsistent tradition that John was killed by the Jews is given on the authority of Papias by Georgius Hamartolus in the 9th century.

JOHN, Epistles of. Of the three Epistles which are ascribed to the apostle John, the First is by far the most important, both from the space which it occupies in the canon and from the weightiness of its teaching.

First Epistle.— Title.— Some exception has been taken to the title “epistle” as applied to this document, seeing that it bears the name neither of sender nor of recipient, and carries with it no definiteness of message to a special correspondent. But, though it may be admitted that with regard to its literary form it would more properly be described as a homily or discourse, the frequently recurring terms “I wrote,” I have written,” imply that the message was written, not orally delivered.

Genuineness.— The external evidence for the genuineness of this epistle is weighty. Polycarp, a disciple of John, writes with evident reference to 1 John iv. 3: ττSς yaρ δς av μη 0poλoγτj ’ Iησovv ∖ pLστov ev σαρκί εληλυθεvaι, arτLχpcσ- toç eσ-rιv (Ä d Phil., vit). Eusebius, writing of Papias '(H. E., iii. 39), says: K∈χp^ται δ’ 6 αυτός μαρτυρίαν; άττο τpζ Ιωάννου προτερας ετηστολης καί άττο της Hετpoυ ομοίως. The epistle was frequently cited by Irenaeus, a disciple of Polycarp, as we learn both from the statement of Eusebius (77. E., v. 8) and from his extant work against heretics (Adv. Haeret., iii. 16, v. and viii.). The two epistles of St John mentioned in the canon of Muratori are probably the Second and Third, but the absence of reference to the First in that particular connexion implies its acknowledged canonicity; moreover, the same canon contains a citation of 1 John i. 1, 4. The early fraggιent called the letter to Diognetus has unmistakable allusions to the Johannine epistles. The Peshito contains the epistle, and there is an undoubted reference to it in the letter from the churches of Vienne and Lyons. All those authorities belong to the first two centuries. In the succeeding centuries the volume of evidence grows. Eusebius reckons the epistle among the Homoloyoumena or writings of acknowledged authority, and the testimony of Tertullian, Clemens Alexandrinus, Origen, and Cyprian, in addition to the evidence already adduced, indicates its reception in all the churches.

To those who accept the Fourth Gospel as John’s, the strength of the internal evidence for the Johannine authorship of the epistle lies in the similarity of words, of teaching, and of style between the two writings. This similarity is so marked that it requires no argumentative proof. It is a similarity not only of diction, or of parallel expressions and peculiarities of style, but one which is penetrated by the more subtle correspondence of under-currents of thought and of implied knowledge. See on this part of the subject Westcott, Introduction to the Gospel of St John, p. lxi. sq., in the Speaker's Commentary ; and Davidson’s Introduction to the Study of the New Testament, ii. 293 sq. On the other hand, the very closeness of the connexion between the epistles and the gospel has necessarily involved the former in the assaults of recent criticism upon the genuineness of the latter. Some critics, however, while admitting the similarity of style, contend that there are differences of doctrine between the gospel and epistle which preclude identity of authorship. The main points advanced in behalf of this statement are—the supposed differences in eschatological views, the application of the term “Paraclete” to the work of the Holy Spirit in the gospel and to the office of Christ alone in the epistlé, the introduction into the epistle of such terms as ϊλασμός and χpισγzα, which are not found in the gospel, and, lastly, the polemical and strongly anti-Docetic tone which is said to distinguish the epistle from the gospel. Such differences, however, are in part more apparent than real (they are certainly not contradictions), and in part may be naturally explained by the changed circumstances in which the two writings were composed and the different aims proposed in them. On this point see Westcott, p. lxxxviii., and Reuss, Introduction, p. 358 57.

Date.— The date of the epistle must remain in uncertainty; but it is generally viewed as later in composition than the gospel. “The phrases in the gospel,” writes Professor Westcott, “have a definite historic connexion; they belong to circumstances which explain them. The phrases in the epistle are in part generalizations and in part interpretations of the earlier language in view of Christ’s completed work, and of the experience of the Christian church.” The same writer assigns on good grounds to the gospel as well as to the epistle a date subsequent to the fall of Jerusalem. In this view έσχατη ωpα, ch. ii. 18, must be understood of the approach of the second advent of Christ.

Occasion and Contents.— Mr Browning has in his Death in the Desert caught the true occasion of the apostle’s letter: it was written in view of the time when

“There is left on earth No one alive who knew (consider this),— Saw with his eyes and handled with his hands That which was from the first, the Word of Life; How will it be when none more saith ‘ I saw ’ ?”

It is the testimony of the last surviving eyewitness of the Lord, far removed from the scenes and words which he attests, giving, in view of rising error,—Gnostic and Docetic, —the apostolic judgment on questions of the day, and founding the truth of Christian doctrine on a recognition of the historical Christ.

The subject and character of the epistle answer these conditions. The direct testimony to the real existence of Jesus Christ in the flesh, the declaration of spiritual tests (as in ch. i. 6, ii. 29, iii. 19, and in many other passages) which gives an introspective element to the epistle, and, lastly, the impressive re-delivery of familiar truths not freshly defined but exhibited in different mutual relations, are characteristic of an address given by an aged teacher to a generation of men who had not seen the Lord,—from whom therefore objective proof had been withdrawn, and who in consequence would desire some clear testimony of the facts about Jesus, and some definite tests of comm,union with God and of the reality of their spiritual condition. It is an address to the instructed. Much therefore is taken for granted; many elementary principles and truths of the Christian life are left unnoticed; and religious terms frequent in other parts of the New Testament are absent from this epistle. The apostle writes “because they have known Him that was from the beginning” (ii. 13), and his aim is a deepening of the spiritual life and a confirmation of faith.

After an introduction, giving his credentials as a witness and stating his aim, the apostle delivers his message to the church, “God is light” (i. 5). This thought is the subject of the epistle; it is illustrated by the opposite of light—darkness, and by analogous pairs of opposites, in which the principal theme is exhibited in different aspects: these are—righteousness and sin, truth and falsehood, love and hate, God and the world, life and death. To those ideas, which are in truth varied expressions of one and the same idea, the apostle turns and returns, not repeating himself, but on each reiteration of the truth adding some fresh thought and deeper truth. Through these opposites runs another thought—judgment or decision,—which is viewed not as a future but as an everpresent fact in the Christian life.

After the delivery of his message (αγγeλtα) the apostle proceeds toset forth some effects of the “light,”—fellowship with one another, confession of sin, forgiveness of sin (i. 5-10). This suggests one aspect of the object of the “message,” freedom from sin, the test of which, i.e., in other words, the test of knowing God, is observance of His commandments, which are summed up in love (αγατ∏∕) (ii. 1-11). Here the apostle reminds his readers why he sends the message; it is because (on) they to whom it comes are Christians, whose sins have been forgiven, who have known Christ, who have conquered Satan; it comes to all,—to little children, to young men, to the aged (ii. 12-14). Therefore let them not love the world nor the things of the world (ii. 15-17). Hence the thought of the end of the world and the signs thereof. Of these one is the Antichrist. There are now many Antichrists even in the nominal church. But there is a test of the true Christian,—to have the Father, the Son, the unction (χρίσμα) of the Holy Spirit, and the truth (ii. 18-28).

A new section begins with the thought of sonship of God. The test of sonship is doing righteousness because God is righteous. Sonship is a proof of the Father’s love, and the condition of it is likeness to the Father (ii. 28-iii. 9). The connexion is then traced between righteousness and love (10-13), between love and life, and hate and death (14, 15). This suggests the range of love,—selfsacrifice even to death (16-18). Truth (suggested by reality of love) is shown to be tested by keeping the commandments, the first of which is love (19-23), the result is the indwelling of Christ which the Spirit testifies (24). The mention of the Spirit leads the apostle’s thoughts once more, as in ch. ii. 18 sq., to the distinction between true spirits and false. The test is the same, the acknowledgment that Christ has come in the flesh (iv. 1-6). The thought of the true Christian as distinguished from the false again suggests mutual love, which springs from God’s love to us manifested by the mission of Christ. Mutual love is a proof of the indwelling Christ (7-13). Here the apostle pauses to bear impressive witness to the mission of Christ and the love of God (14-16), and then resumes the subject of love. A result of perfect love is confidence in the day of judgment. But absence of brotherly love means want of love to God (17-21). For the test of brotherly love is love to God, which consists in keeping His commandments through the faith in Jesus Christ that overcomes the world (v. 1-5). Jesus Christ then is the object of faith. Faith brings its own evidence, and its evidence is that God gave eternal life (6-12). To effect the knowledge of this (the possession of eternal life), and the belief in the Son of God, were the apostle’s objects in writing. Such knowledge and belief bring assurance, from which results certainty of answer to prayer. The instance given is intercessory prayer (13-17). In conclusion the apostle recapitulates some of the leading truths dwelt upon in the epistle.

From this brief summary it will be seen that the sections are sometimes linked together by a manifest chain of reasoning, and that sometimes the concluding word in one paragraph suggests the fresh train of thought in the next. Some expositors detect a more logical sequence in the epistle. But the varying results of their expositions go to prove the improbability that the apostle had in view any such systematic arrangement. See, however, Düsterdieck, whose scheme is mainly followed by Alford, and Davidson, Introduction to the Study of the New Testament. Where Written and to Whom Addressed.— The epistle was probably written at Ephesus, where the most ancient tradition places the closing scenes of St John’s life, and addressed to the church of Ephesus, or as an encyclical letter to the churches of Asia. In some Latin MSS., however, and in St Augustine’s Quaest. Evang., π. 39, the address ad Parthos is found. Bede adds testimony to the same effect. But such a destination of the epistle is unlikely in itself, receives no support from the Greek Church, and is opposed to ecclesiastical tradition. Hence the best criticism rejects the superscription. It is variously accounted for. Whiston, in his Commentary on the Epistles (1719), suggests that the original address was τrpos παρθένους, and that this abbreviated appeared in Latin as ad Parthos ; according to others it is a corruption of ad Sparsos, “to the dispersed.”

Before textual criticism was studied scientifically, much controversy turned upon the words contained in vers. 7 and 8 of ch. v. The disputed passage, εv τω ovpαvω . . . εν τή γή, is now omitted by all the leading editors, on indisputable authority.

Second and Thibd Epistles. —These are interesting as the only examples of apostolic letters to private persons, except the epistle to Philemon, which have descended to us. Their genuineness is well attested, though with less decisive evidence than that of the First Epistle. Irenaeus quotes 2 John 10, 11. Clement of Alexandria (Strom., ii. 66) alludes to the First Epistle in a way which implies another, èv τή μείζονι επιστολή. Dionysius of Alexandria (248 A.D.) makes express mention of the Second and Third Epistles; Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, cites a passage from the Second. The Muratorian canon, as already stated, probably contains a reference to the two minor epistles.

On the other hand, Eusebius mentions those epistles among the αντιλεγόμενα, or disputed writings (H. A ’.,iii. 25); Jerome writes that they were ascribed to John the Presbyter; Cyprian appears never to cite from them in his own writings (though he records words of Bishop Aurelius, who, speaking in a synod, quotes 2 John 9); Tertullian is equally silent; the Peshito does not contain either epistle.

In answer to the doubts thus raised it has been urged that the brevity and unimportance of the two minor epistles sufficiently account for the comparative silence of the first two centuries respecting them; that the existence of John the Presbyter rests on the slender authority of an inference from a statement by Papias (Eus., H. E., iii. 39); that the style and expressions in the disputed epistles are so manifestly Johannine that, if they did not proceed from John the apostle, they must be the work of a conscious imitator, who, if honest, would have used his own name, if an intentional deceiver, that of the apostle; that the term ό πρεσβυτέρας (“the elder,” or “the aged ”), 2 John 1, 3 John 1, is either a title of dignity or descriptive of age (if the first it may be paralleled by the use of συμπρεσβυτερoς, 1 Pet. v. 1; if the second, by that of πρεσβύτης, Phil. 9, both applied by an apostle to himself).

The greeting in the Second Epistle εκλεκτή κυρία is variously interpreted—either (a) of a person (to the elect lady, to the elect Kyria, or to the lady Eclecta), or (6) of a church mystically addressed under a personal appellation. The last hypothesis is unlikely, and is not supported either by New Testament usage or by the early apocryphal writings. If either εκλεκτή or κυρία be a proper name, it is better to regard κυρία as such, since εκλεκτός is a term applied to all the saints, and in this very letter to the lady’s sister, ver. 13. On the whole it is more probable that both εκλεκτή and κυρία bear their ordinary meanings, and that the A.V. is correct.

The Third Epistle is addressed to Gaius or Caius, a name so common that all identifications must be regarded as purely conjectural. From the epistle we learn that he was a Christian of good report, probably a layman, whom the apostle commends for his hospitality to certain missionaries of the faith who seem to have visited his city. Two other names are mentioned—Diotrephes, a leading and ambitious presbyter, who had refused to obey the apostle’s injunctions, and Demetrius, either the bearer of the epistle or a member of the same church to which Caius belonged.

The time when and the place where these epistles were written must remain unknown from the absence of any data by which to determine them.

The works consulted for this article have been the commentaries of Alford, Ebrard, Lücke, and Reuss on the Epistles, and that of Westcott on the Gospel of St John (Speaker's Commentary') ; Westcott, The Canon of the New Testament ; Neander’s Planting of Christianity (Bohn’s trans., vol. ii. ); F. D. Maurice’s Lectures on the Epistles of St John ; and Davidson’s Introduction to the New Testament. There are also commentaries, among others, by Düsterdieck, 1852; Luthardt, 1860; Haupt, 1869; Baur, 1848; Hilgenfeld, 1854, the last two representing the Tübingen school of criticism. (A. C. *)

JOHN, Gospel of. See Gospels, vol. x. p. 818.

JOHN the Baptist, the last of the prophets and the “forerunner” of Christ, was born in a 7r0λιs Ίοΰδα (according to rabbinical tradition, at Hebron, but according to an ingenious modern interpretation of the phrase, at Jutta), in the beginning of the second half of the year 749 a.u.c. His father Zechariah was a priest “of the course of Abia ”; his mother Elizabeth was related to Mary, the mother of Jesus, whose senior he was by six months. The circumstances of his birth are related with much detail in Luke i., but those of his early years are summed up in the single expression at ver. 80 that he “grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his shewing unto Israel.” In his thirtieth year (Autumn, 779 A.u.c.) he began his public life in the “wilderness of Judaea,” the wild district that lies between the Kidron and the Dead Sea, and particularly in the neighbourhood of the Jordan, where multitudes were attracted by his eloquence. His appearance, costume, and habits of life were such as to recall to the minds of his hearers what they had read about the ancient prophets, and particularly about Elijah, who came to be regarded as his prototype. Nor was his preaching in substance different from theirs: his central doctrine was that “the kingdom of heaven” had come near, and preparation for its speedy arrival by an appropriate change of heart and life was the practical duty he urged. With regard to the nature of the baptism he administered, much uncertainty exists; for some discussion of its origin and meaning, the reader is referred to the article Baptism (vol. iii. p. 348-9). Amongst those who resorted to this rite was John’s kinsman, Jesus of Nazareth, whom he had foretold, and now acknowledged, as one mightier than himself, the latchet of whose shoes he was not worthy to unloose. The duration of John’s ministry cannot be determined with certainty; it terminated in his imprisonment in the fortress of Machaerus, to which he had been committed by Herod Antipas, whose incestuous marriage with Herodias the Baptist had sternly rebuked, and where he was beheaded under circumstances which are familiar to every reader of the Bible. The date of this event cannot with safety be placed later than the end of 782 A.u.c. For our knowledge of John the Baptist we are almost entirely dependent on the notices contained in the Gospel narratives, but a brief account of his career is also given by Josephus (Ant., xviii. 5); some legends of an obviously fictitious character are contained in the apocryphal Gospels.

JOHN, the name of twenty-two popes.

JOHN (1167-1216), king of England, youngest son of Henry II. and Eleanor of Aquitaine, and third king of the Plantagenet family, was born December 24, 1167. He was his father’s favourite child, and Henry hoped to bestow on him the kingdom of Ireland. The Irish princes did homage to John at Oxford in 1177, and in 1185 he was sent to Ireland. His arrogant behaviour roused the resentment of the natives, and he was recalled in disgrace. In the last revolt of Richard against Henry, John was base enough to join with his father’s enemies. This treachery was the death-blow of Henry II. (1189). Richard, on his accession, made the most ample provision for John, giving him several English counties, and marrying him to the heiress of the great earldom of Gloucester. But he had so little trust in his brother’s character that, before his own departure on the third crusade, he bound John to stay away from England for three years. At the end of the term John returned, and harassed Richard’s justiciar, William Longchamp. The unpopularity of Longchamp enabled John, aided by the archbishop of Rouen, to lead a revolutionary movement by which Longchamp was deprived of the justiciarship, and John recognized as summus rector of the kingdom; but the real power remained with the archbishop of Rouen. When the news of the king’s captivity arrived, John entered into an active alliance with Philip II. of France, Richard’s malignant enemy, and tried to seize the reins of government, asserting that the king was dead. But he was baffled by the fidelity of Richard’s ministers and mother, and at Richard’s return his castles had to be surrendered to the king. Richard treated John with great generosity, and for the rest of his reign John gave no further trouble. Richard on his deathbed declared John his heir, The principle of primogeniture, now generally adopted, would have pointed out Arthur of Brittany, son of John’s elder brother Geoffrey, as the heir, and Philip II. made himself the champion of Arthur. John made fresh enemies by divorcing his wife, and marrying Isabella, heiress of the count of Angoulême, who was already betrothed to the Count of La Marche. The anger of the La Marche family caused a fresh outbreak of war, in which Arthur became involved. In a misguided attempt to capture his grandmother Eleanor, in the castle of Mirabeau, he was defeated and taken prisoner by John, who marched with great swiftness to his mother’s aid. Arthur now disappears from history; and, though there is no certain information about his death, it was generally believed at the time that John murdered him. Philip’s court of peers declared John guilty, and sentenced him to forfeiture. John abandoned himself to pleasure, and made no attempt to defend his dominions; he showed such complete indifference, while Philip was reducing castle after castle in Normandy, that it was said he was spell-bound by witchcraft. In 1204 all Normandy was lost. Anjou, Maine, and part of Aquitaine soon followed the fate of Normandy; John made only feeble or abortive attempts to save them. In 1205 his great quarrel with the church began. The monks of Canterbury had elected their sub-prior to the archbishopric, and John had nominated a minister of his own: all parties appealed to Pope Innocent IIΓ., who took the matter into his own hands, and ordered the convent proctors to elect Stephen Langton, an Englishman already distinguished by learning and character. John’s refusal to accept Langton brought sentence of interdict on his kingdom (1208). He was personally excommunicated in 1209, and in 1211 the pope issued a bull deposing him from his throne; the execution of the decree was committed to Philip, who prepared to invade England. John at last gave way, moved chiefly by a prophecy that on the next Ascension Day he would be no longer king. He made an abject submission to the papal legate Pandulph, agreeing to hold his kingdom henceforth as a tributary fief of the popedom. Thus the ecclesiastical difficulty was settled, but now John had to settle a quarrel with his own people. He had incurred their hatred by his personal vices, by his cruelty and perfidy, of which the supposed murder of Arthur was only one instance among many, and by his exaction of taxes greatly in excess of the customary rates. The barons of the north began the quarrel by refusing to accompany John on the expedition to France which he planned immediately after his absolution, alleging that their tenures did not oblige them to service abroad. Langton restrained the king from doing immediate vengeance on the barons, and in the meantime an important assembly was held at St Albans (the first -to which representatives from the towns are known to have been summoned), at which the justiciar promised in the king’s name that the laws of Henry I. should be observed. At an assembly at St Paul’s the same year, Langton, who was the moulding spirit of the movement, produced the charter of Henry I., which became the basis of Magna Charta. John was now bent on trying to knit together the Germanic confederacy against Philip, which had been originated by Richard. He showed both policy and energy in this matter, but the barons of Poitou failed him at the critical moment of the war, and his nephew the emperor Otho was utterly defeated by Philip at Bouvines. John was forced to conclude the peace of Chinon (1214), by which he ceded to Philip all bis claims on lands lying north of the Loire. He had scarcely returned to England when his barons formed a confederacy against him at Bury St Edmunds. He attempted to bribe the clergy by granting them free election; but they stood firm to the national cause. The city of London gave its adhesion to the barons, and John found himself abandoned by all. He was obliged to grant the demands of the barons, and to sign (at Runnymede, June 15, 1215), the Great Charter, which for two hundred years was to be the watchword of English freedom. John signed the charter without the least intention of keeping it, and he found a powerful ally in his new master Innocent III., who issued a bull against the charter, and suspended. Langton. Langton went to Rome to appeal, and the patriot party was thus deprived of its wisest leader. War soon broke out again, but John was able to obtain a host of foreign mercenaries, and the barons were driven to make alliance with France. Louis, son of Philip II., arrived in England in May 1216, and John’s unusual audacity and success deserted him at once. In three months the greater part of the country was in the hands of Louis. Yet the national mistrust of the foreigner was already causing a reaction in favour of John, when in marching across the Wash he met with the accident which led to his death. He was overtaken by the tide, lost all his baggage and treasure, and narrowly escaped himself. Vexation and fatigue, aggravated by excess in eating and drinking, brought on an attack of dysentery; with difficulty he reached Newark, where he died October 19, 1216.*

The reign of John is a turning point in English history, and marks the beginning of a new era. (1) The separation of Normandy insured the free development of English life, and the absorption of the Norman nobility in the English people. (2) Magna Charta marks the first united attempt of the English people to limit the power of the king. Hitherto the people had been the allies of the royal power against the baronage; for the two following centuries they are leagued with the baronage and the church against royal tyranny. (3) The surrender of John’s kingdom to the pope, followed by the opposition of Innocent to English freedom and the papal exactions of the next reign, caused a change of feeling towards the papacy, and led to the antiRoman legislation which went on from the reign of Edward I. till the Reformation. (e. s. a.)

JOHN (JOÂO) I. (1357-1433), king of Portugal, the natural son of Pedro I. (el Justicieiro), was born at Lisbon on April 22, 1357, and in 1364 was created grand-master of Aviz. On the death of his lawful brother Ferdinand I., without male issue, in October 1383, strenuous efforts were made in various quarters to secure the succession in the legitimate line for Beatrice, the only child of Ferdinand I., who as heiress apparent had been married to John I. of Castile; but the popular voice declared decisively against an arrangement by which Portugal would virtually have become a Spanish province, and John was after violent tumults proclaimed protector and regent in the following December. In April 1385 he was unanimously chosen king by the estates of the realm at Coimbra, and the coronation took place some little time afterwards. The king of Castile resorted to arms on behalf of his wife, and invested Lisbon, but the besieging army was compelled by the ravages of a pestilence to withdraw, and subsequently by the decisive battle of Aljubarrota (14th August 1385) the stability of John’s throne was permanently secured. Hostilities continued, however, with more or less of interruption until the death of John of Castile, without leaving issue by Beatrice, in 1390; and even after that event relations between the two countries continued to be strained. In the meanwhile John went on consolidating the power of the crown at home and the influence of the nation abroad. In 1415 Ceuta was taken from the Moors by his sons who had been born to him by his wife Philippa, daughter of John, duke of Lancaster; specially distinguished in the siege was Prince Henry, afterwards generally known as “the Navigator,” who in this and also in the following reign did so much to prepare the way for the position of colonial importance subsequently held by Portugal. Porto Santo and Madeira were occupied respectively in 1419 and 1420. John I., sometimes surnamed “the Great,” and sometimes ‘ father of his country,” died August 11, 1433, in the forty-eighth year of a reign which had been characterized by great prudence, ability, and success; he was succeeded by his son Edward or Duarte, so named out of compliment to Edward III. of England.

JOHN (1801-1873), king of Saxony, brother and successor of Frederick Augustus II., and younger son of Duke Maximilian and Caroline of Parma, was born at Dresden 12th December 1801. In youth he showed a special bent towards mathematics, and he also studied with great diligence law and history. His interest in Italian literature having been awakened by a journey to Italy in 1821, he in 1825 printed for private circulation, under the pseudonym of Philalethes, a metrical translation of a portion of Dante’s Inferno, and in 1829 he published a complete translation of the Divine Comedy, with critical and historical notes. At an early age he also took an active part in political life. In 1821 he became a member of the college of finance, of which he was president from 1825 to 1831. From 1831 to 1846 he acted as commander of the national guards. On ascending the throne in 1854 he followed the same enlightened and liberal policy as his brother, and introduced several reforms of great benefit to the country. In the wars of 1866 he sided with Austria against Prussia, and on that account had to submit to the payment of a large sum of money and the cession of the fortress of Königstein at the conclusion of peace. He, however, afterwards entered the North German federation, and his troops took a very prominent and distinguished part in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71. He died at Dresden, October 29, 1873.

JOHN (JUAN) I. (1350-1395), king of Aragon, was born December 27, 1350, and succeeded his father, Pedro IV., in 1387. He left the affairs of his kingdom to a large extent in the hands of his wife Yolande, a granddaughter of John the Good, king of France, while he himself led a life of pleasure and inglorious ease. A characteristic feature of his reign was the encouragement he gave to the poetical institutions of the troubadours, a “consistory of the Gaya Sciencia” having been founded at Barcelona under his auspices iu 1390. In that year he repelled an attack by the count of Armagnac, who had laid claim to the domains in Majorca previously in possession of his family; and in 1392 he quelled a revolt of the Sardinians.

He died in 1395, in consequence of an accident on the hunting field, and was succeeded by his brother Martin.

JOHN (JUAN) I. 1358-1390), king of Castile and Leon, born in August 1358, was the son of Henry II. (“El Bastardo”), whom he succeeded in 1379. At his accession the Lancasterian claims to the throne of Castile were renewed, and gained the support of Portugal; the result was a war with the latter power, which ended in a marriage (1382) between John and the Portuguese infanta. The peace thus ratified did not subsist long, for, on the death of Ferdinand of Portugal in the following year without male issue, John sought to establish a claim to the succession on behalf of his wife, and crossing the frontier penetrated as far as to Lisbon, to which he began to lay siege while John, the grand-master of Aviz, was being proclaimed king. Compelled by pestilence and other unfavourable circumstances to withdraw, he encountered the Portuguese in the neighbourhood of Aljubarrota in August of 1385; the disastrous defeat he there sustained was followed by a descent of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster (July 1386), which led to the conclusion of the peace of Troncoso (1387), in virtue of which the constantly recurring disputes about the crown were settled by the marriage of the crown prince Henry to Catherine, the representative of the Lancasterian claims. The last four years of the reign of John were marked by important legislative reforms in the town brotherhoods (fermandades), in the army, and in the system of taxation. In 1390 he was killed by a fall from his horse, and was succeeded by his son Henry III.

JOHN, Don, of Austria (1545-1578), was the bastard son of the emperor Charles V. by Barbara Blomberg, the daughter of a well-to-do citizen of Ratisbon. He was born in that free imperial city (according to a not very probable tradition in the “imperial hostelry” there, which still survives as the inn of the Golden Cross), on February 24, 1545, the anniversary of his father’s birth and coronation, and of the battle of Pavia. On another visit to Ratisbon in the following year, after arranging a marriage between the fair Barbara and one of his German courtiers, Hieronymus Piramis Kegell, the emperor carried off the young Geronimo, as he was then conveniently called. The worthy Don Luis de Quijada, to whose care he was hereupon confided, watched over his early childhood with jealous care. It was at first sought to conceal the connexion between the emperor and the child of his declining years, who was brought up in retirement, chiefly in Quijada’s castle of Villagarcia in Spain. In the year before the emperor’s death, however, the boy was brought into the immediate neighbourhood of San Yuste, where his presence brightened the close of his father’s life. In his last will Charles V. acknowledged “Geronimo” as his son, and commended him to the care of his successors, expressing a wish that he should take monastic vows, but that in the event of his declining these a handsome income should be provided for him out of the revenues of Naples.

In September 1559 the boy was publicly recognized by king Philip II. as his brother; and henceforth he resided at court under the name of Don Juan d’Austria as a member of the royal family. With the heir to the throne, the unhappy Don Carlos, his relations were so friendly that, when at the end of the year 1567 the infante was plotting his flight from Spain, he confided his more or less treasonable scheme to his half-brother, and even requested the latter to accompany him on his expedition. A sense of duty, at which it is difficult to cavil, prompted Don John to reveal this unsought confidence to the king, and thus he helped to bring about the fatal catastrophe, as it proved, of the imprisonment of Don Carlos.

It was not the habit of Philip II. to allow those who served him to choose their own seasons and methods of doing so. The impetuous Don John, whom the king would have preferred to see a monk, had in 1565 been refused permission to serve in the fleet ordered to sail for the relief of Malta; and an express royal command had been needed to bring him back when on the point of making the voyage on his own account. His obedience was rewarded when in 1568 he was appointed to the great office of Capitan general de la mar. His first actual service, however, was by land, and of a kind unattractive to any but the genuine Spanish blood. In 1569 he was charged with a task, the execution of which the captain-general of Granada, the marquis of Mondejar, had begun, but was unwilling relentlessly to complete. The reformation of the converted Moriscoes had come to mean the suppression of the remnants of their national as well as religious life; and after the insurrection of Aben Humeya had been overcome, the wholesale deportation of all the Moriscoes from their habitations was decreed, and executed on All Saints’ Day 1570. Don John cannot be held responsible either for the cruelty of this ordinance, or for the general policy of the war, which from the time when the jealousy of the king had allowed him to take the field, instead of remaining at Granada, he had carried on with vigour and skill. The capture of Guejar had been his first deed of arms (December 1569); it had been followed by that of Galera; and in August 1570 the Alpujarras mountains were cleared of the Moriscoes, of whom more than 10,000 are said to have been killed or captured in the space of a single month.

Before long a nobler crusade engaged the energy of the obedient and successful commander. Philip II., though he was during nearly the whole of his reign engaged in hostilities with the Turks, had hitherto displayed no great vigour in resisting their still unceasing inroads upon the domain of Christendom. His fleet had for the time saved Malta; but Cyprus was torn by the infidel from the Venetians without his having offered timely co-operation for its defence (1571); and the barbarous proceedings of the conquerors had filled Europe with horror and shame. Not even the waters of the Adriatic were secure from the Turkish vessels, and the league which shortly before the loss of Cyprus papal diplomacy had succeeded in knitting between Spain, Venice, and Rome, and which purported to aim at the extinction of the Mahometan power, had as yet remained a dead letter. At length the forces of the allies— 208 galleys, 6 galeases, and a number of smaller craft, with more than 20,000 Spanish, German, and Italian soldiers on board—assembled at Messina. Don John of Austria had been named admiral of the league, with power (granted at the request of Pope Pius V.) of free action after consultation with his captains and the Venetian commander. Thus the day of Lepanto was in every sense his own, though it was his good fortune that the Turks had underestimated his numbers, which were in truth little inferior to theirs. The Christian victory was complete. Only forty of the Turkish vessels effected their escape, the rest being burnt or captured; and 35,000 of their men were slain or captured, while 15,000 Christian galley-slaves were released. At Constantinople apprehensions were even entertained of an immediate attack on the part of the victors. The battle of Lepanto (October 7, 1571) was, as Ranke observes, like that of Actium, a decisive historic struggle between West and East; and the ecstatic joy which it inspired was shared by all Christian Europe. But though, on receiving the great news of a success which seemed in its momentousness to surpass any of his father’s achievements, Philip II. had vowed to carry on this Christian war, jealousy between the allies wasted the immediate fruits of the victory, and the by no means remotely possible consequences of an active Franco-Turkish alliance inclined the king of Spain to keep his brother inactive in Sicily. Soon the ever vigilant suspicions of Philip were aroused by information which he received— partly from the candid Don John himself—as to the visions which (instigated by the inveterate papal habit of giving away kingdoms before they had been conquered) suggested themselves to the restless imagination of the hero of Lepanto. At one time Albania and the Morea entreated him to reign over them, after he should have previously freed them from the Turkish yoke; next, Rhodes besought the aid of his invincible arm for the work of its liberation. Meanwhile, after the Turks had brought together another fleet, he was unable to force them to accept another battle at Navarino (September 1572); and soon afterwards Venice, by concluding a separate treaty of peace with the sultan, put an end to the league which had been victorious at Lepanto. Spain was by herself no match for the Turkish power; and 'though in 1573 Don John captured Tunis, it was speedily recaptured in the following year.

Although unable to obtain from his brother even so much as the title of an infante of Spain, the ardent spirit of Don John had continued to indulge in wild dreams of a kingdom to be erected by him for himself in those regions which he had successfully disputed with the infidel; and, after suppressing a momentary hankering after the crown of France which the death of Charles IX. had excited, he had solicited the good offices of pope Gregory XIII. towards his establishment as king of Tunis. The pope, however, had destined him for higher things. As yet King Philip had shrunk from taking up the cause of Rome’s unfortunate daughter, held captive in heretic England. Might not a share in the throne of three northern kingdoms tempt Don John to become the hero of a second and more rewardful crusade?

In the midst of schemes and dreams such as these Don John was summoned by King Philip to an office which might seem to bring him near to the accomplishment of the most glorious of them all. He was appointed (in 1576) to the government of the Netherlands, vacant by the death of Requesens. The administration of the latter had not been intended to introduce any radical change into the system of his predecessor Alva; his military operations had been only partially successful; and the pacification of Ghent (October 1576), concluded since his death, had greatly improved the prospects of William of Orange and the insurrection. The magic of Don John’s name, and the loyal energy of which he had given proof, were to recover what had been lost; and he was willing to undertake a task the accomplishment of which might lead to higher tasks beyond. He was, however, now brought into conflict with an adversary of a very different calibre from his own. He showed himself willing to consent to the demand of the dismissal of the Spanish troops from the Netherlands, hoping to be able to employ them in a descent upon England. William of Orange, by warning Queen Elizabeth of these designs, secured not only her goodwill, but the rarer proof of it in the shape of a sum of money, and at home drew still tighter the alliance established by the Ghent pacification. Hereupon Don John found himself obliged to grant the perpetual edict (February 1577) which in accordance with the pacification dismissed the Spanish troops designed by him for the conquest of England, and held his entry into Brussels (May 1st) amidst popular acclamations. In secret, however, he was counselling and preparing a renewal of the war; and before the end of the summer he took Namur by a stratagem. The answer was the proclamation of Orange as protector of Brabant, and the nomination as governor-general of the archduke Matthias, under whom Orange continued to hold the actual supremacy, while Don John’s control was almost entirely confined to the south-western part of the Netherlands. He now (January 1578) declared war against the insurgent provinces, and the dismissed Spanish troops were soon with other forces reassembling under his standard. A large army brought from Lombardy by Alexander Farnese, prince of Parma (Don John’s nephew), raised the Spanish forces to a virtual equality in numbers with those of their opponents; and Farnese’s victory of Gemblours (January 31, 1578) hopefully opened the campaign. It remained an open question whether the aid of France (which appeared to be warranted by the arrival with an army of the duke of Anjou, the “protector” of the liberties of the Netherlands), together with the money of England and the men of the Palatinate, would suffice to make the cause of freedom prevail against the determination of Philip, the ambitious devotion of Don John, and the military genius of Alexander Farnese. On the other hand, it seemed doubtful whether the disunion among Philip’s adversaries would weaken them more than his parsimony and suspicion vexed the soul and crippled the energies of his brother. Such was the situation when Don John was removed by death. After having shortly before escaped the dagger of an English assassin (a Catholic refugee, who had hoped by the act to secure the pardon of the queen), Don John succumbed to a sudden illness at Namur on October 1, 1578. An altogether unwarranted, but under the circumstances far from inexplicable, suspicion accused King Philip of having by poison brought about the death of a half-brother whose action his jealousy and distrust of all the world except himself had thwarted after Gemblours as after Lepanto. The settlement of the Netherlands, after whatever fashion Don John might have accomplished it, was a harder task than any he ever executed; and the subjection of heretic England to the authority of a Catholic queen seems to posterity a dream more marvellous than were even the actual glories of Lepanto. But his life, which spanned but little more than thirty-three years, was the reverse of an empty or an ignoble one, and though it was full of imperfections and disappointments, yet its enthusiasm shines forth even under the cold shade spread over it by the fraternal jealousy of a Philip II.

The only modern monograph on the life of Don John of Austria is that by Professor W. Havemann (Gotha, 1865), which corrects some of Motley’s vivacities. For the rebellion of the Moriscoes and the battle of Lepanto see Prescott’s Reign of Philip II'. f and Forneron’s Histoire de Philippe II. (vols. i. and it, Paris, 1880); for the battle, see also Ranke’s Die Osmanen u. die Spanische Monarchie (4th ed., 1877).

JOHN of Damascus. See Damascenus, vol vi. p. 789.

JOHN of Gaunt. See Lancaster, Duke of.

JOHN, St, of Nepomuk, or Pomuk (c. 1330-1393), the patron saint of Bohemia, was born at Pomuk about 1330. After studying at the university of Prague he took holy orders and was for some time a priest in the diocese of Prague. In 1372 he is mentioned as imperial notary; in 1380 he became rector of the church of St Gall in Prague, and notary and secretary of the archbishop; and in 1381 he was made doctor of canon law and canon of the metropolitan chapter. He appears to have taken an important part as adviser or supporter of the archbishop John of Jansteinin his disputes with King Wenceslaus, and on this account, after suffering cruel torture, he was drowned in the Moldau. The chief events of his life were afterwards adorned with a variety of legends, and in 1729 he was canonized by Benedict XIII. An annual procession in his honour takes place at Prague on May 16. See Abel, Die Legende vorn St Johann von Nepomuk, Berlin, 1855.

JOHN of Salisbury (c. 1115-1180), a distinguished writer of the 12th century, was born at Salisbury in Wiltshire between the years 1110 and 1120. From the cognomen Parvus, which he applies to himself, and from the fact that he was of Saxon, not of Norman race, it may be inferred that his name was Short, or Small, or Little. Few details are known regarding his early life or rank in society; but from his own statements it is gathered that he crossed to France about the year 1131, and began regular studies in Paris under Abelard, who had there for a brief period reopened his famous school on Mont St Geneviève. After Abelard’s retirement, John carried on his studies under Alberich, Robert of Melun, and Robert Pulleyn. Three years he spent at the great school of Chartres, mainly under William of Conches, though it would seem that he had been a pupil of the founder of the school, Bernard Silvester. Bernard’s teaching was distinguished partly by its pronounced Platonic tendency, partly by the stress laid upon literary study of the greater Latin writers; and the influence of the latter feature is noticeable in all John of Salisbury’s works. Returning to Paris, he spent some years there, partly as teacher, partly as pupil of Adam de Ponto Parvo and Gilbert de la Porrée. Whether he attended any of the teachers of the Victorin school is uncertain, but his mode of thinking in theological subjects bears unmistakable traces of the peculiar views of these writers. Probably in the year 1147 or 1148 he crossed to England, with a letter of recommendation from Peter of Celli to Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury. For thirteen years he acted as secretary to Theobald, and was frequently ambassador from the English primate to the papal see. During this time he composed his greatest works, published almost certainly in 1159, the Policraticus, sive de Nugis Curialium et de Vestigiis Philosophorum and the Meta-logicus, writings invaluable as storehouses of information regarding the matter and form of scholastic education, and remarkable for their cultured literary style and humanist tendency. After the death of Theobald in 1061, John continued to occupy the post of secretary to his successor, the famous chancellor Thomas Becket, and took an active part in the long disputes between the primate and his sovereign, Henry II. His letters are of great value for the light they throw upon the obscure course of the constitutional struggle then agitating the English world. With Becket he withdrew to France during the king’s displeasure; he returned with him in 1169, and was present at his assassination in 1170. In the following years, during which he continued in an influential situation in Canterbury, but at what precise date is unknown, he drew up the Life of St Thomas à Becket, and somewhat later the Life of St Anselm. In 1176 he was made bishop of Chartres, where he passed the remainder of his life. The date of his death has been variously given as 1182, 1181, or 1180; the strongest reasons are in favour of the last.

John’s writings are not in any strict sense philosophical, but they give much information regarding the general currents of thinking at the time, and enable us to understand with much completeness the literary and scientific position of the 12th century. So far as his own views are concerned, they are such as one might expect from a cultured intelligence well versed in practical affairs. His doctrine, on the whole, is a kind of a utilitarianism, with a strong leaning, on the side of speculative questions, to the modified, literary scepticism of Cicero. For Cicero, indeed, he has unbounded admiration, and his Latin style, unusually excellent when compared with the average Latinity of the scholastic writers, is evidently moulded on that of Cicero. The remarkable feature of his writings, apart from their value as giving information respecting studies in the 12th century, is their strongly marked humanist tendency. To some extent this is common to John and to his predecessors in the school of Chartres, but no other writer seems to have possessed so extensive and competent an acquaintance with the great works of Latin classical literature. Of Greek writers he appears to have known nothing at first hand, and very little in translations. The Timaeus of Plato in the Latin version of Chalcidius was known to him as to his contemporaries and predecessors, and probably he had access to translations of the Phaedo and Meno. Of Aristotle he possessed, in Latin version, the whole of the Organon ; he is, indeed, the first of the mediaeval writers of note to whom the whole was known. Of other Aristotelian writings he appears to have known nothing.

The Ροlicraticus seems first to have been printed in 1476, in folio; a quarto reprint reappeared in 1513, and an octavo in the same year, but from different MS. sources; the most common edition is that of 1639. The Metalοg icus was first printed in 1610; the best known edition is that of 1639. The Eηtheticus, or more correctly Hutheticus, was first printed in 1843 by C. Petersen. The collected editions of the works are by J. A. Giles, 5 vols., Oxford, 1848, and by Migne, in the Patrologiae Cursus, vol. 199,—neither accurate. The most complete study of John of Salisbury is the monograph by Schaarschmidt, Johannes Sarisberienis nach Leben unci Studien, Schriften und Philosophie, which is a model of accurate and complete workmanship.

JOHNSON, Samuel (1709-1784), one of the most eminent English writers of the 18th century, was the son of Michael Johnson, who was, at the beginning of that century, a magistrate of Lichfield, and a bookseller of great note in the midland counties. Michael’s abilities and attainments seem to have been considerable. He was so well acquainted with the contents of the volumes which he exposed to sale that the country rectors of Staffordshire and Worcestershire thought him an oracle on points of learning. Between him and the clergy, indeed, there was a strong religious and political sympathy. He was a zealous churchman, and, though he had qualified himself for municipal office by taking the oaths to the sovereigns in possession, was to the last a Jacobite in heart. At his house, a house which is still pointed out to every traveller who visits Lichfield, Samuel was born on the 18th of September 1709. In the child the physical, intellectual, and moral peculiarities which afterwards distinguished the man were plainly discernible: great muscular strength accompanied by much awkwardness and many infirmities; great quickness of parts, with a morbid propensity to sloth and procrastination; a kind and generous heart, with a gloomy and irritable temper. He had inherited from his ancestors a scrofulous taint, which it was beyond the power of medicine to remove. His parents were weak enough to believe that the royal touch was a specific for this malady. In his third year he was taken up to London, inspected by the court surgeon, prayed over by the court chaplains, and stroked and presented with a piece of gold by Queen Anne. One of his earliest recollections was that of a stately lady in a diamond stomacher and a long black hood. Her hand was applied in vain. The boy’s features, which were originally noble and not irregular, were distorted by his malady. His checks were deeply scarred. He lost for a time the sight of one eye; and he saw but very imperfectly with the other. But the force of his mind overcame every impediment. Indolent as he was, he acquired knowledge with such ease and rapidity that at every school to which he was sent he was soon the best scholar. From sixteen to eighteen he resided at home, and was left to his own devices. He learned much at this time, though his studies were without guidance and without plan. He ransacked his father’s shelves, dipped into a multitude of books, read what was interesting, and passed over what was dull. An ordinary lad would have acquired little or no useful knowledge in such a way; but much that was dull to ordinary lads was interesting to Samuel He read little Greek; for his proficiency in that language was not such that he could take much pleasure in the masters of Attic poetry and eloquence. But he had left school a good Latinist, and he soon acquired, in the large and miscellaneous library of which he now had the command, an extensive knowledge of Latin literature. That Augustan delicacy of taste which is the boast of the great public schools of England he never possessed. But he was early familiar with some classical writers who were quite unknown to the best scholars in the sixth form at Eton. He was peculiarly attracted by the works of the great restorers of learning. Once, while searching for some apples, he found a huge folio volume of Petrarch’s works. The name excited his curiosity, and he eagerly devoured hundreds of pages. Indeed, the diction and versification of his own Latin compositions show that he had paid at least as much attention to modern copies from the antique as to the original models.

While he was thus irregularly educating himself, his family was sinking into hopeless poverty. Old Michael Johnson was much better qualified to pore upon books, and to talk about them, than to trade in them. His business declined; his debts increased; it was with difficulty that the daily expenses of his household were defrayed. It was out of his power to support his son at either university; but a wealthy neighbour offered assistance; and, in reliance on promises which proved to be of very little value, Samuel was entered at Pembroke College, Oxford. When the young scholar presented himself to the rulers of that society, they were amazed not more by his ungainly figure and eccentric manners than by the quantity of extensive and curious information which he had picked up during many months of desultory but not unprofitable study. On the first day of his residence he surprised his teachers by quoting Macrobius; and one of the most learned among them declared that he had never known a freshman of equal attainments.

At Oxford Johnson resided during about three years. He was poor, even to raggedness; and his appearance excited a mirth and a pity which were equally intolerable to his haughty spirit. He was driven from the quadrangle of Christ Church by the sneering looks which the members of that aristöcratical society cast at the holes in his shoes. Some charitable person placed a new pair at his door; but he spurned them away in a fury. Distress made him, not servile, but reckless and ungovernable. No opulent gentleman commoner, panting for one-and-twenty, could have treated the academical authorities with more gross disrespect. The needy scholar was generally to be seen under the gate of Pembroke, a gate now adorned with his effigy, haranguing a circle of lads, over whom, in spite of his tattered gown and dirty linen, his wit and audacity gave him an undisputed ascendency. In every mutiny against the discipline of the college he was the ringleader. Much was pardoned, however, to a youth so highly distinguished by abilities and acquirements. He had early made himself known by turning Pope’s Messiah into Latin verse. The style and rhythm, indeed, were not exactly Virgilian; but the translation found many admirers, and was read with pleasure by Pope himself.

The time drew near at which Johnson would, in the ordinary course of things, have become a bachelor of arts; but he was at the end of his resources. Those promises of support on which he had relied had not been kept. His family could do nothing for him. His debts to Oxford tradesmen were small indeed, yet larger than he could pay. In the autumn of 1731 he was under the necessity of quitting the university without a degree. In the following winter his father died. The old man left but a pittance; and of that pittance almost the whole was appropriated to the support of his widow. The property to which Samuel succeeded amounted to no more than twenty pounds.

His life, during the thirty years which followed, was one hard struggle with poverty. The misery of that struggle needed no aggravation, but was aggravated by the sufferings of an unsound body and an unsound mind. Before the young man left the university, his hereditary malady had broken forth in a singularly cruel form. He had become an incurable hypochondriac. He said long after that he had been mad all his life, or at least not perfectly sane; and, in truth, eccentricities less strange than his have often been thought ground sufficient for absolving felons, and for setting aside wills. His grimaces, his gestures, his mutterings, sometimes diverted and sometimes terrified people who did not know him. At a dinner table he would, in a fit of absence, stoop down and twitch off a lady’s shoe. He would amaze a drawing-room by suddenly ejaculating a clause of the Lord’s Prayer. He would conceive an unintelligible aversion to a particular alley, and perform a great circuit rather than see the hateful place. He would set his heart on touching every post in the streets through which he walked. If by any chance he missed a post, he would go back a hundred yards and repair the omission. Under the influence of his disease, his senses became morbidly torpid, and his imagination morbidly active. At one time he would stand poring on the town clock without being able to tell the hour. At another he would distinctly hear his mother, who was many miles off, calling him by his name. But this was not the worst. A deep melancholy took possession of him, and gave a dark tinge to all his views of human nature and of human destiny. Such wretchedness as he endured has driven many men to shoot themselves or drown themselves. But he was under no temptation to commit suicide. He was sick of life; but he was afraid of death; and he shuddered at every sight or sound which reminded him of the inevitable hour. In religion he found but little comfort during his long and frequent fits of dejection; for his religion partook of his own character. The light from heaven shone on him indeed, but not in a direct line, or with its own pure splendour. The rays had to struggle through a disturbing medium; they reached him refracted, dulled, and discoloured by the thick gloom which had settled on his soul, and, though they might be sufficiently clear to guide him, were too dim to cheer him.

With such infirmities of body and of mind, this celebrated man was left, at two-and-twenty, to fight his way through the world. He remained during about five years in the midland counties. At Lichfield, his birthplace and his early home, he had inherited some friends and acquired others. He was kindly noticed by Henry Hervey, a gay officer of noble family, who happened to be quartered there. Gilbert Walmesley, registrar of the ecclesiastical court of the diocese, a man of distinguished parts, learning, and knowledge of the world, did himself honour by patronizing the young adventurer, whose repulsive person, unpolished manners, and squalid garb moved many of the petty aristocracy of the neighbourhood to laughter or to disgust. At Lichfield, however, Johnson could find no way of earning a livelihood. He became usher of a grammar school in Leicestershire; he resided as a humble companion in the house of a country gentleman; but a life of dependence was insupportable to his haughty spirit. He repaired to Birmingham, and there earned a few guineas by literary drudgery. In that town he printed a translation, little noticed at the time, and long forgotten, of a Latin book about Abyssinia. He then put forth proposals for publishing by subscription the poems of Politian, with notes containing a history of modern Latin verse; but subscriptions did not come in, and the volume never appeared.

While leading this vagrant and miserable life, Johnson fell in love. The object of his passion was Mrs Elizabeth Porter, a widow who had children as old as himself. To ordinary spectators the lady appeared to be a short, fat, coarse woman, painted half an inch thick, dressed in gaudy colours, and fond of exhibiting provincial airs and graces which were not exactly those of the Queensberrys and Lepels. To Johnson, however, whose passions were strong, whose eyesight was too weak to distinguish cerise from natural bloom, and who had seldom or never been in the same room with a woman of real fashion, his Titty, as he called her, was the most beautiful, graceful, and accomplished of her sex. That his admiration was unfeigned cannot be doubted; for she was as poor as himself. She accepted, with a readiness which did her little honour, the addresses of a suitor who might have been her son. The marriage, however, in spite of occasional wranglings, proved happier than might have been expected. The lover continued to be under the illusions of the wedding-day till the lady died in her sixty-fourth year. On her monument he placed an inscription extolling the charms of her person and of her manners; and when, long after her decease, he had occasion to mention her, he exclaimed with a tenderness half ludicrous half pathetic, “Pretty creature !”

His marriage made it necessary for him to exert himself more strenuously than he had hitherto done. He took a house in the neighbourhood of his native town, and advertized for pupils. But eighteen months passed away, and only three pupils came to his academy. Indeed, his appearance was so strange, and his temper so violent, that his schoolroom must have resembled an ogre’s den. Nor was the tawdry painted grandmother whom he called his Titty well qualified to make provision for the comfort of young gentlemen. David Garrick, who was one of the pupils, used, many years later, to throw the best company of London into convulsions of laughter by mimicking the endearments of this extraordinary pair.

At length Johnson, in the twenty-eighth year of his age, determined to seek his fortune in the capital as a literary adventurer. He set out with a few guineas, three acts of the tragedy of Irene in manuscript, and two or three letters of introduction from his friend Walmesley. Never since literature became a calling in England had it been a less gainful calling than at the time when Johnson took up his residence in London. In the preceding generation a writer of eminent merit was sure to be munificently rewarded by the Government. The least that he could expect was a pension or a sinecure place; and, if he showed any aptitude for politics, he might hope to be a member of parliament, a lord of the treasury, an ambassador, a secretary of state. It would be easy, on the other hand, to name several writers of the 19th century of whom the least successful has received forty thousand pounds from the booksellers. But Johnson entered on his vocation in the most dreary part of the dreary interval which separated two ages of prosperity. Literature had ceased to flourish under the patronage of the great, and had not begun to flourish under the patronage of the public. One man of letters, indeed, Pope, had acquired by his pen what was then considered as a handsome fortune, and lived on a footing of equality with nobles and ministers of state. But this was a solitary exception. Even an author whose reputation was established, and whose works were popular—such an author as Thomson, whose Seasons were in every library, such an author as Fielding, whose Pasquin had. had a greater run than any drama since The Beggar's Opera— was sometimes glad to obtain, by pawning his best coat, the means of dining on tripe at a cookshop underground, where he could wipe his hands, after his greasy meal, on the back of a Newfoundland dog. It is easy, therefore, to imagine what humiliations and privations must have awaited the novice who had still to earn a name. One of the publishers to whom Johnson applied for employment measured with a scornful eye that athletic though uncouth frame, and exclaimed, “You had better get a porter’s knot, and carry trunks.” Nor was the advice bad, for a porter was likely to be as plentifully fed, and as comfortably lodged, as a poet.

Some time appears to have elapsed before Johnson was able to form any literary connexion from which he could expect more than bread for the day which was passing over him. He never forgot the generosity with which Hervey, who was now residing in London, relieved his wants during this time of trial. “Harry Hervey,” said the old philosopher many years later, “was a vicious man; but he was very kind to me. If you call a dog Hervey, 1 shall love him.” At Hervey’s table Johnson sometimes enjoyed feasts which were made more agreeable by contrast. But in general he dined, and thought that he dined well, on sixpennyworth of meat and a pennyworth of bread at an alehouse near Drury Lane.

The effect of the privations and sufferings which he endured at this time was discernible to the last in his temper and his deportment. His manners had never been courtly. They now became almost savage. Being frequently under the necessity of wearing shabby coats and dirty shirts, he became a confirmed sloven. Being often very hungry when he sat down to his meals, he contracted a habit of eating with ravenous greediness. Even to the end of his life, and even at the tables of the great, the sight of food affected him as it affects wild beasts and birds of prey. His taste in cookery, formed in subterranean ordinaries and à la mode beefshops, was far from delicate. Whenever he was so fortunate as to have near him a hare that had been kept too long, or a meat pie made with rancid butter, he gorged himself with such violence that his veins swelled and the moisture broke out on his forehead. The affronts which his poverty emboldened stupid and low-minded men to offer to him would have broken a mean spirit into sycophancy, but made him rude even to ferocity. Unhappily the insolence which, while it was defensive, was, pardonable, and in some sense respectable, accompanied him into societies where he was treated with courtesy and kindness. He was repeatedly provoked into striking those who had taken liberties with him. All the sufferers, however, were wise enough to abstain from talking about their beatings, except Osborne, the most rapacious and brutal of booksellers, who proclaimed everywhere that he had been knocked down by the huge fellow whom he had hired to puff the Harleian Library.

About a year after Johnson had begun to reside in London he was fortunate enough to obtain regular employment from Cave, an enterprising and intelligent bookseller, who was proprietor and editor of the Gentleman's Magazine. That journal, just entering on the ninth year of its long existence, was the only periodical work in the kingdom which then had what would now be called a large circulation. It was, indeed, the chief source of parliamentary intelligence. It was not then safe, even during a recess, to publish an account of the proceedings of either House without some disguise. Cave, however, ventured to entertain his readers with what he called “Reports of the Debates of the Senate of Lilliput.” France was Blefuscu; London was Mildendo; pounds were sprugs; the duke of Newcastle was the Nardac secretary of state; Lord Hardwicke was the Hurgo Hickrad; and William Pulteney was Wingul Pulnub. To write the speeches was, during several years, the business of Johnson. He was generally furnished with notes, meagre indeed, and inaccurate, of what had been said; but sometimes he had to find arguments and eloquence both for the ministry and for the opposition. He was himself a Tory, not from rational conviction—for his serious opinion was that one form of government was just as good or as bad as another—but from mere passion, such as inflamed the Capulets against the Montagues, or the Blues of the Roman circus against the Greens. In his infancy he had heard so much talk about the villanies of the Whigs, and the dangers of the church, that he had become a furious partisan when he could scarcely speak. Before he was three he had insisted on being taken to hoar Sacheverel preach at Lichfield cathedral, and had listened to the sermon with as much respect, and probably with as much intelligence, as any Staffordshire squire in the congregation. The work which had been begun in the nursery had been completed by the university. Oxford, when Johnson resided there, was the most Jacobitical place in England; and Pembroke was one of the most Jacobitical colleges in Oxford. The prejudices which he brought up to London were scarcely less absurd than those of his own Tom Tempest. Charles II. and James II. were two of the best kings that ever reigned. Laud, a poor creature who never did, said, or wrote any thing indicating more than the ordinary capacity of an old woman, was a prodigy of parts and learning over whose tomb Art and Genius still continued to weep. Hampden deserved no more honourable name than that of “the zealot of rebellion.” Even the ship money, condemned not less decidedly by Falkland and Clarendon than by the bitterest Roundheads, Johnson would not pronounce to have been an unconstitutional impost. Under a Government the mildest that had ever been known in the world, under a Government which allowed to the people an unprecedented liberty of speech and action, he fancied that he was a slave; he assailed the ministry with obloquy which refuted itself, and regretted the lost freedom and happiness of those golden days in which a writer who had taken but one-tenth part of the licence allowed to him would have been pilloried, mangled with the shears, whipped at the cart’s tail, and flung into a noisome dungeon to die. He hated dissenters and stock-jobbers, the excise and the army, septennial parliaments, and Continental connexions. He long had an aversion to the Scotch, an aversion of which he could not remember the commencement, but which, he owned, had probably originated in his abhorrence of the conduct of the nation during the Great Rebellion. It is easy to guess in what manner debates on great party questions were likely to be reported by a man whose judgment was so much disordered by party spirit. A show of fairness was indeed necessary to the prosperity of the Magazine. But Johnson long afterwards owned that, though he had saved appearances, he had taken care that the Whig dogs should not have the best of it; and, in fact, every passage which has lived, every passage which bears the marks of his higher faculties, is put into the mouth of some member of the opposition.

A few weeks after Johnson had entered on these obscure labours, he published a work which at once placed him high among the writers of his age. It is probable that what he had suffered during his first year in London had often reminded him of some parts of that noble poem in which Juvenal had described the misery and degradation of a needy man of letters, lodged among the pigeons’ nests in the tottering garrets which overhung the streets of Rome. Pope’s admirable imitations of Horace’s Satires and Epistles had recently appeared, were in every hand, and were by many readers thought superior to the originals. What Pope had done for Horace, Johnson aspired to do for Juvenal. The enterprise was bold, and yet judicious. For between Johnson and Juvenal there was much in common, much more certainly than between Pope and Horace.

Johnson’s London appeared without his name in May 1738. He received only ten guineas for this stately and vigorous poem; but the sale was rapid, and the success complete. A second edition was required within a week. Those small critics who are always desirous to lower established reputations ran about proclaiming that · the anonymous satirist was superior to Pope in Pope’s own peculiar department of literature. It ought to be remembered, to the honour of Pope, that he joined heartily in the applause with which the appearance of a rival genius was welcomed. He made inquiries about the author of London. Such a man, he said, could not long be concealed. The name was soon discovered; and Pope, with great kindness, exerted himself to obtain an academical degree and the mastership of a grammar school for the poor young poet. The attempt failed, and Johnson remained a bookseller’s hack.

It does not appear that these two men, the most eminent writer of the generation which was going out, and the most eminent writer of the generation which was coming in, ever saw each other. They lived in very different circles, one surrounded by dukes and earls, the other by starving pamphleteers and indexmakers. Among Johnson’s associates at this time may be mentioned Boyse, who, when his shirts were pledged, scrawled Latin verses sitting up in bed with his arms through two holes in his blanket, who composed very respectable sacred poetry when he was sober, and who was at last run over by a hackney coach when he was drunk; Hoole, surnamed the metaphysical tailor, who, instead of attending to his measures, used to trace geometrical diagrams on the board where he sat cross-legged; and the penitent impostor, George Psalmanazar, who, after poring all day, in a humble lodging, on the folios of Jewish rabbis and Christian fathers, indulged himself at night with literary and theological conversation at an alehouse in the city. But the most remarkable of the persons with whom at this time Johnson consorted was Richard Savage, an earl’s son, a shoemaker’s apprentice, who had seen life in all its forms, who had feasted among blue ribands in Saint James’s Square, and had lain with fifty pounds weight of irons on his legs in the condemned ward of Newgate. This man had, after many vicissitudes of fortune, sunk at last into abject and hopeless poverty. His pen had failed him. His patrons had been taken away by death, or estranged by the riotous profusion with which he squandered their bounty, and the ungrateful insolence with which he rejected their advice. He now lived by begging. He dined on venison and champagne whenever he had been so fortunate as to borrow a guinea. If his questing had been unsuccessful, he appeased the rage of hunger with some scraps of broken meat, and lay down to rest under the piazza of Covent Garden in warm weather, and, in cold weather, as near as he could get to the furnace of a glass house. Yet, in his misery, he was still an agreeable companion. He had an inexhaustible store of anecdotes about that gay and brilliant world from which he was now an outcast. He had observed the great men of both parties in hours of careless relaxation, had seen the leaders of opposition without the mask of patriotism, and had heard the prime minister roar with laughter and tell stories not over-decent. During some months Savage lived in the closest familiarity with Johnson; and then the friends parted, not without tears. Johnson remained in London to drudge for Cave. Savage went to the west of England, lived there as he had lived everywhere, and in 1743 died, penniless and heartbroken, in Bristol jail.

Soon after his death, while the public curiosity was strongly excited about his extraordinary character and his not less extraordinary adventures, a life of him appeared widely different from the catchpenny lives of eminent men which were then a staple article of manufacture in Grub Street. The style was indeed deficient in ease and variety; and the writer was evidently too partial to the Latin element of our language. But the little work, with all its faults, was a masterpiece. No finer specimen of literary biography existed in any language, living or dead; and a discerning critic might have confidently predicted that the author was destined to be the founder of a new school of English eloquence.

The Life of Savage was anonymous; but it was well known in literary circles that Johnson was the writer.

During the three years which followed, he produced no important work; but he was not, and indeed could not be, idle. The fame of his abilities and learning continued to grow. Warburton pronounced him a man of parts and genius; and the praise of Warburton was then no light thing. Such was Johnson’s reputation that, in 1747, several eminent booksellers combined to employ him in the arduous work of preparing a Dictionary of the English Language, in two folio volumes. The sum which they agreed to pay him was only fifteen hundred guineas; and out of this sum he had to pay several poor men of letters who assisted him in the humbler parts of his task.

The prospectus of the Dictionary he addressed to the earl of Chesterfield. Chesterfield had long been celebrated for the politeness of his manners, the brilliancy of his wit, and the delicacy of his taste. He was acknowledged to be the finest speaker in the House of Lords. He had recently governed Ireland, at a momentous conjuncture, with eminent firmness, wisdom, and humanity; and he had since become secretary of state. He received Johnson’s homage with the most winning affability, and requited it with a few guineas, bestowed doubtless in a very graceful manner, but was by no means desirous to see all his carpets blackened with the London mud, and his soups and wines thrown to right and left over the gowns of fine ladies and the waistcoats of fine gentlemen, by an absent, awkward scholar, who gave strange starts and uttered strange growls, who dressed like a scarecrow, and ate like a cormorant. During some time Johnson continued to call on his patron, but, after being repeatedly told by the porter that his lordship was not at home, took the hint, and ceased to present himself at the inhospitable door.

Johnson had flattered himself that he should have completed his Dictionary by the end of 1750; but it was not till 1755 that he at length gave his huge volumes to the world. During the seven years which he passed in the drudgery of penning definitions and marking quotations for transcription, he sought for relaxation in literary labour of a more agreeable kind. In 1749 he published the Vanity of Human Wishes, an excellent imitation of the tenth satire of Juvenal. It is in truth not easy to say whether the palm belongs to the ancient or to the modern poet. The couplets in which the fall of Wolsey is described, though lofty and sonorous, are feeble when compared with the wonderful lines which bring before us all Rome in tumult on the day of the fall of Sejanus, the laurels on the doorposts, the white bull stalking towards the Capitol, the statues rolling down from their pedestals, the flatterers of the disgraced minister running to see him dragged with a hook through the streets, and to have a kick at his carcase before it is hurled into the Tiber. It must be owned too that in the concluding passage the Christian moralist has not made the most of his advantages, and has fallen decidedly short of the sublimity of his pagan model. On the other hand, Juvenal’s Hannibal must yield to Johnson’s Charles; and Johnson’s vigorous and pathetic enumeration of the miseries of a literary life must be allowed to be superior to Juvenal’s lamentation over the fate of Demosthenes and Cicero. For the copyright of the Vanity of Human Wishes Johnson received only fifteen guineas.

A few days after the publication of this poem, his tragedy, begun many years before, was brought on the stage. His pupil, David Garrick, had in 1741 made his appearance on a humble stage in Goodman’s Fields,

THE EVANGELIST was a native of Bethsaida, in Galilee, son of Zebedee and Salome, by profession a fisherman. Some have thought that he was a disciple of John the Baptist before he attended Jesus Christ. He was brother to James the greater. It is believed that St. John was the youngest of the Apostles. Tillemont is of opinion that he was twenty-five or twenty-six years of age when he began to follow Jesus. Our Saviour had a particular friendship for him; and he describes himself by the name of “that disciple whom Jesus loved.” St. John was one of the four Apostles to whom our Lord delivered his predictions relative to the destruction of Jerusalem, and the approaching calamities of the Jewish nation, Mark xiii, 3. St. Peter, St. James, and St. John were chosen to accompany our Saviour on several occasions, when the other Apostles were not permitted to be present. When Christ restored the daughter of Jairus to life, Mark v, 37; Luke viii, 51; when he was transfigured on the mount, Matt. xvii, 1, 2; Mark ix, 2; Luke ix, 28; and when he endured his agony in the garden, Matt. xxvi, 36, 37; Mark xiv, 32, 33; St. Peter, St. James, and St. John were his only attendants. That St. John was treated by Christ with greater familiarity than the other Apostles, is evident from St. Peter desiring him to ask Christ who should betray him, when he himself did not dare to propose the question, John xiii, 24. He seems to have been the only Apostle present at the crucifixion, and to him Jesus, just as he was expiring upon the cross, gave the strongest proof of his confidence and regard, by consigning to him the care of his mother, John xix, 26, 27. As St. John had been witness to the death of our Saviour, by seeing the blood and water issue from his side, which a soldier had pierced, John xix, 34, 35, so he was one of the first made acquainted with his resurrection. Without any hesitation, he believed this great event, though “as yet he knew not the Scripture, that Christ was to rise from the dead,” John xx, 9. He was also one of those to whom our Saviour appeared at the sea of Galilee; and he was afterward, with the other ten Apostles, a witness of his ascension into heaven, Mark xvi, 19; Luke xxiv, 51. St. John continued to preach the Gospel for some time at Jerusalem: he was imprisoned by the sanhedrim, first with Peter only, Acts iv, 1, &c, and afterward with the other Apostles, Acts v, 17, 18. Some time after this second release, he and St. Peter were sent by the other Apostles to the Samaritans, whom Philip the deacon had converted to the Gospel, that through them they might receive the Holy Ghost, Acts viii, 14, 15. St. John informs us, in his Revelations, that he was banished to Patmos, an island in the Ægean Sea, Rev. i, 9. This banishment of the Apostle to the isle of Patmos is mentioned by many of the early ecclesiastical writers; all of whom, except Epiphanius in the fourth century, agree in attributing it to Domitian. Epiphanius says that John was banished by command of Claudius; but this deserves the less credit, because there was no persecution of the Christians in the time of that emperor, and his edicts against the Jews did not extend to the provinces. Sir Isaac Newton was of opinion that John was banished to Patmos in the time of Nero; but even the authority of this great man is not of sufficient weight against the unanimous voice of antiquity. Dr. Lardner has examined and answered his arguments with equal candour and learning. It is not known at what time John went into Asia Minor. Lardner thought that it was about the year 66. It is certain that he lived in Asia Minor the latter part of his life, and principally at Ephesus. He planted churches at Smyrna, Pergamos, and many other places; and by his activity and success in propagating the Gospel, he is supposed to have incurred the displeasure of Domitian, who banished him to Patmos at the end of his reign. He himself tells us that he “was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ;” and Irenæus, speaking of the vision which he had there, says, “It is not very long ago that it was seen, being but a little before our time, at the latter end of Domitian’s reign.” On the succession of Nerva to the empire in the year 96, John returned to Ephesus, where he died at an advanced age, in the third year of Trajan’s reign, A. D. 100. An opinion has prevailed, that he was, by order of Domitian, thrown into a caldron of boiling oil at Rome, and came out unhurt; but this account rests almost entirely on the authority of Tertullian, and seems to deserve little credit.

The genuineness of St. John’s Gospel has always been unanimously admitted by the Christian church. It is universally agreed that St. John published his Gospel in Asia; and that, when he wrote it, he had seen the other three Gospels. It is, therefore, not only valuable in itself, but also a tacit confirmation of the other three; with none of which it disagrees in any material point. The time of its publication is placed by some rather before, and by others considerably after, the destruction of Jerusalem. If we accede to the opinion of those who contend for the year 97, this late date, exclusive of the authorities which support it, seems favoured by the contents and design of the Gospel itself. The immediate design of St. John in writing his Gospel, as we are assured by Irenæus, Jerom, and others, was to refute the Cerinthians, Ebionites, and other heretics, whose tenets, though they branched out into a variety of subjects, all originated from erroneous opinions concerning the person of Christ, and the creation of the world. These points had been scarcely touched upon by the other evangelists; though they had faithfully recorded all the leading facts of our Saviour’s life, and his admirable precepts for the regulation of our conduct. St. John, therefore, undertook, perhaps at the request of the true believers in Asia, to write what Clement of Alexandria called a _spiritual_ Gospel; and, accordingly, we find in it more of doctrine, and less of historical narrative, than in any of the others. It is also to be remembered, that this book, which contains so much additional information relative to the doctrines of Christianity, and which may be considered as a standard of faith for all ages, was written by that Apostle who is known to have enjoyed, in a greater degree than the rest, the affection and confidence of the divine Author of our religion; and to whom was given a special revelation concerning the state of the Christian church in all succeeding generations. We have three epistles by this Apostle. Some critics have thought that all these epistles were written during St. John’s exile in Patmos; the first, to the Ephesian church; the others to individuals; and that they were sent along with the Gospel, which the Apostle is supposed also to have written in Patmos. Thus Hug observes, in his “Introduction:” If St. John sent his Gospel to the continent, an epistle to the community was requisite, commending and dedicating it to them. Other evangelists, who deposited their works in the place of their residence, personally superintended them, and delivered them personally; consequently they did not require a written document to accompany them. An epistle was therefore requisite, and, as we have abundantly proved the first of John’s epistles to be inseparable from the Gospel, its contents demonstrate it to be an accompanying writing, and a dedication of the Gospel. It went consequently to Ephesus. We can particularly corroborate this by the following observation: John, in the Apocalypse, has individually distinguished each of the Christian communities, which lay the nearest within his circle and his superintendence, by criteria, taken from their faults or their virtues. The church at Ephesus he there describes by the following traits: It was thronged with men who arrogated to themselves the ministry and apostolical authority, and were impostors, ψευδεις. But in particular he feelingly reproaches it because its “first love was cooled,” τὴν ἀγάπην σου τὴν ϖρώτην ἀφῆκας. The circumstance of impostors and false teachers happens in more churches. But decreasing love is an exclusive criterion and failing, which the Apostle reprimands in no other community. According to his judgment, want of love was the characteristic fault of the Ephesians: but this epistle is from beginning to the end occupied with admonitions to love, with recommendations of its value, with corrections of those who are guilty of this fault, 1 John ii, 5, 9–11, 15; iii, 1, 11, 12, 14–18, 23; iv, 7–10, 12, 16–21; v, 1–3. Must not we therefore declare, if we compare the opinion of the Apostle respecting the Ephesians with this epistle, that, from its peculiar tenor, it is not so strikingly adapted to any community in the first instance as to this? The second epistle is directed to a female, who is not named, but only designated by the honourable mention, ἐκλεκτὴ κυρία, “the elect lady.” The two chief positions, which are discussed in the first epistle, constitute the contents of this brief address. He again alludes to the words of our Saviour, “A new commandment,” &c, as in 1 John ii, 7, and recommends love, which is manifested by observance of the commandments. After this he warns her against false teachers, who deny that Jesus entered into the world as the Christ, or Messiah, and forbids an intercourse with them. At the end, he hopes soon to see her himself, and complains of the want of writing materials. The whole is a short syllabus of the first epistle, or it is the first in a renewed form. The words also are the same. It is still full of the former epistle: nor are they separated from each other as to time. The female appears before his mind in the circumstances and dangers of the society, in instructing and admonishing which he had just been employed. If we may judge from local circumstances, she also lived at Ephesus. But as for the author, his residence was in none of the Ionian or Asiatic cities, where the want of writing materials is not conceivable: he was still therefore in the place of his exile. The other circumstances noticed in it, are probably the following: The sons of the ἐκλεκτὴ κυρία had visited John, 2 John 4. The sister of this matron wishing to show to him an equal respect and sympathy in his fate, sent her sons likewise to visit the Apostle. While the latter were with the Apostle, there was an opportunity of sending to the continent, 2 John 13, namely, of despatching the two epistles and the Gospel. The third epistle is written to Caius. The author consoles himself with the hope, as in the former epistle, of soon coming himself, 3 John 14. He still experiences the same want of writing materials, 3 John 13. Consequently, he was still living in the same miserable place: also, if we may judge from his hopes, the time was not very different. The residence of Caius is determined by the following criteria: The most general of them is the danger of being misled by false teachers, 3 John 3, 4. That which leads us nearer to the point, is the circumstance of John sometimes sending messages thither, and receiving accounts from thence, 3 John 5–8, that he supposes his opinions to be so well known and acknowledged in this society, that he could appeal to them, as judges respecting them, 3 John 12, and that, finally, he had many particular friends among them, 3 John 15. The whole of this is applicable to a considerable place, where the Apostle had resided for a long time; and in the second epoch of his life, it is particularly applicable to Ephesus. He had lately written to the community, of which Caius was a member, ἔγραψα τῆ ἐκκλησία, “I wrote to the church,” 3 John 9. If this is to be referred to the first epistle, (for we are not aware of any other to a community,) then certainly Ephesus is the place to which the third epistle was also directed, and was the place where Caius resided. From hence, the rest contains its own explanation. John had sent his first epistle thither; it was the accompanying writing to the Gospel, and with it he also sent the Gospel. Who was better qualified to promulgate the Gospel among the believers than Caius, especially if it was to be published at Ephesus? The above view is ingenious, and in its leading parts satisfactory; but the argument from the Apostle’s supposed want of “writing materials” is founded upon a very forced construction of the texts. There seems, however, no reason to doubt of the close connection, in point of time, between the epistles and the Gospel; and, that being remembered, the train of thought in the mind of the Apostle sufficiently explains the peculiar character of the latter.

JOHN II. (1609-1672), Casimir, king of Poland, second son of Sigismund III. and the duchess Constantia of Austria, was born March 21, 1609. After journeying in several countries of Europe, he in 1640 joined the Jesuit order at Rome, and shortly afterwards was chosen cardinal. Subsequently he returned to Poland, where he resided as a a layman until the death of his brother, 20th November 1648, when he succeeded him on the throne. In September 1668 he abdicated, after which he went to France, and became abbot of St Germains de Prés and of St Martin, at Nevers. He died September 16, 1672. For the events of his unfortunate reign see Poland.

JOHN II. (1455-1495), “the Perfect,” king of Portugal, succeeded his father, Alphonso V., in August 1481. His first business after ascending the throne was to curtail with a vigorous hand the overgrown power of his aristocracy; noteworthy incidents in the contest were the execution (in 1483) of the duke of Braganza for correspondence with Castile, and the murder, by the king’s own hand, of the youthful duke of Viseu for conspiracy. This reign was signalized by Bartolommeo Dias’s discovery of the Cape of Good Hope in 1486, and also by the equipment (1493) of a squadron for exploration of the new world recently discovered by Columbus. The latter proceeding led to disputes with Castile, until the claims of the disputants were adjusted by the famous treaty of Tordesillas (7th June 1494). John II. died, without leaving male issue, in October 1495, and was succeeded by his brother-in-law Emmanuel (Manoel) I.

JOHN II. (1397-1479), king of Aragon from 1458, was the younger son of Ferdinand I. (the Just), and was born June 29, 1397. He was twice married,—first to Blanche, daughter of Charles III. of Navarre, by whom he had three children (Carlos, heir to the crowns of Navarre and Aragon; Blanche, for some time the wife of Henry

IV. of Castile; and Eleanor, wife of Gaston, count of Foix); and afterwards (in 1447) to Joanna Henriquez, of the blood-royal of Castile, by whom he became the father of Ferdinand V. (the Catholic). For a long time he acted as lieutenant-general in Aragon for his brother Alphonso

V. , whom business detained in his Neapolitan dominions; in this capacity he intervened frequently in the affairs of Castile, where his weak and inexperienced kinsman John II. occupied the throne, and on one occasion (1444) he invaded that kingdom, but was defeated at Olmedo. On his second marriage he irritated his son Carlos and the community by sending his queen Joanna to share the administration of Navarre with his son; in the revolt which ensued victory declared for John, Carlos himself being reduced to captivity (1452), in which he was detained for many months. In May 1458 John succeeded his brother in Aragon, Sicily, and Sardinia; but the influence of Joanna Henriquez prevented him from recognizing the legitimate claims of his own eldest son to the reversion; an attempt by Carlos to obtain support in other quarters led to his arrest and imprisonment, from which he was released only after Catalonia had risen in arms and the king of Castile had begun an irruption into Navarre. Shortly after this temporary triumph Carlos was carried off by a fever in September 1461, bequeathing the crown of Navarre to his sister Blanche and her posterity. Ferdinand, the half-brother of Carlos, was now put forward as heir apparent of the Aragonese throne, but the indignant Catalonians raised a revolt which did not come to an end until December 1472. Immediately afterwards John entered upon a war with Louis XI. of France in consequence of disputes about Roussillon and Cerdagne; first successful, but afterwards worsted, this bold and energetic but ambitious and unjust prince died January 20, 1479, before the conclusion of the peace. He was succeeded by Ferdinand V.

JOHN II. (1404-1454) of Castile and Leon, grandson of the preceding, succeeded to the throne when only twenty-two months old. Until 1412 the regency was shared with his mother Catherine by his uncle Ferdinand (afterwards Ferdinand IV. of Aragon); this period was marked by much internal prosperity and by important conquests from the Moors, especially by the capture of Antequera. Unfortunately for Castile, Ferdinand was called away (in 1412) to occupy the throne of Aragon; but it was not until after the death of Catherine in 1418 that John’s weakness and incapacity came to be fully seen. Abandoning himself recklessly to a life of frivolous pleasure, he left the affairs of his kingdom in the hands of a few favourites, such as the archbishop of Toledo and Juan de Velasco. From 1423 onwards he was the tool principally of Alvaro de Luna, a brilliant, ambitious, and crafty courtier. Henceforward the history of his reign is largely a record of the internal commotions, rising sometimes to the height of civil war, occasioned by the nobles’ jealousy of Alvaro, and by the oppressions to which the common people were exposed under the absolutist policy of that minister. The period of John II. is chiefly and most favourably remembered in connexion with the history of Castilian literature: a man of some literary turn himself, he was a liberal patron of letters; and his countenance gave an impulse to refinement and culture of literary style, the effects of which were distinctly traceable through several subsequent generations. By his first wife John II. became the father of Henry IV., his successor; the daughter of a second marriage was Isabella, afterwards known as “the Catholic.” He died in June 1454.

JOHN III. (1502-1557) of Portugal was born at Lisbon, June 6, 1502, and ascended the throne as successor of his father Emmanuel L in December 1521. In 1524 he married Catherine, sister to the emperor Charles V., who in turn shortly afterwards married the infanta Isabella, John’s sister. Succeeding to the crown at a time when Portugal was at the height of its political power, and Lisbon in a position of commercial importance previously unknown, John III., unfortunately for his dominions, yielded so far to the counsels of the clerical party among his subjects as to consent to the introduction of the Inquisition (about 1526); this led to measures of tyranny and oppression which, notwithstanding the enactment of many wise laws, soon avenged themselves in disastrous consequences to the commercial and social prosperity of his kingdom. The conflicts in which Portugal engaged with the Moors and the Turks during his reign were comparatively unfruitful of results. He died of apoplexy on June 6, 1557, and was succeeded by his grandson Sebastian, then a child of only three years.

JOHN VI. (1769-1826) of Portugal was born at Lisbon May 13, 1769, and received the title of prince of Brazil in 1788. In 1792 he assumed the reins of government in name of his mother Queen Mary I., who had become insane. He himself having been brought up in an unhealthy ecclesiastical atmosphere, and being naturally of a somewhat weak and helpless character, was but ill adapted for the responsibilities he was thus called on to undertake. In 1799 he assumed the title of regent, which he retained until his mother’s death in 1816. The political relations of Portugal with England and France from the period of the first coalition against France in 1793 to the treaty of Fontainebleau (1807), by which the partition of the first-named country was agreed upon, will be elsewhere explained (see Portugal). In consequence of the latter treaty the prince of Brazil found it necessary to leave the kingdom (November 1807), and transfer the seat of his government to Rio Janeiro. The occupation and annexation of the whole country immediately ensued; against this he recorded his protest in November 1808, and in a more practical manner by the seizure of French Guiana in ,the following year. He also entered into alliance with England in 1810, and was a party to the treaty of Paris in 1814. In 1816 he was recognized as king of Portugal on the death of Mary, but he continued to reside abroad; the consequence was the spread of a feeling of natural dissatisfaction, which resulted in the peaceful revolution of 1820, and the proclamation of a constitutional government, to which he swore fidelity on his return to Portugal in 1822. In the same year, and again in 1823, he had to suppress a rebellion led by his son Dorn Miguel, whom he ultimately was compelled to banish in 1824. He died at Lisbon, March 26, 1826, and was succeeded by Pedro IV.