Soame Jenyns

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Soame Jenyns (1 January 1704 – 18 December 1787) was an English writer.

[edit] Biography

He was the son of Sir Roger Jenyns and his second wife Elizabeth Soame, daughter Sir Peter Soame. He was born in London, and was educated at St Johns College, Cambridge. In 1742 he was chosen M.P. for Cambridgeshire, in which his property lay, and he afterwards sat for the borough of Dunwich and the town of Cambridge. From 1755 to 1780 he was one of the commissioners of the board of trade.

For the measure of literary repute which he enjoyed during his life Jenyns was indebted as much to his wealth and social standing as to his accomplishments and talents, though both were considerable. His poetical works, the Art of Dancing (1727) and Miscellanies (1770), contain many passages graceful and lively though occasionally verging on licence.

The first of his prose works was his Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil (1756). This essay was severely criticized on its appearance, especially by Samuel Johnson in the Literary Magazine. Johnson, in a slashing review — the best paper of the kind he ever wrote — condemned the book as a slight and shallow attempt to solve one of the most difficult of moral problems. Jenyns, a gentle and amiable man in the main, was extremely irritated by his failure. He put forth a second edition of his work, prefaced by a vindication, and tried to take vengeance on Johnson after his death by a sarcastic epitaph.

In 1776 Jenyns published his View of the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion. Though at one period of his life he had affected a kind of deistic scepticism, he had now returned to orthodoxy, and there seems no reason to doubt his sincerity, questioned at the time, in defending Christianity on the ground of its total variance with the principles of human reason. The work was deservedly praised in its day for its literary merits, but is so plainly the production of an amateur in theology that as a scientific treatise it is valueless.

His heir was his uncle George Leonard Jenyns.

A collected edition of the works of Jenyns appeared in 1790, with a biography by Charles Nalson Cole. There are several references to him in James Boswell's Johnson.

Preceded by: Samuel Shepheard Henry Bromley	Member for Cambridgeshire 1741–1754 with Samuel Shepheard 1741–1747, Viscount Royston 1747–1754	Succeeded by: Viscount Royston Marquess of Granby
Preceded by: Miles Barne Sir Jacob Garrard Downing, Bt	Member for Dunwich 1754–1758 with Sir Jacob Garrard Downing, Bt	Succeeded by: Sir Jacob Garrard Downing, Bt Alexander Forrester
Preceded by: Viscount Dupplin Hon. Charles Cadogan	Member for Cambridge 1758–1780 with Hon. Charles Cadogan 1758–1776, Benjamin Keene 1776–1780	Succeeded by: Benjamin Keene James Whorwood Adeane