JENYNS, SOAME (1704-87), English author, was born in London on Jan. I, 1704, and was educated at St. John's 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. He died on Dec. 18, 1787. Jenyns wrote poems: Art of Dancing (1727) and Mis cellanies (177o) : and, in prose, Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil (1756), and View of the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion (1776). He is chiefly remembered by the slash
ing review by Samuel Johnson in the Literary Magazine on the Free Innitiry, and by references in Boswell's Life of Johnson.