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.[1] 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. 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 Boswell's _Johnson_. FOOTNOTE: [1] Two lines will suffice:-- Boswell and Thrale, retailers of his wit, Will tell you how he wrote, and talk'd, and cough'd, and spit. JEOPARDY, a term meaning risk or danger of death, loss or other injury. The word, in Mid. Eng. _juparti_, _jeupartie_, &c., was adapted from O. Fr. _ju_, later _jeu_, and _parti_, even game, in medieval Latin _jocus partitus_. This term was originally used of a problem in chess or of a stage in any other game at which the chances of success or failure are evenly divided between the players. It was thus early transformed to any state of uncertainty.