JOHN OF SALISBUSY, bishop of Chartres, born at Salisbury, of Saxon lineage; was a pupil of Abelard; was secretary first to Theobald and then to Thomas a Becket, archbishop of Canterbury; was present at the assassination of the latter; afterwards he retired to France and was made bishop; wrote the Lives of St. Thomas and St. Anselm, and other works of importance in connection with the scholasticism of the time (1120-1180).

JOHN THE BAPTIST, the forerunner of Christ, who baptized with water unto, or on the confession of, repentance, in anticipation of, and in preparation for, the appearance in the immediate future of One who would baptize with the Spirit and with fire; his fate is well known, and the motive of it.

JOHN THE GOOD, king of France from 1350 to 1364, succeeded his father Philip VI.; at the battle of Poitiers he was captured and carried to England; four years later he was allowed to return on leaving his son as hostage; the hostage made his escape; John chivalrously came back to London, and died in captivity (1319-1364).

JOHN’S EVE, ST., a festival celebrated with fires on Midsummer Eve; very universally observed and with similar rites throughout Europe, in the Middle Ages, and the celebration of it was associated with many superstitious practices.

JOHNSON, ANDREW, American President, born at Raleigh, N. Carolina; was entirely self-educated, and became a tailor; settling in Tennessee he entered the State legislature in 1839; he sat in Congress from 1843 till 1853; was for four years Governor of Tennessee, and sat in the Senate from 1857 to 1863; though in favour of slavery, he discountenanced secession and supported Lincoln, whom he succeeded as President in 1865, and whose policy he continued; but he lost the confidence of Congress, which indeed he treated somewhat cavalierly; his removal of Secretary Stanton led to his impeachment for violation of the Tenure of Office Act; he was tried before the Senate, but acquitted, and completed his term (1808-1875).

JOHNSON, SAMUEL, the great English lexicographer, born in Lichfield, the son of a bookseller; received his early education in his native town and completed it at Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1728; in 1736 he married a widow named Porter, who brought him L800; started a boarding-school, which did not prosper, and in the end of a year he removed to London along with David Garrick, who had been a pupil under him; here he became connected with Cave, a printer, the proprietor of the Gentleman’s Magazine, with whom he had previously corresponded, and contributed to the pages of the magazine, earning thereby a meagre livelihood, eking out his means by reporting Parliamentary debates in terms which expressed the drift of them, but in his own pompous language; in 1740 he published a poem entitled the “Vanity of Human Wishes,” and about the same time commenced his world-famous Dictionary, which was Published in 1755, “a great, solid, square-built edifice, finished, symmetrically