The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 163

DIBDIN, CHARLES, musician, dramatist, and song-writer, born in Southampton; began life as an actor; invented a dramatic entertainment consisting of music, songs, and recitations, in which he was the sole performer, and of which he was for the most part the author; wrote some 30 dramatic pieces, and it is said 1400 songs; his celebrity is wholly due to his sea songs, which proved of the most inspiring quality, and did much to man the navy during the war with France; was the author of "Tom Bowling"; left an account of his "Professional Life" (1745-1814).

DIBDIN, THOMAS, dramatic author and song-writer, son of the preceding; was an actor as well as an author, and a most versatile one; performed in all kinds of characters, and wrote all kinds of plays, as well as numerous songs (1771-1841).

DIBDIN, THOMAS FROGNALL, bibliographer, nephew of Charles Dibdin, born in Calcutta; took orders in the Church of England; held several preferments; wrote several works all more or less of a bibliographical character, which give proof of extensive research, but are lacking often in accuracy and critical judgment; was one of the founders of the Roxburghe Club (1775-1847).

DICaeARCHUS, an ancient geographer, born at Messina, 4th century B.C.; a disciple of Aristotle.

d.i.c.k, JAMES, a West Indian and London merchant, born in Forres; bequeathed 113,787 to encourage learning and efficient teaching among the parish schoolmasters of Elgin, Banff, and Aberdeen shires; it is known as the d.i.c.k Bequest, and the property is vested in a governing body of thirteen duly elected (1743-1828).

d.i.c.kENS, CHARLES, celebrated English novelist, born at Landport, Portsmouth; son of a navy clerk, latterly in great straits; was brought up amid hardships; was sent to a solicitor's office as a clerk, learned shorthand, and became a reporter, a post in which he learned much of what afterwards served him as an author; wrote sketches for the _Monthly Magazine_ under the name of "Boz" in 1834, and the "Pickwick Papers" in 1836-37, which established his popularity; these were succeeded by "Oliver Twist" in 1838, "Nicholas Nickleby" in 1839, and others which it is needless to enumerate, as they are all known wherever the English language is spoken; they were all written with an aim, and as Ruskin witnesses, "he was entirely right in his main drift and purpose in every book he has written," though he thinks we are apt "to lose sight of his wit and insight, because he chooses to speak in a circle of stage fire.... Allowing for his manner of telling them, the things he tells us are always true"; being a born actor, and fain in his youth to become one, he latterly gave public readings from his works, which were immensely popular; "acted better," says Carlyle, who witnessed one of these performances, "than any Macready in the world; a whole tragic, comic, heroic _theatre_ visible, performing under one _hat_, and keeping us laughing--in a sorry way some of us thought--the whole night"; the strain proved too much for him; he was seized with a fit at his residence, Gad's Hill, near Rochester, on June 8, 1870, and died the following morning; he was a little man, with clear blue intelligent eyes, a face of most extreme mobility, and a quiet shrewdness of expression (1812-1870).

DICTATOR, a magistrate invested with absolute authority in ancient republican Rome in times of exigence and danger; the const.i.tution obliged him to resign his authority at the end of six months, till which time he was free without challenge afterwards to do whatever the interest of the commonwealth seemed to him to require; the most famous dictators were Cincinnatus, Camillus, Sulla, and Caesar, who was the last to be invested with this power; the office ceased with the fall of the republic, or rather, was merged in the perpetual dictatorship of the emperor.

DICTATOR OF LETTERS, Voltaire.

DICTYS CRETENSIS (i. e. of Crete), the reputed author of a narrative of the Trojan war from the birth of Paris to the death of Ulysses, extant only in a Latin translation; the importance attached to this narrative and others ascribed to the same author is, that they are the source of many of the Greek legends we find inwoven from time to time in the mediaeval literature that has come down to us.

DIDDLER, JEREMY, a needy, artful swindler in Kenny's farce of "Raising the Wind."

DIDEROT, DENIS, a French philosopher, born at Langres, the son of a cutler there; a zealous propagator of the philosophic ideas of the 18th century, and the projector of the famous "Encyclopedie," which he edited along with D'Alembert, and which made a great noise in its day, but did not enrich its founder, who was in the end driven to offer his library for sale to get out of the pecuniary difficulties it involved him in, and he would have been ruined had not Catharine of Russia bought it, which she not only did, but left it with him, and paid him a salary as librarian. Diderot fought hard to obtain a hearing for his philosophical opinions; his first book was burnt by order of the parlement of Paris, while for his second he was clapped in jail; and all along he had to front the most formidable opposition, so formidable that all his fellow-workers were ready to yield, and were only held to their task by his indomitable resolution and unquenchable ardour. "A deist in his earlier writings," says SCHWEGLER, "the drift of his subsequent writings amounts to the belief that all is G.o.d. At first a believer in the immateriality and immortality of the soul, he peremptorily declares at last that only the race endures, that individuals pa.s.s, and that immortality is nothing but life in the remembrance of posterity; he was kept back, however, from the materialism his doctrines issued in by his moral earnestness"; that Diderot was at heart no sceptic is evident, as Dr. Stirling suggests, from his "indignation at the _darkness_, the miserable _ignorance_ of those around him, and his resolution to dispel it" (1713-1784).

DIDIUS, JULIa.n.u.s, a Roman emperor who in 193 purchased the imperial purple from the praetorian guards, and was after two months murdered by the soldiers when Severus was approaching the city.

DIDO, the daughter of Belus, king of Tyre, and the sister of Pygmalion, who, having succeeded to the throne on the death of his father, put Sichaeus, her husband, to death for the sake of his wealth, whereupon she secretly took ship, sailed away from the city with the treasure, accompanied by a body of disaffected citizens, and founded Carthage, having picked up by the way 80 virgins from Cyprus to make wives for her male attendants; a neighbouring chief made suit for her hand, encouraged by her subjects, upon which, being bound by an oath of eternal fidelity to Sichaeus, she erected a funeral pile and stabbed herself in presence of her subjects; Virgil makes her ascend the funeral pile out of grief for the departure of aeneas, of whom she was pa.s.sionately in love.

DIDOT, the name of a French family of paper-makers, printers, and publishers, of which the most celebrated is Ambroise Firmin, born in Paris, a learned h.e.l.lenist (1790-1876).

DIDYMUS (twin), a surname of St. Thomas; also the name of a grammarian of Alexandria, a contemporary of Cicero, and who wrote commentaries on Homer.

DIEBITSCH, COUNT, a Russian general, born in Silesia; commander-in-chief in 1829 of the Russian army against Turkey, over the forces of which he gained a victory in the Balkans; commissioned to suppress a Polish insurrection, he was baffled in his efforts, and fell a victim to cholera in 1831.

DIEFFENBACH, JOHANN FRIEDRICH, an eminent German surgeon, born at Konigsberg; studied for the Church; took part in the war of liberation, and began the study of medicine after the fall of Napoleon; was appointed to the chair of Surgery in Berlin; his fame rests on his skill as an operator (1792-1847).

DIEFFENBACH, LORENZ, a distinguished philologist and ethnologist, born at Ostheim, in the grand-duchy of Hesse; was for 11 years a pastor; in the end, until his death, librarian at Frankfort-on-the-Main; his literary works were numerous and varied; his chief were on philological and ethnological subjects, and are monuments of learning (1806-1883).

DIEGO SUAREZ, BAY OF, is situated on the NE. of Madagascar, and has been ceded to France.

DIEMEN, ANTONY VAN, governor of the Dutch possessions in India, born in Holland; was a zealous coloniser; at his instance Abel Tasman was sent to explore the South Seas, when he discovered the island which he named after him Van Diemen's Land, now Tasmania after the discoverer (1593-1645).

DIEPENBECK, ABRAHAM VAN, a Flemish painter and engraver (1599-1675).

DIEPPE (22), a French seaport on the English Channel, at the mouth of the river Arques, 93 m. NW. of Paris; a watering and bathing place, with fisheries and a good foreign trade.

DIES IRAE (lit. the Day of Wrath), a Latin hymn on the Last Judgment, so called from first words, and based on Zeph. i. 14-18; it is ascribed to a monk of the name of Thomas de Celano, who died in 1255, and there are several translations of it in English, besides a paraphrastic rendering in the "Lay of the Last Minstrel" by Scott, and it is also the subject of a number of musical compositions.

DIET, a convention of the princes, dignitaries, and delegates of the German empire, for legislative or administrative purposes, of which the most important in a historical point of view are diets held at Augsburg in 1518, at Worms in 1521, at Nuremberg in 1523, 1524, at Spires in 1526, 1529, at Augsburg in 1530, at Cologne in 1530, at Worms in 1536, at Frankfort in 1539, at Ratisbon in 1541, at Spires in 1544, at Augsburg in 1547, 1548, 1550, and at Ratisbon in 1622.

DIETRICH, mayor of Strasburg, at whose request Rouget de Lisle composed the "Ma.r.s.eillaise"; was guillotined (1748-1793).

DIETRICH OF BERN, a favourite hero of German legend, who in the "Nibelungen" avenges the death of Siegfried, and in the "Heldenbuch"

figures as a knight-errant of invulnerable prowess, from whose challenge even Siegfried shrinks, hiding himself behind Chriemhilda's veil; has been identified with Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths.

DIEZ, FRIEDRICH CHRISTIAN, a German philologist, born at Giessen; after service as a volunteer against Napoleon, and a tutorship at Utrecht, went to Bonn, where, advised by Goethe, he commenced the study of the Romance languages, and in 1830 became professor of them, the philology of which he is the founder; he left two great works bearing on the grammar and etymology of these languages (1794-1876).

DIEZ, JUAN MARTIN, a Spanish brigadier-general of cavalry, born at Valladolid, the son of a peasant; had, as head of guerilla bands, done good service to his country during the Peninsular war and been promoted; offending the ruling powers, was charged with conspiracy, tried, and executed (1775-1825).

DIGBY, a seaport on the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia; noted for the curing of pilchards, called from it digbies.

DIGBY, SIR EVERARD, member of a Roman Catholic family; concerned in the Gunpowder Plot, and executed (1581-1606).

DIGBY, SIR KENELM, a son of the preceding; was knighted by James I.; served under Charles I.; as a privateer defeated a squadron of Venetians, and fought against the Algerines; was imprisoned for a time as a Royalist; paid court afterwards to the Protector; was well received at the Restoration; was one of the first members of the Royal Society, and a man of some learning; wrote treatises on the Nature of Bodies and Man's Soul, on the corpuscular theory (1603-1665).

DIHONG, the name given to the Brahmaputra as it traverses a.s.sam; in the rainy season it overflows its channel and floods the whole lowlands of the country.

DIJON (61), the ancient capital of Burgundy, and the princ.i.p.al town in the dep. of Cote d'Or, 195 m. SE. of Paris, on the ca.n.a.l of Bourgogne; one of the finest towns in France, at once for its buildings, particularly its churches, and its situation; is a centre of manufacture and trade, and a seat of learning; the birthplace of many ill.u.s.trious men.