who was long supposed to have ridiculed him, in his Poetaster, under the name of Crispinus; and Decker was believed to have resented the affront in his play of Satyromastix, where Jonson, under the name of young Horace, is the hero of the piece. But it has since been shown that the Crispinus of Jonson was not Decker, but Marston. Decker wrote three of his plays in conjunction with Webster, and one with Rowley and Ford. The dates of his birth and death are unknown, though it is certain he was alive after 1638. His Gull's Hornbook was reprinted in 1813.

DE COETLOGON, (Charles Edward,) an eminent Calvinistic divine, born in London, of French parents. He was educated at Christ's hospital, whence he removed to Pembroke hall, Cambridge. He commenced his clerical career as assistant chaplain to the Lock hospital, and afterwards obtained the living of Godstone, in Surrey. He wrote, A Portraiture of a Christian Penitent, 8vo, 2 vols; Theological Miscellany, 8vo, 6 vols; Character of King George the Third; The Temple of Truth, 8vo, 3 vols; and a volume of Sermons. He died in

1820.

DE COURCY, (Richard,) an Irish divine, of the ancient family of Kinsale. He was educated at Trinity college, Dublin. In 1774 he was presented to the vicarage of St. Alkmond, Shrewsbury. Besides several single discourses and tracts, he published two vols, entitled Christ Crucified, and a volume of his sermons was published after his death, with a biographical preface. He died in

1808.

DECRES, (Denis, duc,) a French admiral, born, of a noble family, at Chateau Vilain, in Champagne, in 1761. At a very early age he distinguished himself by an action of singular bravery. His advancement now was rapid. At the battle of Aboukir he commanded the light squadron, and having made his escape on board the Guillaume Tell, he sailed to Malta, but was taken by the English. On the establishment of the maritime prefectures, he was appointed to that of L'Orient. In 1802 he was made minister of the marine, in which office he remained till the fall of the imperial government. He was recalled in March 1815, but finally retired in June following. He died at Paris, on the 7th of December, 1820, in consequence of injuries received from a terrific explosion of a large quantity of gun

powder, which had been introduced under his bed by his valet de chambre.

DEDEKIND, (Frederic,) inspector of the Protestant churches in the diocese of Lubeck, who flourished in the sixteenth century. He published an ingenious ironical eulogium on incivility and rudeness, entitled Grobianus, de Morum Simplicitate libri iii. in Gratiam omnium Rusticitatis Amantium conscripti, Leipsic, 1552, 8vo, reprinted at Frankfort, in 1558, with the title of Grobianus, sive de incultis Moribus et inurbanis Gestibus. An English translation of this amusing piece was published in London, 1739, 8vo, entitled The Compleat Booby, an ironical poem, in three books, done into English, from the original Latin, by Roger Bull. Dedekind died in 1598.

DEE, (John,) a divine, astrologer, alchemist, and mathematician, born in London, in 1527. He was educated at Chelmsford, and at St. John's college, Cambridge. He went, in 1547, to Flanders, and studied under Frissius, Mercator, and others; and on his return he was made fellow of Trinity college, just founded by Henry VIII. His attention to mathematical studies, so closely connected with astronomy, and, in those days, with astrology, brought upon him the suspicion of magic; and, to avoid this, he retired to Louvain, in 1478, where it is supposed he took the degree of LL.D.

In 1550 he visited Paris, where he read lectures on Euclid's elements; but the most flattering promises could not prevail upon him to settle there. He returned to England in 1551, and was introduced to Cheke and Cecil, was presented to Edward VI., and was made rector of Upton-upon-Severn, and Long Lednam, in Lincolnshire. In Mary's reign, his correspondence with Elizabeth's friends exposed him to the suspicion of treason. He afterwards paid his court to queen Elizabeth, who flattered him with compliments. In 1564 he left England, to present his Monas Hieroglyphica to the emperor Maximilian, and returned in the same year. sented his Propedumata Aphoristica to Elizabeth; and in 1570 he published a curious and laborious preface to Sir Henry Billingsley's translation of Euclid, which he also enriched with notes. In 1571 the queen paid such respect to his celebrity, that she sent two physicians to attend him when confined by sickness at Louvain. On his return to England he settled at Mortlake, where he collected a choice library of above 4000 volumes; which, however, during his absence, in

In 1568 he pre

1583, was plundered by the populace, who firmly believed that he had a familiar connexion with the devil, by his magical incantations. The appearance of a new star in 1572, and of a comet in 1577, gave him opportunities of distinguishing himself as an astronomer; and he engaged the queen's patronage by his able assertion of her right to the countries discovered by her subjects, and by his ingenious plans for the reformation of the calendar. In 1581 he began his attempts to penetrate more deeply into futurity, and, assisted by Kelly, a young man of Worcestershire, he launched forth into those extravagancies in mystery and superstition by which he pretended to hold intercourse with departed spirits. For two years he was engaged in these pursuits, and was at last persuaded by Albert Laski, a Polish lord, to pass over to the continent. After travelling through Germany, the three conjurers reached Poland, and, after an introduction to the emperor Rodolph II., and to Stephen, king of Poland, Dee and Kelly were at last, after the exhibition of some magical tricks, banished by the interference of the pope's nuncio. The report of this adventure reached Elizabeth, who desired Dee to return. He obeyed, and, travelling with great pomp and solemnity, reached England on the 23d of November, 1589, and a few days after was presented to the queen, who received him graciously. By the interference of lady Warwick and archbishop Whitgift, Dee obtained the chancellorship of St. Paul's, and, two years after, the wardenship of Manchester college, where he spent seven years. In 1604 he vainly petitioned James that his conduct and character might be fairly sifted. He at last removed to Mortlake, where he began again to practise his mysterious arts. He died in 1608, in abject poverty. He was twice married, and he left a numerous family.—The eldest of his sons, ARTHUR, was brought up under Camden, and was physician to Charles I. His writings were very numerous; but besides what he published, several MSS. are preserved in the Cotton library and in the Ashmolean museum. In 1659, Dr. Meric Casaubon published a folio volume, entitled, A true and faithful Relation of what passed between Dr. John Dee and some Spirits. Several curious journals of Dee's are in the college library of Manchester, with his portrait.

DEERING, or DOERING, (Charles,) a native of Saxony, who took his degree of doctor in physic at Leyden, after which

he came to London, and in 1736 removed to Nottingham. In 1737 he published an improved method of treating the small-pox; in which he recommended the cooling regimen. He published a Catalogue of Plants growing about Nottingham, Svo, 1738, and wrote the history of that town, which appeared in 1751, 4to. He died in 1749.

DEFFANT, (Marie de Vichy Chamroud, marchioness du,) descended from a noble family in Burgundy, was born in 1697. An ill-assorted marriage issued in a separation, and she became the centre of a literary circle which was composed of the most distinguished characters of the age. In her fifty-fourth year she lost her sight. Voltaire called her l'Aveugle Clairvoyante. The delicacy of her taste, and the extent of her acquaintance with the literature of the time, recommended her to the notice of Horace Walpole, with whom she corresponded, as well as with Voltaire, d'Alembert, Montesquieu, and others. Her Correspondence was published in 4 vols, 8vo, Paris, 1811. She died in 1780, in her eighty-fourth year. Her attainments were considerable, but her temper was wayward, quarrelsome, and peevish.

DE FOE, (Daniel,) an ingenious miscellaneous writer, born, about 1663, in the parish of St. Giles' Cripplegate, in London, where his father, James Foe, was a butcher. He was educated among the dissenters, and warmly embraced their tenets; and he probably prefixed De to his name to conceal the obscurity of his origin. He commenced author early, and published, in 1683, a pamphlet on the contest between the Turks and Austrians. In that year he followed in arms the fortunes of the duke of Monmouth, and had, unaccountably, the good luck to escape the grasp of Jeffreys. He became a liveryman of London in 1688, and zealously favoured the revolution. About this time he followed the trade of a hosier, in Freeman's-court, Cornhill, though he afterwards denied the occupation; and in 1692 he was so reduced, either by misconduct or by the unfavourable circumstances of the times, that he fled from his creditors, though he afterwards very honourably discharged the best part of his debts. In 1695 he was made accountant to the commissioners of the glass duty, in which post he continued till the suppression of the tax in 1699. His True-born Englishman, a satire, in verse, in defence of the Revolution,

had a prodigious sale, and recommended him to the notice of William III. His Shortest Way with the Dissenters, published in 1702, as it reflected on the government and the church, was voted a seditious libel by the House of Commons, and the author was sentenced to the pillory, to be fined, and imprisoned. During his confinement in Newgate he wrote A Hymn to the Pillory; and Pope, who has thought fit to introduce him in the Dunciad, characterises him in the following line:

"Earless on high stood unabash'd Defoe."

In February 1704, while still in Newgate, he commenced The Review; a periodical paper, published first twice, and then thrice, a-week, which, besides the current domestic and political news, contained the fiction of a club (called the Scandal Club) discussing questions on a variety of miscellaneous topics. This publication is, with probability, supposed to have given the hint of the Tatler. He was liberated from his confinement in August 1704, by the interposition of Harley and of Godolphin, and immediately retired to St. Edmundsbury, where his pen was again employed on political subjects. In May 1706 he produced an Essay at removing National Prejudices against an Union with Scotland; and so great were his services considered, that he was sent by Godolphin to Edinburgh to confer upon the subject with the leading men of Scotland. Upon the conclusion of the union he was rewarded for his services, and two years after, 1709, he published The History of the Union, in a manner so satisfactory, that, in 1786, the same pamphlet was republished when the Irish union was projected. In 1713 some of his publications were considered as Jacobitical, in consequence of which he was prosecuted and imprisoned, but was at last liberated from Newgate by the influence of his friend lord Oxford. He found himself so neglected on the accession of the house of Hanover, that he published his Appeal to Honour and Justice, the last of his political tracts, as he was seized with an apoplexy before the work was finished, and as he afterwards devoted himself only to useful and general instruction. In 1715 he wrote The Family Instructor; and in April 1719 appeared the first part, and August following the second part, of his admirable Robinson Crusoe; the most lasting monument of the literary fame of De Foe. He died in April 1731. The other publica

tions of De Foe are:-The Life of Captain Singleton; A New Voyage round the World; The History of Duncan Campbell; The Life of Moll Flanders; The Life of Colonel Jack; The Adventures of Roxana; The Memoirs of a Cavalier during the Civil Wars in England; Religious Courtship; A Journal of the Plague in 1665; The Political History of the Devil, to which he afterwards added, A System of Magic; A Tour through England and Scotland, 3 vols, 8vo, &c.

DEHEEM, (John David,) a Dutch painter, born at Utrecht in 1604. He excelled in painting flowers and fruit, gold and silver cups, and musical instruments. In representing the transparency of glass he has produced the most perfect illusion. He died at Antwerp, in 1674.

DEIDIER, (Anthony,) the son of a surgeon of Montpellier, where he studied medicine, and in 1697 became professor of chemistry. In 1732, being appointed physician to the galleys, he went to Marseilles, where he died in 1746. He was at Marseilles while the plague raged there, and attributed the disease to a prevailing acid. He wrote a vast number of medical works, in which he maintained opinions which evinced precipitancy of judgment, and a proneness to theorize, little consistent with the sobriety of philosophical investigation. He published three volumes of consultations and observations, in which the diseases are generally correctly described. The titles of his works may be seen in Haller's Bib. Med.

DEIMAN, (John Rodolph,) an eminent Dutch physician and chemist, born at Hagan, in East Friesland, in 1743. He studied at the university of Halle, where he took the degree of M.D. in 1770. He was appointed physician to the king of Holland, and made knight of the order of Merit. He died in 1808.

DEJAURE, (John Elias Bedenc,) an ingenious French dramatic poet, born in 1761. His Franc Breton, Montano et Stéphanie, and Lodoiska, an opera, have been received on the stage with applause. He died in 1799.

DEJOTARUS, tetrarch of Galatia, was, in consideration of his services in the Mithridatic war, placed by Pompey upon the throne of the Lesser Armenia, with the addition of great part of Pontus and Colchis. At the breaking out of the war between Pompey and Cæsar, Dejotarus took part with the former, and was present at the battle of Pharsalia. Ip

order to make his peace with Casar, he was obliged to pay a large sum of money, and was deprived of part of his dominions, but was suffered to retain the title of king. An accusation was brought against him by his daughter's son Castor, of having planned the murder of Cæsar while in Galatia, after his return from Egypt, and Cicero pronounced an oration in his defence. After the death of Cæsar, by means of a large bribe to Antony's wife, Fulvia, he recovered his forfeited territories. He afterwards sided with Brutus, quitted him for Antony, and at last went over to Octavius. He died at a very advanced age.

DE LA BARRE. See BARre. DELABORDE, (John Benjamin,) a musician, born at Paris, in 1734. Among other masters, he was instructed on the violin by the celebrated Dauvergne, and in the theory of music and composition by Rameau. Destined by his friends for a government financial situation, be became at first principal valet de chambre to Louis XV., of whom he was a great favourite. He soon after this cultivated his talent for music with greater ardour and application, and in 1758 produced at the theatre of the court the comic opera Gilles Garçon Peintre, which was very successful. At the death of Louis XV. in 1774, Delaborde quitted the court, and became a fermier-general. In 1780, he published Essai sur la Musique ancienne et moderne, four vols, 4to, with plates. He was afterwards guillotined, in the reign of terror, for being a partisan of the court.

DELACEPEDE. See LACEPEDE. DE LA COUR, or DELACOURT, (James,) an Irish poet, born at Killowen, near Blarney, in the county of Cork, in 1709. He was educated at Trinity college, Dublin; and before he had reached his 21st year, he produced his Letter of Abelard to Eloisa, in imitation of Pope; and in 1733 he published his work entitled The Prospect of Poetry. Soon after this he took orders, but his love of versification, and an addiction to drink, unfitted him for his clerical duties, and he soon became deranged, and pretended to prophesy. He died in 1781.

DELAMBRE, (John Baptist Joseph,) an eminent mathematician and astronomer, born on the 19th of September, 1749, at Amiens, where he received his earlier education under the care of the celebrated poet Delille, at that time a teacher in the gymnasium. This was the commencement of a friendship

between the preceptor and his pupil, which ended only with the life of the former, who has dedicated to Delambre his poem entitled Trois Règnes de la Nature. The narrow circumstances of his family seemed to present obstacles to his removal to the university of Paris, which, however, were happily overcome by the generous exertions of his teacher in rhetoric, Gossart, who caused him to be sent to the college du Plessis.. At the close of his academical course he determined to seek a means of support by the exercise of his pen; and notwithstanding a considerable weakness of sight, occasioned by an attack of small-pox in his infancy, he undertook translations of works in the Latin, Greek, Italian, and English languages, and commenced the study of the mathematics. He next went to Compiègne, at the recommendation of his friends, to engage in tuition; but he speedily returned to Paris, where he pursued that career with considerable advantage, and applied himself with ardour to the study of physics and astronomy, as well as to general literature. He now studied at the college of France, under Lalande, who, struck by his superior talents, regarded him as a fellowlabourer, and entrusted to him the most complicated astronomical calculations, Delambre thenceforth consecrated his life to the study and description of the heavens. In 1781 he obtained the prize offered by the Academy of Sciences for the determination of the orbit of the recently discovered Georgium Sidus, or Uranus; he also constructed ecliptical tables of the satellites of Jupiter, for which he was honoured with another prize; and in 1792 he was elected a member of the Academy. About the same time he was associated with Mechain in a commission to measure an arc from Dunkirk to Barcelona, a task which, under the directing mind of Delambre, was brought to a successful termination after the labour of ten years, the result of which he gave to the world in his Base du Système Métrique Décimal, 1806-1810. He was appointed perpetual secretary for the mathematical sciences in the Institute, successor of Lalande in the chair of astronomy in the college of France, and one of the principal directors of the university. His History of Astronomy, 6 vols, 4to, is a work of prodigious research. It is a remarkable fact, that he did not apply himself to astronomical observations until he had reached his thirty-fifth year. In

1814 he was appointed a member of the Royal Council of Instruction; and when Paris was taken by the allied armies, Delambre, then in that city, applied himself, undisturbed by the roar of cannon, to the pursuit of his favourite studies. He was more fortunate, however, than Archimedes in a similar position; for such was the respect in which his reputation was held, that no molestation was offered to him by the victors, nor was even a single soldier billeted upon him. Intense application at length impaired his health, and he died on the 19th of August, 1822. Besides his numerous scientific writings he contributed to the Biographie Universelle the lives of Hippocrates, Ptolemy, Kepler, Picard, Lalande, La Caille, and others. He also wrote a conclusive refutation of the absurd pretensions to antiquity made by the Indian tables, which he has shown to be not more than 700 years old.

DELAMET, (Adrian Augustin de Bussy,) a learned French priest and casuist, born in Picardy, in 1621. In 1646 he became a member of the society of the Sorbonne, of which he was chosen prior in 1648. He conciliated the esteem of cardinal De Retz, who was his relation, and he continued attached to him in his prosperity and in his disgrace, accompanying him in his travels through England, Holland, and Italy. He returned to Paris, and settled in the college of the Sorbonne, where he became emninent for his wisdom in the management of ecclesiastical concerns, and was often applied to for the resolution of difficult cases of conscience. He died in 1691. The work for which he is chiefly celebrated is A Resolution of numerous Cases of Conscience, relative to Morality and Church Discipline, according to the sacred Scriptures, the Decrees of Councils, the Sentiments of the Fathers of the Church, and those of different Canonists and Divines; of which the first volume appeared after his death, in 1714, in Svo. This work includes the resolutions of M. Fromageau, and was afterwards extended to the number of five volumes. In 1732 the work was systematized by M. Treuve, who published it in the form of A Dictionary of Cases of Conscience, in two volumes fol. which are usually connected with the celebrated work of M. Pontas, in three volumes fol. under the same title.

DELANDINE, (Anthony Francis,) deputy of the province of Forez to the States-General, was born at Lyons, in

1756. He became librarian of that city, and member of several academies; and he exercised the profession of an advocate previous to the Revolution. Till the closing of the constituent assembly, he took an active part in the deliberations, and distinguished himself by his judgment and moderation. He opposed the issuing of assignats, and successfully defended the royal guards who had accompanied the king in his flight to Varennes. He also maintained the inviolability of the royal person; and, on the 4th of July, 1791, protested against the detention of Louis XVI. He was afterwards obliged to conceal himself in the mountains of Forez, and being discovered in the winter of 1793, he was dragged from prison to prison, and only owed his safety to the revolution which overthrew the reign of terror (9 Thermidor). He published, in 1804, in conjunction with Chaudon, the eighth edition of the Dictionnaire Historique; and among his other works are, Catalogue des Livres de la Bibliothèque Publique de Lyon; and Mémoires Bibliographiques et Littéraires, 1816, 8vo. He died in 1820.

DELANY, (Patrick,) an Irish divine, born about 1686. His father was originally a servant in the family of Sir John Rennel, a judge, and afterwards rented a small farm. Young Delany was brought up as a sizar at Trinity college, Dublin, of which he became fellow. At this time he formed a very intimate acquaintance with dean Swift, and soon distinguished himself as a popular preacher, and as an active and successful tutor in his college. The part, however, which he took in supporting two young men who had, for misconduct, been expelled, proved offensive to the provost, and to Boulter the primate, who wished to oppose his advancement. Lord Carteret, in 1727, presented him to the chancellorship of Christ Church, and to a prebend in the cathedral of St. Patrick. In 1729 he began a periodical paper called the Tribune, continued to twenty numbers; and in 1731 he came to London to publish his Revelation examined with candour, a work to which he added a second volume, and, thirty years after, a third, and which was universally admired. When in London he married Mrs. Margaret Tenison, a rich Irish widow. In 1738 he published his Reflections upon Polygamy, a curious work, which was followed, in 1740 and 1742, with An Historical Account of the Life of David, King of Israel, in 3 vols. In 1743 he took for his second wife the