DICTIONARY
OF
NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY
DIAMOND DRAKE
DICTIONARY
OF
NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY
EDITED BY
LESLIE STEPHEN
VOL. XV. DIAMOND DRAKE
MACMILLAN AND CO.
LONDON : SMITH, ELDER, & CO. 1888
ag
v.lS'
LIST OF WRITERS
IN THE FIFTEENTH VOLUME.
J. G. A. . . J. G. ALGER.
T. A. A. . . T. A. ARCHER.
G. F. R, B. G. F. KUSSBLL BARKER.
R. B THE REV. RONALD BATNE.
T. B THOMAS BAYNE.
G. T. B. . . G. T. BETTANT.
A. C. B. . . A. C. BICKLEY.
B. H. B. . . THE REV. B. H. BLACKER.
W. G. B. . . THE REV. PROFESSOR BLAIKIE,D.D.
G. C. B. . . G. C. BOASE.
G. S. B. . . G. S. BOULGER.
A. H. B. . . A. H. BULLEN.
G. W. B. . . G. W. BURNETT.
H. M. C. . . H. MANNERS CHICHESTER.
M. C-Y. . . . MILLER CHRISTY.
J. W. C-K.. J. W. CLARK.
A. M. C. . . Miss A. M. CLERKE.
T. C THOMPSON COOPER, F.S.A.
W. P. C. . . W. P. COURTNEY.
C. C CHARLES CREIGHTON, M.D.
L. C LIONEL GUST.
J. D JAMES DIXON, M.D.
R. W. D. . . THE REV. CANON DIXON.
A. D AUSTIN DOBSON.
J. W. E. . . THE REV. J. W. EBSWORTH, F.S.A.
F. E FRANCIS ESPINASSE.
L. F Louis FAGAN.
C. H. F. . . C. H. FIRTH.
J. G JAMES GAIRDNER.
S. R. G. . . S. R. GARDINER, LL.D.
R. Gr RICHARD GARNETT, LL.D.
J. W.-G. . . J. WESTBY-GIBSON, LL.D. J. T. G. . . J. T. GILBEBT, F.S.A. G. G GORDON GOODWIN.
A. G THE REV. ALEXANDER GORDON.
R. E. G. . . . R. E. GRAVES.
G. J. G. . . G. J. GRAY.
W. A. G. . . W. A, GREENHILL, M.D.
J. A. H. . . J. A. HAMILTON.
R. H ROBERT HARRISON.
W. J. H. . . PROFESSOR W. JEROME HARRISON. T. F. H. . . T. F. HENDERSON. G. J. H. . . . G. J. HOLYOAKE.
J- H Miss JENNETT HUMPHREYS.
R. H-T. . . . THE LATE ROBERT HUNT, F.R.S. W. H. ... THE REV. WILLIAM HUNT.
B. D. J. . . B. D. JACKSON.
A. J THE REV. AUGUSTUS JESSOPP, D.D.
T. E. K. . . T. E. KEBBEL.
C. K CHARLES KENT.
J- K JOSEPH KNIGHT.
J. K. L. . . PROFESSOR J. K. LAUGHTON.
S. L. L. . . S. L. LEE.
H. R. L. . . THE REV. H. R. LUARD, D.D.
VI
List of Writers.
N. McC. . . NORMAN MACCOLL.
M. M. . . . JENEAS MACKAY, LL.D.
N. M NORMAN MOORE, M.D.
J. N PROFESSOR NICHOL.
T. 0 THE REV. THOMAS OLDEN.
J. O JOHN ORMSBY.
J. H. 0. . . THE REV. CANON OVERTON.
H. P HENRY PATON.
G. GK P. . . . THE KEV. CANON PERRY.
N. P THE REV. NICHOLAS POCOCK.
R. L. P. . . R. L. POOLE.
S. L.-P. . . . STANLEY LANE-POOLE.
A. W. R. . . A. WOOD RENTON.
J. M. R. . . J. M. RIGG.
C. J. R.. . . THE REV. C. J. ROBINSON.
J. M. S. . E. S. S. . . W. B. S. . L. S. . . . H. M. S. . C. W. S. . H. R. T. . T. F. T. .
E. V. . . . A. V. ... J. R. W. . M. G. W..
F. W-T. . W. W. .
. J. M. SCOTT.
. E. S. SHUCKBURGH.
. W. BARCLAY SQUIRE.
. LESLIE STEPHEN.
. H. MORSE STEPHENS.
. C. W. SUTTON.
. H. R. TEDDER.
. PROFESSOR T. F. TOUT.
. THE REV. CANON VENABLES.
. ALSAGER VIAN.
. THE REV. J. R. WASHBOURN.
. THE REV. M. G. WATKINS.
. FRANCIS WATT.
. WARWICK WROTH.
DICTIONARY
OF
NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY
Diamond
Dibben
DIAMOND, HUGH WELCH (1809- 1886), photographer, eldest son of William Batchelor Diamond, a surgeon in the East India Company's service, was educated at Norwich grammar school under Dr. Valpy. His family claimed descent from a French refugee named Dimont or Demonte, who settled in Kent early in the seventeenth cen- tury. Diamond became a pupil at the Royal College of Surgeons in London 5 Nov. 1828, a student at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in 1828, and a member of the College of Sur- geons in 1834. While a student he assisted Dr. Abernethy in preparing dissections for his lectures, and subsequently practised in Soho, where he distinguished himself in the cholera outbreak in 1832. He soon made mental diseases his speciality, and studied at Beth- lehem Hospital. From 1848 to 1858 he was resident superintendent of female patients at the Surrey County Asylum, and in 1858 he established a private asylum for female pa- tients at Twickenham, where he lived till his death on 21 June 1886.
Diamond interested himself largely in the early success of photography. While im- proving many of the processes, he is said to have invented the paper or cardboard photo- graphic portrait ; earlier photographers pro- duced portraits only on glass. In 1853 he became secretary of the London Photographic Society, and edited its journal for many years. In 1853 and following years he contributed a series of papers to the first series of ' Notes and Queries ' on photography applied to ar- chaeology and practised in the open air, and on various photographic processes. He read a paper before the Royal Society t On the Appli- cation of Photography to the Physiognomic and Mental Phenomena of Insanity.' A com- mittee was subsequently formed among scien- tific men to testify their gratitude to Diamond
VOL. xv.
| for his photographic labours, and he was pre- • sented, through Professor Faraday, with a 1 purse of 3001. Collections made by Diamond | for a work on medical biography were incorpo- ! rated by Mr. J. C. Jeaffreson in his ' Book about j Doctors.' Diamond was a genial companion I and an enthusiastic collector of works of art j and antiquities. Several valuable archseo- I logical memoirs by him appeared in the <Ar- ; chaeologia.'
[Athenaeum, 3 July 1886 ; Medical Directory, 1886 ; Notes and Queries, 1st ser. passim.]
DIBBEN, THOMAS, D.D. (d. 1741), Latin poet, a native of Manston, Dorsetshire, was admitted into Westminster School on the foundation in 1692, and thence elected in 1696 to a scholarship at Trinity College, Cam- bridge, of which he became a fellow in 1698 (B.A. 1699, M.A. 1703, B.D. 1710, D.D. 1721). On 16 July 1701 he was instituted to the rectory of Great Fontmell, Dorsetshire. He was chaplain to Dr. John Robinson, bishop of Bristol and lord privy seal, with whom he went to the congress of Utrecht, and who | on being translated to the see of London col- lated him in 1714 to the precentorship of St. Paul's Cathedral. He represented the diocese of Bristol in the convocations of 1715 and 1727. Afterwards he became mentally de- ranged, left his house and friends, spent his fortune, and died in the Poultry compter, London, on 5 April 1741.
He published two sermons, one of which was preached at Utrecht before the pleni- potentiaries 9-20 March 1711 on the anni- versary of the queen's accession. As a Latin poet he acquired considerable celebrity. He wrote one of the poems printed at Cambridge on the return of William III from the conti- nent in 1697, and translated Matthew Prior's ' Carmen Seculare ' for 1700 into Latin verse.
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Dibdin
Of this translation Prior, in the preface to his ' Poems ' (1733), says : ' I take this occasion to thank my good friend and schoolfellow, Mr. Dibben, for his excellent version of the I " Carmen Seculare," though my gratitude may justly carry a little envy with it ; for I believe the most accurate judges will find the translation exceed the original.'
[Addit. MS. 5867, f. 64 ; Hutchins's Dorset- shire (1813), iii. 161; London Mag. 1741, p. 206; Welch's Alumni Westmon. (Phillimore), pp. 222, 231, 232; Le Neve's Fasti (Hardy); Watt's Bibl. Brit.] T. C.
DIBDIN, CHARLES (1745-1814), dra- matist and song-writer, was born at South- ampton on or before 4 March 1745. The date 1748 is commonly but inaccurately given ; his baptismal register shows that he was privately baptised, being no doubt sickly at birth, on 4 March, and christened on the 26th at Holy- rood Church, Southampton, where his father, Thomas Dibdin, was parish clerk. It is most improbable that Charles was, as he asserted, the eighteenth child of his father, ' a silver- smith, a man of considerable credit.' Charles had been intended for the church, but music alone delighted him ; his good voice in boy- hood won notice at Winchester College, and, through Fussell the organist, at the Cathedral, where he sang anthems, but the concert-rooms at the races and assizes ' echoed with his vocal fame ' (Professional Life, i. 14). When he was f twelve ' (or fifteen ?) years old he was kindly treated by Archdeacon Eden and John Hoadly (1711-1776) [q. v.], chancellor of the diocese. He became the principal singer at the Subscription Concerts ; but his popularity with the clergy and officers left him little leisure even for musical study. He was re- jected on account of his youth when he applied for the post of organist at Waltham, Hamp- shire. Invited to London, at free quarters, "by his elder brother Thomas the seaman, he visited the theatres, made a position for him- self by playing voluntaries at the churches, and often ' played out the congregation of St. Bride's ' before he was sixteen. He was em- ployed by Old Johnson, who kept a music-shop in Cheapside, but his sole employment was to tune harpsichords. His brother Tom had started in the Hope, West-Indiaman, and had been captured by a French seventy-four, so that no help could be expected from him. The Thompsons of St. Paul's Churchyard gave him his first three guineas for the copyright of six ballads, published at three halfpence each, after they had been sung by Kear at Finch's Grotto. He had not learnt music scientifically until he was sixteen, when he put in score Corelli's harmonies. He was in-
troduced by Berenger to John Beard [q, v.], who accepted and produced for him a pastoral operetta, ' The Shepherd's Artifice,' 21 May 1762, repeated next season, 1763. In the summer of the former year he had performed with Shuter, Weston, and Miss Pope at the Richmond Theatre, then called the Histrio- nic Academy. Next summer he went to Bir- mingham with Younger's company, and took some extra work at Vauxhall there ; visited Coventry to see the Lady Godiva pageant, and next season at Covent Garden played the part of Ralph in Isaac Bickerstafte's ' Love in a Village,' on Dunstall's incapacity becoming evident. He was encored in all the songs, and set the fashion of wearing ' Ralph hand- kerchiefs.' His salary was raised ten shil- lings a time in each of three successive weeks. He signed articles for three years, at 3/., 4/., and 5/. per week. Bickerstaffe's i Maid of the Mill ' ran fifty nights. Dibdin complains of the envy and opposition of brother actors, which gradually drove him away from the profession in disgust. His taste was for operatic music, not for acting. After a second season at Birmingham he performed at Love's new theatre at Richmond. In 1767 he was the original Watty Cockney in ' Love in the City /afterwards altered into ' The Romp,' for which he composed choruses and songs, in- cluding the popular ' Dear me ! how I long to be married ! ' Dr. T. A. Arne [q. v.] gene- rously saved him from the malignity of Simp- son the hautboy player, but the piece lasted one week only. He next composed two- thirds of the music for ' Lionel and Clarissa,' by Bickerstaffe [q. v.], altered speedily to ' The School for Fathers,' of which nearly all the music was Dibdin's. For this he got no more than 48/. He had already married the daugh- ter of a respectable tradesman, a woman without beauty, but a handsome portion ; and had deserted her when her fortune was dissi- pated. All his children by this marriage died young. She lived on a scanty pittance till 1793 or later ; no imputation was thrown on her character (CKOSBY, p. 103). In 1767 he had formed an illicit connection with a so-called Mrs. Davenet, a chorus-singer of Covent Garden. She was unmarried, and her real name was Pitt ; her children for many years bore that name : Charles I. M. was born in 1768, surviving until 1833 (see below) ; Thomas [q. v.], born in 1771, took his father's name about 1799.
George Colman, succeeding Beard in the last year of Dibdin's articles, treated him harshly and with meanness. His benefit night was spoilt by the compulsory closing of the theatre on the death of Princess Matilda. In 1768 Bickerstaffe's ' Padlock,' produced at
Dibdin
Dibdin
the Haymarket, enabled Dibdin to make his * greatest hit ' as Mungo, after Moody had rehearsed and resigned the part. Twenty- eight thousand copies of the ' Padlock ' were sold ; whereby Bickerstaffe, as author of the words, realised fully 1,700/. by 1779 (G. HOGARTH); but Dibdin received only 43J. for having composed the music. His brother Thomas had been released from imprison- ment, and got an appointment for India through Sir William Young ; Charles having crippled himself to pay his brother's debts •and assist his outfit. He secured good terms at Ranelagh Gardens, 100/., each season, for the music of l The Maid and Mistress,' ' Re- cruiting Sergeant,' and 'Ephesian Matron.' In September 1769 Garrick's Shakespeare Jubilee at Stratford gave him employment in setting and resetting music to the songs. Before the celebration came off Dibdin and 'Garrick had quarrelled; Garrick, quoting Othello, threatened the composer, 'I can take down the pegs that make this music ! ' Dibdin capped the Othello verse by the happy rejoinder, * Yes, as honest as you are ! ' The breach was widened when Dibdin praised as Garrick's best work the rondeau * Sisters of the Tuneful Strain,' which proved to have been borrowed from Jerningham. The quarrel wellnigh interrupted the Stratford music, but Dibdin repented, composed l Let Beauty with the Sun arise ! ' hastened after Garrick, and caused the performers to serenade him with the piece, when it had been considered hopeless. A reconciliation followed, Dibdin receiving a reward of twenty guineas after having expended twenty-six in travelling. This, however, is Dibdin's unsupported ac- •count.
Dibdin got 50/. for music to < Dr. Ballardo,' but no more than 15/. for copyright from the Thompsons for resetting ' Damon and Phil- lida.' When Bickerstaffe absconded in 1771, Dibdin publicly rebuked Dr. Kenrick, author of the scurrilous libel on Garrick, ' Roscius's Lamentation.' He now composed an opera, 4 The Wedding Ring,' 1773, but concealed the authorship. This led to a legal squabble with Newbery, publisher of the ' Public Ledger,' Dibdin having avowed himself the writer, to the anger of Garrick, after sur- mises that it was a work of Bickerstaffe. For King, purchaser of Sadler's Wells, Dibdin had composed two interludes, ' The Ladle ' and * The Mischance,' performed in the summer of 1772. Also a pantomime, ' The Pigmy Revels,' and some trifles to com- memorate the installation of new Garter knights. He wrote songs for ' The Deserter,' 1773, and was ordered to set music to Garrick's •* Christmas Tale,' 1774; but met increased
animosity from him, chiefly on account of Dibdin's ill-usage of Miss Pitt, mother of at least three children by him, whom he deserted about this time. Garrick felt so indignant that he discharged him. He had transferred himself and his truant affections to a Miss Anne Wild, or Wyld, of Portsea, probably a relation of James Wild, the prompter, but was unable to marry her until long after- wards, when his neglected first wife died. Garrick rejected contemptuously Dibdin's ' Waterman,' and Foote accepted it for the Haymarket, where it became instantly and lastingly popular. 'The Cobler' followed, memorable for the song of ' 'Twas in a Village near Castlebury,' but a clique secured its re- moval on the tenth night. ' The Quaker ' was sold to Brereton for 701. for his benefit ; and ultimately Garrick purchased it, but kept it back. Dibdin then spitefully wrote a pamphlet against him as ' David Little,' ad- vertised it, but withdrew it from publication in time. He satirised Garrick, nevertheless, in a puppet-play, ' The Comic Mirror,' at Exeter Change (Prof. Life, i. 153). En- tangled in debt, and with angry creditors threatening imprisonment, he sought flight to France, to stay two years, ' to expand my ideas and store myself with theatrical ma- terials,' as he himself declared. Sheridan avowed the impossibility of Dibdin's rein- statement at Drury Lane, where Linley now ruled, but affected to have prevailed on T. Harris to engage him at Covent Garden. Har- ris declined, saying, ' Surely Mr. Sheridan is mad.' Harris produced Dibdin's ' Seraglio ' in November 1776, which was favourably re- ceived, after Dibdin had left England. In it was sung ' Blow high, blow low,' the earliest of Dibdin's numerous sea songs. It was writ- ten in a gale of wind, during a thirteen-hours' passage from Calais. i Poor Vulcan ' was altered beyond recognition, and produced suc- cessfully 4 Feb. 1778, yielding the author above 200/. He disparaged Calais, but con- fessed that he ' muddled away five months there,' before moving with his irregular family to Nancy, the journey taking ten days. He felt happier at Nancy, often visiting Le Chartreux, two miles distant. He remained in France twenty-two months, but disliked the French with stubborn prejudice. Impending war caused Englishmen to be ordered out of the country. Early in June 1778 he returned from Calais to Dover, narrowly escaping an Ame- rican frigate. Harris engaged him at 10/. a week. To his after-piece/ The Gipsies,' written while in France, Thomas Arnold had set the music. Of six interludes which he had pre- pared abroad, his ' Rose and Colin ' and ' The Wives Revenged ' were injudiciously but
u2 .
Dibdin
Dibdin
successfully produced together, 18 Sept. 1778, at Covent Garden. ' Annette and Lubin' fol- lowed, and on 3 Jan. 1779 ' The Touchstone.' But Fred. Pilon, Mrs. Cowley, Cumberland, and even Lee Lewis had been allowed to in- terlineate and spoil it. In a fit of impatient disgust Dibdin felt inclined to go to India and join his brother Tom at Nagore, but first wrote 'The Chelsea Pensioners.' He had wished his ' Mirror ' to be entitled ' Hell broke Loose ; ' it was a mythological bur- lesque of Tartarus. He at last prevailed on Harris to produce his ' Shepherdess of the Alps ' in 1780. His brother died at the Cape of Good Hope, when voyaging home- ward, after having been struck by lightning and been partially paralysed. Seeing India thus closed to him, Dibdin became reconciled to Harris, who produced for him * Harlequin Freemason ' at Covent Garden 1780, but 'The Islanders ' came out before it. His ' Amphi- tryon,' a musical adaptation of Dryden's, was a failure, and it probably deserved to be, but he had secured himself as to profits, and got 285/. for it. ' Pretty well for an unsuccess- ful piece,' Dibdin said. This brought a fresh rupture with Harris.
Dibdin now commenced giving musical entertainments at the Royal Circus, on the site of the present Surrey Theatre. He found enemies in Hughes and the elder Grimaldi, father of ' Joey,' the future clown [q. v.] But he was continually finding enemies, accord- ing to his own account. His numerous inter- ludes were sandwiched between equestrian feats in the circle. ' The Benevolent Tar,' ' The Cestus,' and ' Tom Thumb ' were brought out in 1782. Troubles were incessant. His 'Liberty Hall,' full of songs, was accepted at Drury Lane in 1784. By the destruction of another place of entertainment, named Helicon, he lost 290J., and 460/. by a Dub- lin misadventure, soon after the death of his mother at Southampton. He removed with one of his families to a village five miles off, and began his novel of ' The Younger Brother,' which was not published until 1793. Restarted a weekly satire called l The Devil,' which died within the half-year. His ' Har- vest Home ' was produced before he started in 1787 to give entertainments in various towns for fourteen months. He was the sole performer. Of this ' Musical Tour ' he pub- lished at Sheffield, in 4to, an account in 1788. He was continually embroiled with mana- gers, and again quarrelled with Harris in March that year. Even as his own master and servant he was dissatisfied, and he once more resolved to go to India, being again in danger of arrest. He left the Thames for Madeira, expecting to be ( picked up ' there.
He sold all that he could, obtaining merely two guineas for his 'Poll and my Partner Joe,' which brought 200/. to the publisher, and ' Nothing like Grog ' for half a guinea. He got to Dunkirk with his family, but he had quarrelled with the captain, the crew were mutinous, and by stress of weather they were driven to Torbay, and never got nearer to India. Threatened by creditors he re- turned to London, took lodgings near the Old Bailey, and made a fresh start with one of his best entertainments, ' The Whim of the Moment,' in which he introduced his favourite song of 'Poor Jack.' This was parodied ruthlessly by John Collins, but held its ground. After this the entire interest of his life centres in his sea songs and various ' entertainments sans souci.' He amused the public with anecdotes and gossip, interspersed with his ditties. He resided at St. George's Fields, and engaged the Lyceum for his ' Oddities,' 1788-9, seventy-nine nights, and ' The Wags,' 1790, for 108 nights : ' Private Theatricals ' and ' The Quizzes ' were the names- of entertainments given at the Royal Poly- graphic Rooms, Strand, 1791, followed by ' Coalition,' 1792, and ' Castles in the Air,r 1793. It was at this, his most successful time, that warm-hearted John O'Keeffe saw him,, and without any professional jealousy praised him generously : ' Dibdin's manner of coming on the stage was in happy style ; he ran on sprightly, and with nearly a laughing face, like a friend who enters hastily to impart to you some good news. Nor did he disappoint his audience ; he sang, and accompanied himself on an instrument, which was a concert in itself; he was, in fact, his own band. A few lines of speaking happily introduced his admir- able songs, full of wit and character, and his peculiar mode of singing them surpassed all I had ever heard.'
Other sketches that followed were ' Nature in Nubibus' and ' Great News,' 1794. ' Will of the Wisp' and 'Christmas Gambols,' 1795. ' Datchet Mead,' ' General Election ' (in which came ' Meg of Wapping ' and ' Nongtongpaw ') and ' The Sphynx,' 1797, were performed at Leicester Place, and he also produced there ' The Goose and Gridiron ' and ' Tour to the Land's End,' 1798, founded on his own adven- tures ; ' King and Queen ' and ' Tom Wilkins,' 1799, with his song of 'The Last Shilling.' He went to Bath and Bristol with success, and soon after to Scotland, making sketches with pen and pencil, and composing new sketches (' The Cake House,' 1800 ; ' The Frisk,' 1801 ; 'Most Votes,' 1802; 'Britons Strike Home!' 1803; ' Valentine's Day,' 'The Election," The Frolic,' and 'A Trip to the Coast,' 1804 ;' Heads or Tails 'and 'Cecilia' (1805). He now wished
Dibdin
Dibdin
to retire into private life, for he knew that he had lost power of voice and popularity. Government had granted him a pension of 200/., June 1803. In 1805, being more than sixty, he retired from the theatre in Leices- ter Place, and sold his stock and copyright of three hundred songs to Bland and Weller, the music-sellers of Oxford Street, for 1,800/., and three years' annuities of 100/. a year for such songs as he might compose in that time. He removed to a quiet home at Cranford. His pension was withdrawn by the Grenville government, 1806-7. After this loss of in- come he returned to the Lyceum, adding other singers, and produced in 1808 ' Professional Volunteers ' and ' The Kent Day,' followed finally by ' A Thanksgiving ' and ' Commodore Pennant.' He also opened a music-shop oppo- site the theatre, but failure and bankruptcy fol- lowed. Mr. Oakley, of Tavistock Place, advo- cated in the ( Morning Chronicle' of 16 March 1810 the openinga subscription for Dibdin. At a public dinner on 12 April the musicians of the day generously gave their valuable help, and 640/. was raised. Of this 80/. was paid to him at once, and the remainder invested in long annuities, to benefit his second wife and their daughter Anne thereafter. He re- moved to Arlington Street, Camden Town, where he remained until he died. He tried one more play, ' The Round Robin,' at the Haymarket, in 1811, but the public, caring nothing for a worn-out favourite, rejected it. and he composed a dozen songs for ''La Belle Assembler ' of his friend, Dr. Kitchener, after- j wards his biographer, obtaining 60/. for them, j Struck by paralysis in 1813, he lingered at Arlington Street until 25 July 1814, dying j about the age of sixty-nine. A stanza from | one of his most beautiful and unaffected j songs, ' Tom Bowling ' (from the ' Oddities,' j and said to have been intended as a descrip- tion of his own brother Tom), was carved on i his tombstone at St. Martin's burial-ground in Camden Town. His widow, Anne, and her daughter, also Anne, enjoyed a pension of lOO/. besides the annuity of 30/. ; three other children had died in infancy ; a son, John, was , drowned . Anne married an offi cer in the army. Her daughter (alive in 1870) appears to be the only legitimate descendant of Charles Dibdin. Dibdin left no provision for his il- legitimate offspring.
Of these the eldest son was CHAKLES ISAAC MUNGO (so named after his father, Bicker- staffe, and the character in the ' Padlock ' which Dibdin performed in early life, and had set music for). The son's real surname was Pitt, but he is known generally as ' Charles Dibdin the younger ; ' he was born in 1768, and afterwards became a proprietor and acting
manager of Sadler's Wells Theatre, for which he wrote many plays and songs. Among the plays printed were : ' Claudine,' a burlesque, 1801 ; ' Goody Two-Shooes ' (sic), a panto- mime, n.d. ; ' Barbara Allen,' spectacle, n.d. ; 'The Great Devil,' comic spectacle, 1801 ; 'Old Man of the Mountains,' spectacle, n.d. ; and, one of his best, ' The Farmer's Wife,' comic opera, after 1814. He also wrote a ' History of the London Theatres,' 1826. He was popu- lar and fairly successful. He died in 1833. His son, Henry Edward Dibdin, is separately noticed.
Besides ' The Younger Brother,' 1793, the elder Charles Dibdin published in 1792 a novel entitled ' Hannah Hewit ; or the Fe- male Crusoe,' introducing the loss, of the Grosvenor, of which a dramatised version was acted for a benefit in 1797; ' The Devil,' 2 vols., circa 1785 ; ' The Bystander,' in which he published one song and an essay each week, 1787 ; his ' Musical Tour ' in the same year; his ' History of the Stage,' 5 vols., i 1795, hurriedly written in scraps while tra- i veiling ; * Observations of a Tour through Scotland and England,' with views by him- | self, 1803 ; and his ' Professional Life,' with j the words of six hundred songs, 4 vols., 1803 I (vide infra) ; besides many previous smaller ! selections, 12mo, such as one in 1790. His irritating letter to Benjamin Crosby ought to be remembered as a proof of his cross-grained disposition. Crosby having courteously re- quested biographical information from him, as from others, in 1796, Dibdin replied : ' Mr. Dib- din is astonished at Mr. Crosby's extraordi- nary request ; he not only refuses it, but forbids Mr. Crosby to introduce anything concerning his life in his production. If he should, Mr. Dibdin may be under the necessity of publicly contradicting what, according to Mr. Crosby's own confession, cannot be authentic ' (CROSBY, p. 100). But the great merit of Dibdin's best songs, his sea-songs especially, words and music, is undeniable. His autobiography is dreary and egotistical in the extreme, and he is loose and inaccurate, whether by de- fect of memory or by intentional distortion of truth. His sea-songs are full of generous sentiment and manly honesty. Somehow he cared less for a practical fulfilment of the ethics that he preached so well. He invented his own tunes, for the most part spirited and melodious, and in this surpassed Henry Carey [q. v.] beyond all comparison. They were admirably suited to his words. He boasted truly: 'My songs have been the solace of sailors in long voyages, in storms, in battle ; and they have been quoted in mutinies to the restoration of order and discipline ' (Life, i. 8). He brought more men into the navy in war
Dibdin
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time than all the press-gangs could. Exclu- sive of the ' entertainments sans souci,' com- menced in 1797, with their 360 songs, he wrote nearly seventy dramatic pieces, and set to music productions of other writers. He claimed nine hundred songs as his own, of which two hundred were repeatedly encored, ninety of them being sea-songs, and un- doubtedly his master-work. He was a rapid worker. No one of his entertainments cost him more than a month; his best single songs generally half an hour, e.g. his ' Sailor's Jour- nal.' Music and words came together. His portrait was painted by Devis, showing his handsome face, his hearty boisterousness. It has been several times engraved.
[Professional Life of Mr. Dibdin, written by Himself, with the "Words of Six Hundred Songs, 4 vols., 1803; Benjamin Crosby's Pocket Com- panion to the Playhouses, pp. 99-105, 1796; Dibdin's own Eoyal Circus Epitomised, 1784, a full account of his difficulties and imprisonments in the Fleet and the Bench ; A Brief Memoir of Charles Dibdin, by (the late) Dr. William Kit- chener, with some Documents supplied by his (Dibdin's) Granddaughter, Mrs. Lovat Ashe, London, n.d. (1823), a very slight work, 24 pp. ; Kecollections of John 0'Keeffe,written by himself, ii. 322, 323, 1826 ; Biographia Dramatica, ed. 1812, i. 187; Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. x. 415, 4th ser. v. 155, &c.; The London Stage, 1826-7, 4 vols. ; Bell's British Theatre ; Cumberland's Plays ; G. H. Davidson's Songs of Charles Dib- din, with Memoir by George Hogarth, 2 vols. 1 842 and 1848, very inaccurate and ill-edited through- out, many songs being given that were written by Colley Gibber, long before Dibdin touched ' Damon and Phillida,' and by other older and well-known writers; Annual Eegister, Ivi. 137; Dibdin's own books, above mentioned ; N. S. F. Hervey's Celebrated Musicians, Appendix, p. 32, 1883-5; Musical Times, March 1886; Gent. Mag. Ixxxv. 285 (1815) ; European Mag. July 1810.]
J. W. E.
DIBDIN, HENRY EDWARD (1813- 1866), musician, the youngest son of Charles Dibdin the younger [q. v.J, born at Sadler's Wells 8 Sept. 1813, was taught music by his elder sister, Mary Anne (b. 1800), afterwards Mrs. Tonna, who was an excellent harpist and musician, and the composer of several songs and instrumental pieces. Dibdin studied the harp with her, and afterwards with Bochsa. He also performed on the viola and organ. His first public appearance took place at Co- vent Garden Theatre on 3 Aug. 1832, when he played the harp at Paganini's last concert. In 1833 he settled at Edinburgh, where he remained for the rest of his life, holding the honorary post of organist of Trinity Chapel, and occupied with private teaching and com- position. In 1843 he published (in collabo-
ration with J. T. Surenne) a collection of church music, a supplement to which ap- peared in the following year. His best known work is the { Standard Psalm Book ' (1857), an admirable collection, with a useful historical preface. In 1865 he also compiled another collection, ' The Praise Book.' His remain- ing published works, about forty in number, consist of songs, pianoforte and harp pieces, and a good many hymn tunes. Dibdin was also a skilled artist and illuminator. His death took place at Edinburgh 6 May 1866.
[Information from Mr. E. B. Dibdin ; Craw- ford and Eberle's Biog. Index to the Church Hymnal, 3rd ed. 1878 ; Grove's Diet, of Music, i. 444.] W. B. S.
DIBDIN, THOMAS FROGNALL(1776- 1847), bibliographer, son of Thomas Dibdin,, elder brother of Charles Dibdin the song- writer [q. v.], was born in India in 1776. His mother's maiden name was Elizabeth Compton. His father, a captain in the navy, died in 1780 on his way to England ; his mother soon afterwards at Middelburg in Zeeland. Brought up by his uncle, William Compton, the boy was educated first at Read- ing, at a small school kept by a Mr. John Man, then at a school at Stockwell, and afterwards at a school near Brentford, kept by Mr. Greenlaw. From this he went to St. John's College, Oxford, and passed his examination for his degree in 1797, though he did not take it till March 1801. He pro- ceeded M.A. on 28 April 1825, and B.D. and D.D. on 9 July 1825. He at first chose the bar as his profession, and studied under Basil Montagu. He married early in life, and went to reside at Worcester, intending to establish himself as a provincial counsel. He, how- ever, soon abandoned all thoughts of the law, and determined to take holy orders. He- was ordained deacon in 1804, and priest in 1805 by Bishop North of Winchester, to a curacy at Kensington, where he spent all the earlier portion of his life.
While quite a young man he became an author; after some scattered essays in the ' European Magazine,' and in a periodical called ' The Quiz,' put forth by Sir R. K. Porter and his sisters, which came to an un- timely end in 1798, he published a small vo- lume of poems in 1797, and two tracts on legal subjects. He began his career as a bibliographer in 1802 by an ' Introduction to the Knowledge of rare and valuable editions of the Greek and Latin Classics,' which was published in a thin volume at Gloucester. It is chiefly founded on Edward Harwood's ' View' of the classics (1790) ; but it was the means of introducing him to Lord Spencer, who even then was known as the possessor of one
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of the most valuable private libraries in the country. Lord Spencer proved his patron through life, made him at one time his libra- rian, obtained church patronage for him, and made the Althorp library the wonderful col- lection it since became, very much under his direction. The ' Introduction to the Classics ' was reprinted in 1804, 1808, and 1827, each time with great enlargements, but its intrinsic value is very small. In 1809 appeared the first edition of the l Bibliomania,' which caught the taste of the time, and the second edition of which in 1811 had considerable in- fluence in exciting the interest for rare books and early editions, which rose to such a height at the Roxburghe sale in 1812. Soon afterwards he undertook a new edition of Ames's and Herbert's ' Typographical Anti- quities.' The first volume, which is confined to Caxton, appeared in 1810 ; the fourth, which goes down to Thomas Hacket, in 1819 ; the work was never finished.
At the Roxburghe sale the edition of Boc- caccio printed by Valdarfer sold for the enor- mous sum of 2,260/., and to commemorate this Dibdin proposed that several of the lead- ing bibliophiles should dine together on the day. Eighteen met at the St. Alban's Tavern, in St. Alban's Street (now Waterloo Place), on 17 June 1812, with Lord Spencer as pre- sident, and Dibdin as vice-president. This was the beginning of the existence of the Roxburghe Club. The number of members was ultimately increased to thirty-one, and each member was expected to produce a re- print of some rare volume of English litera- ture. In spite of the worthless character of some of the early publications (of which it was said that when they were unique there was already one copy too many in existence), and of the ridicule thrown on the club by the publication of Haslewood's ' Roxburghe Revels,' this was the parent of the publish- ing societies established in this country, which have done so much for English history and antiquities, to say nothing of other branches of literature ; and Dibdin must be credited with being the originator of the proposal.
Soon after this he undertook an elaborate catalogue of the chief rarities of Lord Spencer's library, and here his lamentable ignorance and unfitness for such a work are sadly con- spicuous. He could not even read the cha- racters of the Greek books he describes ; and his descriptions are so full of errors that it may be doubted if a single one is really accurate. On the other hand, the descrip- tions were taken bond fide from the books themselves, and thus the errors are not such as those of many of his predecessors in biblio- graphy, who copied the accounts of others,
and wrote at second hand without having seen the books. The i Bibliotheca Spence- riana,' which is a very fine specimen of the printing of the time, has had the effect of making Lord Spencer's library better known out of England than any other library, and cer- tainly led many scholars to make a study of its rarities. In 1817 appeared the most amus- ing and the most successful (from a pecu- niary point of view) of his works, the ' Biblio- graphical Decameron,' on which a great sum was spent for engravings and woodcuts. The reader will find a great deal of gossip about books and printers, about book collectors and sales by auction ; but for accurate information of any kind he will seek in vain. In 1818 Dibdin spent some time in France and Ger- many, and in his ' Bibliographical, Anti- quarian, and Picturesque Tour,' a very costly work from its engravings, which appeared in 1821, he gives an amusing account of his travels, with descriptions of the contents of several of the chief libraries of Europe. But the style is flippant, and at times childish, and the book abounds with follies and errors. It would have been (it has been said) ( a capital volume, if there had been no letterpress. In 1824 appeared his 'Library Companion,' the only one of his works which was fully (and very severely) reviewed at the time of its pub- lication. In 1836 he published his * Reminis- cences of a Literary Life,' which gives a full account of his previous publications, and the amount spent on them for engravings and woodcuts ; and in 1838 his ' Bibliographical, Antiquarian, and Picturesque Tour in the Northern Counties of England and Scotland,' amusing, as all his books are, but full of ver- biage and follies, and abounding with errors. Sometime before this he had projected a ' His- tory of the University of Oxford ' on a large scale (three folio volumes), with especially elaborate illustrations ; but this never was car- ried out, those who would have been inclined to patronise it knowing how unfit he was foi such an undertaking. It must be confessed that Mr. Dyce's words afford only a too just character of Dibdin : ' an ignorant pretender, without the learning of a schoolboy, who published a quantity of books swarming with errors of every description.' He is said to have been of pleasant manners and good- tempered, and to have had a great fund of anecdote. His preferments in the church were the preachership of Archbishop Tenison's chapel in Swallow Street, the evening lec- tureship of Brompton Chapel, preacherships at Quebec and Fitzroy chapels, the vicarage of Exning, near Newmarket (1823), and the rectory of St. Mary's, Bryanston Square, in 1824. He was an unsuccessful candidate for
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the librarianship of the Royal Institution in 1804, and for one of the secretaryships of the j Society of Antiquaries in 1806. His two sons died before him ; a daughter survived him. His own death took place on 18 Nov. 1847.
The following, it is believed, is a complete list of his publications, in chronological order; those enclosed in brackets were issued pri- vately, from twenty-four to fifty copies only of each being printed : 1. Essays in the * Euro- pean Magazine,' and contributions to the 'Quiz' (Nos. 20, 33), 1797. 2. * Poems,' 1797. 3. * Chart of an Analysis of Blackstone on the Rights of Persons,' 1797. 4. 'The Law of the Poor Rate,' 1798. 5. ' Introduc- tion to the Knowledge of the Editions of the Greek and Latin Classics,' 1802; 2nd edition, 1804 ; 3rd edition, 1808 ; 4th edition, 1827. 6. 'History of Cheltenham,' 1803. 7. Translation of ' Fenelon's Treatise on the Education of Daughters,' 1805. 8. < The Di- rector,' a periodical which extends to 2 vols. Of this he wrote, perhaps, two-thirds, the ' Bibliographiana ' and ( British Gallery,'
1807. 9. Quarles's ' Judgment and Mercy for Afflicted Souls,' 1807, edited under the name of Reginald Wolfe. 10. [' Account of the first printed Psalter at Mentz, and the Mentz Bible of 1450-5 reprinted from Dr. Aikin's 4 Athenaeum' and the 'Classical Journal'], 1807-11. 11. ' More's Utopia,' translated by E. Robinson, 1808, reprinted, Boston, 1878. 12. [' Specimen Bibliothecse Britannicse '],
1808. 13. 'Bibliomania,' 1809; 2nd edition, 1811 ; 3rd edition, 1842, with a supplement giving a key to the characters in the dia- logue ; 4th edition, 1876. 14. [' Specimen of an English De Bure'], 1810. 15. 'The Typographical Antiquities of Great Britain,'
1810, 1812, 1816, 1819. 16. ' Rastell's Chro- nicle,' 1811. 17. [' The Lincolne Nosegay '],
1811. 18. [' Book Rarities in Lord Spencer's Library,' consisting chiefly of an account of theDantes and Petrarchs at Spencer House], 1811. 19. [' Bibliography, a Poem '], 1812.
20. ' Bibliotheca Spenceriana,' 1814-15.
21. ' Bibliographical Decameron,' 1817.
22. [Feylde's ' Complaynt of a Lover's Life. Controversy between a Lover and a Jaye,' for the Roxburghe Club], 1818. 23. ' Ser- mons preached in Brompton, Quebec, and Fitzroy Chapels,' 1820. 24. 'Biographical, Antiquarian, and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany,' 1821. A second edition, in a smaller form and with fewer, but some addi- tional, illustrations, appeared in 1829. It was translated into French in 1825byLicquet and Crapelet. 25. There appeared also at Paris in 1821, ' Lettre 9me relative a la Bibliotheque publique de Rouen,' with notes by Licquet,
and ' Lettre 30me concernant 1'Imprimerie et la Librairie de Paris,' with notes by Crapelet. 26. ['Roland for an Oliver,' an answer to Crapelet's notes on the 30th letter of the 'Tour'],1821. 27. '^£desAlthorpiaii£e,'1822, with a supplement to the ' Bibliotheca Spen- ceriana.' 28. Contributions to a periodical called 'The Museum,' 1822-5. 29. 'Cata- logue of the Cassano Library,' with a general index to the Spencer Catalogue, 1823. 30. ['La Belle Marianne '], 1824. 31. ' Library Com- panion,' 1824; 2nd edition, 1825. 32. [A Reply to the Critiques on this in various re views], 1824. 33. ' Sermons preached in St. Mary's, Bryanston Square,' 1825. 34. Payne's Translation of Three Books of the De Imita- tione Christi, ascribed to T. a Kempis, with an introduction on the author, the editions, and the character of the work, 1828. 35. ' A Sermon on the Visitation of Archdeacon Cam- bridge,' 1831. 36. 'A Pastor's Advice to his Flock in Time of Trouble,' 1831. 37. 'Sunday Library,' 1831. 38. ' Bibliophobia,' 1832. 39. ' Lent Lectures preached in St. Marys, Bryanston Square,' 1833. 40. Holbein's ' Icones Biblicse,' with an introduction, 1834 ; 2nd edition (in Bohn's Illustrated Library), 1858. 41. 'Reminiscences of a Literary Life,' 1836. 42. ' Bibliographical, Antiqua- rian, and Picturesque Tour in the Northern Counties of England and Scotland,' 1838. 43. ' Cranmer, a Novel,' 1839 ; 2nd edition, 1843. This is utterly worthless, but it men- tions the price given by Lord Spencer for the ' Stuttgart Virgils,' which is studiously concealed in the ' Tour,' where the account of the transaction is told at length. 44. Ser- mons, 1843. 45. Three letters to the Bishop of Llandaff, 1843. 46. 'The Old Paths,' 1844.
Among his contemplated publications was a 'History of Dover,' of which one sheet was printed and some of the engravings finished, and he wrote a small portion of a 'Bibliographical Tour in Belgium.' He pub- lished also a few single sermons, and a preface to a guide to Reading : these may be seen in a volume in the British Museum marked C. 28 i., formerly belonging to Dr. Bliss. It contains also several prospectuses of his lite- rary undertakings, and many autograph let- ters written to Dr. Bliss, which give a sad picture of the poverty and illness by which his latter days were harassed.
[Dibdin's Eeminiscences of a Literary Life, Lond. 1836 ; Haslewood's Roxburghe Revels, pri- vately printed, Edinb. 1837; Gent.Mag.vol. xxix. new ser.pp. 87-92, 338, January 1848; Lowndes's Bibl. Man. (Bonn), pp. 639-42 ; Jordan's Men I have Known, Lond. 1866, pp. 169-77.]
H. R. L.
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DIBDIN, THOMAS JOHN (1771- 1841), actor and dramatist, illegitimate son of Charles Dibdin the elder [q. v.], and younger brother of Charles Isaac Mungo Dib- •din, by the same mother, who had taken the name of Mrs. Davenet at Covent Garden Theatre, but was the unmarried sister of Cecil Pitt, was born in Peter Street, Lon- don (now Museum Street, Bloomsbury), on 21 March 1771. One of his godfathers was David Garrick, the other Frank Aiken, one of Garrick's company. Garrick warmly be- friended the family, and showed resentment when they were deserted. Mrs. Siddons led the boy, when four years old, before the audi- ence at Drury 'Lane, as Cupid in a revival of Shakespeare's ' Jubilee ' in 1775, she repre- senting Venus. His maternal grandmother, Mrs. A. Pitt, had been for half a century a popular actress at Covent Garden. In 1779 he entered the choir of St. Paul's, under the tuition of Mr. Hudson. He was then removed, at his mother's expense, for a year to Mr. Tempest of Half-farthing Lane Aca- <lemy, Wandsworth ; next to Mr. Galland, a Cumberland man, classical scholar and dis- ciplinarian, who taught Virgil — * Arma vi- rumque cano,' which a pupil translated feel- ingly into ' "With a strong arm and a thick stick.' He remained three years in the north country, at Durham, was recalled to London, and apprenticed in the city to his maternal uncle, Cecil Pitt of Dalston, upholsterer, but turned over to William Rawlins, afterwards Sir William and sheriff of London, who •during four years declared him to be 'the stupidest hound on earth ; ' but who in later years always echoed the newspaper praise of the successful farce-writer by saying, ' That's a boy of my own, and I always said he was clever ! ' Thomas had seen many plays acted at Durham, and had constructed a toy theatre. An acquaintanceship with Jack Pal- mer, who built the Royalty in 1786, deve- loped his inherited dramatic instincts, and for rough treatment he summoned his master before John Wilkes, who acted with thorough justice and impartiality, sending him back to business. Forbidden to witness any plays he abstained for two months, when he went to the Royalty sixpenny gallery and was nearly detected by his master, who sat be- side him. At eighteen he fled to Margate, soon obtained an engagement with the Dover company at Eastbourne, assumed the name of S. Merchant, and made his first appearance as Valentine in O'Keeffe's ' Farmer,' singing ' Poor Jack,' his father's ditty, which was quite new, and was repeated nearly every night in the season. Here he wrote the first of his 'two thousand ditties ' (M'C), a hunting song, and i
his first burletta, l Something New,' also pros- pering in scene-painting with 'Tilbury Fort' i and the ' Spanish Armada ' of 1588 for ' The Critic/ including unlimited smoke. He had adventures with smugglers, and got a better engagement from Gardner of the Canterbury and Rochester circuit, parting on friendly terms with Russell ; they afterwards ex- changed compliments by playing for each , other's benefits. Dibdin acted at Deal, Sand- j wich, Canterbury, Beverley, Rochester, Maid- ! stone, and Tunbridge Wells. At Beverley he ' first met Miss Nancy Hilliar, a young actress, whom, three years later, he met again at Manchester, and married 23 May 1793. He got a Theatre Royal engagement at Liverpool in 1791, and appeared as Mungo in the ' Pad- lock ' at the opening of a new theatre at Man- chester, the old one having been burnt. Here he again met his Scotch godfather Aiken, | and was able to gain for his half-brother I Cecil Pitt the leadership of the orchestra, | in requital for hospitality at Eastbourne. He was scene-painter in chief, and produced ' Sunshine after Rain.' Small provincial en- gagements, including some in Wales, followed. In 1794 an opening at Sadler's Wells, Isling- ton, presented itself, with a salary of five guineas a week, immediately after the birth of his daughter Maria.
A farce called the ' Mad Guardian ' was published under the name of Merchant in 1795. In 1796 he wrote for Sadler's Wells, of which his brother Charles T. M. Pitt was was now manager, many dramatic trifles. He had a fatal facility. More important were these : ' Sadak and Kalasrade, or the Waters of Oblivion,' and ' John of Calais,' in 1798, and an opera, ' II Bondocani,' from the ' Ara- bian Tales,' or Florian's 'New Tales,' ac- cepted by Harris, but not represented for five years. ' Blindman's Buif, or Who pays the Reckoning?' with 'The Pirates,' and two others, he sold to Philip Astley for fourteen guineas. Assured by Rawlins against pro- secution, he now dropped the name of S. Mer- chant, and assumed that of Dibdin (against the wish of Charles, his father), instead of resuming that of Pitt. Unlike his father, he was faithful in friendships, and at this time had such genial spirits that he was a favourite everywhere. In later life he became soured and more exacting. He became prompter and joint stage-manager at Sadler's Wells. With- out being a brilliant he was always a conscien- tious actor, of close study, letter-perfect, and paying attention to costume. On the Kent cir- cuit he never lost ground, and when the may or of Canterbury visited him in town (at Easter 1804), Dibdin was able to take him round the chief theatres ; when at Covent Garden
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three of his pieces were being acted the same night. At Canterbury he wrote * The British Raft/ ridiculing the threatened French in- vasion, and its one song, ' The Snug Little j Island,' attained astonishing popularity. It
was first sung by ' Jew ' Davis at Sadler's Wells, on Easter Monday, 1797, while Dibdin was acting at Maidstone, where he himself sang it before Lord Romney, and it gained him the friendship of the Duke of Leeds. For Dowton he wrote a farce, ' The Jew and the Doctor/ but it was not produced until 1798, except for Dibdin's benefit, at the time of the state trials of O'Coigley and Arthur O'Conner. Harris wanted the l Jew and the Doctor' for Co vent Garden. Rumour arising of Nelson's victory at the Nile, June 1798, Richard Cumberland [q. v.] advised Dibdin to write a piece on it, with songs, and this was done with wonderful speed and suc- cess, as ' The Mouth of the Nile.' He was a most devoted son to his mother, allowing her an increased income of 100/., besides another allowance to her aged mother. He was proud of his father's abilities, but resented his cruel neglect of his family, and, from sympathy with his mother, avoided mention of his name. His engagement at Covent Garden lasted seven years, and his wife also joined him there, at a smaller salary. George III honoured Dibdin's ' Birthday ' several times with a bespeak, as well as attending the performance of ' The Mouth of the Nile.' Tom paid fifty guineas, instead of the penalty, 50/., to Sir W. Raw- lins to cancel his indenture and make him free. He wrote 'Tag in Tribulation' for Knight's benefit. On 16 Sept. 1799 his wife made her first appearance as Aura in ' The Farm House/ at there-opening of Covent Gar- den. Among other merits she was an excellent under-study, and her versatility was displayed in becoming a substitute for Miss Pope as Clementina Allspice, for Mrs. Litchfield as Millwood, and for Mrs. Jordan as Nell in < The Devil to Pay.' On 7 Oct. 1799 Dibdin produced his musical l Naval Pillar/ in honour of victories at sea, Munden acting a quaker. In December old Mrs. Pitt died, in her seventy- ninth year, at Pentonville. On 19 Feb. one of his farces, ' True Friends/ failed, but crawled through five nights. He worked hard at a ballad-farce (two acts), 'St. David's Day/ and gained by it a lasting success. ' Her- mione ' followed, and l Liberal Opinions/ a three-act comedy, which brought him 200 /., which Harris prevailed on him to enlarge to five acts as ' The School for Prejudice ; ' he also wrote ' Of Age To-morrow/ and success- ful pantomimes each Christmas. 'Harlequin's Tour/ two nights before Christmas, pleased the public. His ' Alonzo and Imogine ' was
revived for his wife's benefit. They usually spent summer-time at Richmond, profession- ally. At Colchester he joined Townsend in a musical entertainment, ' Something New/ followed next night by ' Nothing New/ with additions. He adapted the story of the old garland, 'The Golden Bull/ changing the bull into a wardrobe, and within three weeks composed his first and best opera, ' The Cabinet ; ' it was delayed by Harris, but ran thirty nights at the end of the season 1801-2. ' II Bondocani, or the Caliph Robber/ opened the season September 1802, and brought him 60/. His Jew's song, ' I courted Miss Levi/ &c., as sung by Fawcett (which was misunderstood by the Israelites as an attack on Jewesses), raised a riot, but the sale of the song-books brought him in 630Z. , and it triumphed over op- position. He himself wrote good-humouredly the parody on ' Norval ' —
My name 's Tom Dibdin : far o'er Ludgate Hill My master kept his shop, a frugal cit, &c.
On 13 Dec. 1803 his opera of ' The English Fleet in 1342 ' appeared, running thirty-five nights, and repaying him with 550Z. A comedy, ' The "Will for the Deed/ brought him 320/., and on Easter Monday 1804 came his ' Valentine and Orson/ performed with it, and his ' Horse and Widow ; ' he had the whole playbill to himself. In this year he made 1,515/., of which 200 J. was for ' Guilty or Not Guilty.' He then began to traffic in risky investments, theatre shares, joining Colman and David Morris in the Haymarket. This fell through, and he recalled his 4,OOOJ. to lose it elsewhere. His opera ' Thirty Thou- sand ' brought him 360 guineas in 1805, soon followed by ' Nelson's Glory/ an unsuccess- ful farce, 'The White Plume/ and 'Five Miles Off/ on 9 July 1806, which last gave him 375/. By evil speculation in a Dublin circus he and his brother Charles lost nearly 2.000/., but this loss inspired the wish to have Grimaldi at Covent Garden in his new panto- mime ' Mother Goose/ 1807, which brought to the management close on 20,000/. ' Two Faces under a Hood/ opera, gave him 360/. On 20 Sept. 1808 Covent Garden Theatre was burnt to the ground ; twenty-three lives were lost; but the proprietors opened the opera house with Dibdin's 'Princess or no Princess/ and his ' Mother Goose ' had a third run. On 24 Feb. 1809 Drury Lane Theatre was burnt, while Dibdin was at a ball close by with his wife. The latter now retired from the stage and went to Cheltenham. Dibdin's ' Lady of the Lake ' came out at the Surrey, which he now managed at 15/. a week and two- benefits ; he stayed with Elliston for a year, till the autumn, 1812, at which time he
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adapted, as a pantomime for the Royal Amphi- theatre of Davis and Parker, his own father's ' High-mettled Racer/ by which they cleared 10,000/., and he himself got 50/. When new Drury Lane was almost finished he was engaged by Arnold on the annual salary of 5201. as prompter and writer of the panto- mimes. The first of these was ' Harlequin and Humpo.' His ' Orange Bower ' was an- nounced for 8 Dec. 1813, but could not get licensed and appear till the 10th. In August 1814 came his ' Harlequin Hoax.' He lost his daughter, his father, and his mother respec- tively in March, August, and on 10 Oct. the same year. Among his numerous remaining dramas are ' The Ninth Statue,' 1814, ' Zuma/ 'The Lily of St. Leonards,' January 1819, 'The Ruffian Boy,' dramatised from Mrs. Opie, and ' The Fate of Galas,' 1820.
After the death of Samuel Whitbread, Dib- din was appointed manager at his prompter salary, but saddled with a colleague, Mr. Rae, and there were discomforts with the com- mittee. In 1816 he rashly took the Royal Circus, renamed the Surrey, of which his father had been first manager. This was dis- astrous. He opened it on 1 July, depending chiefly on his melodramas. The death of the Duke of Kent and of George III stopped the success of the theatre. On 19 March 1822 he closed the theatre, and gave the remainder of his lease to Watkyns Burroughs ; but all went wrong. Morris offered him the management of the Hay market at 200/. per season. Dibdin became insolvent. By the Surrey and Dublin ventures he had lost 18,000/. He scarcely succeeded at the Haymarket ; his temper was soured, and he had not his old command of resources. He entered into a lawsuit with Elliston, who had dismissed him from Drury Lane, and he quarrelled with D. E. Morris, was arrested and put in prison. The two law- suits he gained ; but his career was over, the remaining years passing in petty squabbles, inferior work, and discontent. He tried to be cheerful, and his retrospect was that of nearly two hundred plays ten only were failures, and sixteen had attained extraordinary success. Nearly fifty were printed, besides thirty books
His * Reminiscences ' in 1827 were illus- trated with an excellent portrait by Wage- man, engraved by H. Meyer. In these volumes he far surpasses the ' Professional Life ' of his father ; Thomas's being, though necessarily egotistical and devoted to theatrical recol- lections, lively and amusing, full of inter- esting anecdotes of old companions : on the whole generous to all in the earlier portions, not embittered and abusive like his father's. Among his versatile literary employments
were 'A Metrical History of England,' 2 vols., 1813 (published at 18s.), begun at Cheltenham in 1809, anticipating G. A. a Beckett's ' Comic History ; ' • Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress me- trically condensed,' 1834; and 'Tom Dibdin's Penny Trumpet,' a prematurely stifled rival to ' Figaro in London,' four penny numbers, October and November 1832, the least vi- perous of the many satires in the reform ex- citement. He claimed to have written nearly two thousand songs, of which a dozen or more were excellent, such as ' The Oak Table,' ' Snug Little Island,' the duet of ' All's Well,' and most of those sung in 'The Cabinet/ ' The British Fleet/ &c. It was ' feared that he died in indigence ' (Annual Register), but he had been fairly prudent, was of steady domestic habits, and had made money con- stantly until near his closing years, when his toilsome life had enfeebled him and made him querulous. He wrote his own epitaph in the Ad Libitum Club :
Longing while living for laurel and bays, Under this "willow a poor poet ' lays ; ' With little to censure, and less to praise, He wrote twelve dozen and three score plays : He finish'd his ' Life/ and he went his ways.
He died at his house in Myddleton Place, Pentonville, in his seventieth year, 16 Sept. 1841, and was buried on the 21st in the burial- ground of St. James's, Pentonville, close by the grave of his old friend, Joseph Grimaldi [q. v.], and of his grandmother, Anne Pitt.
[Reminiscences of Thomas Dibdin, of the Theatres Royal Covent Garden, Drury Lane, Haymarket, &c., and Author of The Cabinet, &c., 2 vols. 8vo, H. Col burn, 1827; Athenseum, September 1841, p. 749; Tom Dibdin's Penny Trumpet, 20 Oct. to 10 Nov. 1832 ; Annual Bio- graphy, 1841 ; Biographical Dictionary of Living Authors, 1816; Last Lays of the Three Dibdins, 1833; Cumberland's edition of Operasand Farces, The Cabinet, &c., with Remarks by D.G.; works mentioned above, with anecdotes from family knowledge of personal acquaintance.]
J. W. E.
DICCONSON, EDWARD, D.D. (1670- 1752), catholic prelate, was born in 1670, being the third son of Hugh Dicconson, esq.r of Wrightington Hall, Lancashire, by Agnes, daughter of Roger Kirkby, esq., of Kirkby in that county. He was educated in the Eng- lish college at Douay, and at the end of his course of philosophy, in 1691, returned to England. Subsequently he resumed his studies at Douay, where he took the oath on 3 March 1698-9. He took priest's orders; became procurator of the college in 1701 ; and in 1708-9 he was professor of syntax and a senior. In 1709-10 he was professor of poetry, and in 1711-12 professor of philo-
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12
Diceto
sophy. He was made vice-president and pro- fessor of theology in 1713-14.
He left Douay college to serve the English mission on 13 Aug. 1720, having been in- vited by Peter Gift'ard, esq., to take the minis- terial charge at Chillington, Staffordshire. ! While there he was Bishop Stonor's principal adviser and grand vicar. Afterwards he was sent to Rome as agent extraordinary of the secular clergy of England. On the death of Bishop Thomas Williams he was nominated vicar apostolic of the northern district of j England, by Benedict XIV, in September 1740, and he was consecrated on 19 March 1740-1 to the see of Malla in partibus infi- delium by the bishop of Ghent. Proceeding to his vicariate he fixed his residence at a place belonging to his family near Wright- ington, called Finch Mill. He died there on 24 April (5 May N. S.) 1752, and was buried in the private chapel attached to the parish church of Standish, near Wigan. Francis Petre was his successor in the northern vicariate.
He wrote : 1. A detailed account of his agency at Rome in four manuscript volumes, full of curious matter. 2. Reports and other documents relating to the state of his vicariate. Manuscripts preserved among the archives of the see of Liverpool. Six volumes of his papers were formerly in the possession of Dr. John Kirk of Lichfield. Dicconson copied for Dodd, the ecclesiastical historian, most of the records from Douay college, besides writ- ing other parts of his work.
Dicconson's name was falsely affixed to a portrait of Bishop Bonaventure Giffard [q.v.], engraved by Burford from a painting by H. Hysing.
[Brady's Episcopal Succession, iii. 207, 250, 255-9; Gillow's Bibl. Diet. ; Bromley's Cat. of Engraved Portraits, p. 271 ; Chambers's Biog. Ilhistr. of Worcestershire, p. 592 ; Catholic Mis- cellany, vi. 251-4, 260; Addit. MSS. 20310 if. 188, 190, 208, 20312 if. 139, 141, 20313 if. 173, 175.] T. C.
DICETO, RALPH DE (d. 1202?), dean of St. Paul's, bears a surname otherwise en- tirely unknown. The presumption is that it is derived from the place of Ralph's birth. This place has often been identified with Diss in Norfolk, but the conjecture is not sup- ported by any evidence either in the history of Diss or in the writings of Diceto, while it is contradicted by the mediaeval forms of spelling the name of the town (Dize, Disze, Disce, Dysse, Dice, Dicia, Dyssia). After an exhaustive investigation of the subject Bishop Stubbs leans towards the conclusion that De Diceto ' is an artificial name, adopted by its
bearer as the Latin name of a place with which he was associated, but which had no proper Latin name of its own ; ' and this, he suggests, may probably be one of three places in Maine, Dissai-sous-Courcillon,Disse-sous-le-Lude,or Diss6-sous-Baillon. If this theory be correct, still Ralph de Diceto,who must have been born between 1120 and 1130, was probably brought at an early age into England, since, as Bishop Stubbs observes, * his notices of events touch- ing the history of St. Paul's begin in 1136, and certainly have the appearance of personal recollections.' His first known preferment was that of the archdeaconry of Middlesex, void by the election of Richard of Belmeis (the second of that name) as bishop of Lon- don. Richard's consecration took place on 28 Sept. 1152 (STUBBS, note to Gervase of Canterbury, Chron. a. 1151 ; Hist. Works, i. 148, Rolls Series, 1879), and the appoint- ment of his successor in the archdeaconry was his first act as bishop, an act which the pope endeavoured to set aside in favour of a nominee of his own, and which he only sanctioned on the bishop's urgent petition, preferred through the mediation of Gilbert Foliot. From the fact of the appointment, and from the tenacity with which the bishop held to it, Dr. Stubbs conjectures that Diceto was a member of his family ; for it was the prevailing practice to confer the confidential post of archdeacon upon a near kinsman ; the family of Belmeis had long engrossed many of the most important offices in the chapter ; and it was thus natural that this hereditary tendency should affect the archdeaconry. If this assumption be accepted, it is not hard to go a step further and suppose that Ralph was son or nephew of Ralph of Langford, the bishop's brother, who was dean of St. Paul's from about 1138 to 1160.
Diceto is described on his appointment as a * master,' and he is known to have studied at Paris at two periods of his life (ARNTTLF. LEXOV. ep. xvi. ; MIGNE, Patrol. Lat. cci. 29, 30) ; the first time no doubt in his youth, the second some years after his preferment, pro- bably between 1155 and 1160. Besides his archdeaconry, which was poorly endowed, he held two rectories in the country, Aynhoe in Northamptonshire, and Finchingfield in Essex, but at what date or whether at the same time is unknown. He performed his duties in them by means of a vicar. Ap- parently also he was once granted and then dispossessed of a prebend at St. Paul's, since Foliot, soon after he became bishop of London in 1162, exerted his influence with the king in vain to secure its restitution.
In the long conflict between Henry II and Thomas a Becket, Diceto's sympathies were
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divided. Himself on intimate terms with. Foliot, and loyally attached to the king, lie was careful to maintain friendly relations with the other side ; and his cautious reserve made him useful as an intermediary between the parties. In 1180 he was elected dean of St. Paul's and prebendary of Tottenhale in the same cathedral. His activity in his new position is attested by the survey of the capi- tular property, which he made so early as January 1181, and of which all that remains has been printed, among others, by Arch- deacon Hale (Domesday of St. Paul's, pp. 109-17, Camden Society, 1857) ; not to speak of a variety of charters and other official documents, many of which are still preserved among the chapter muniments. The cathe- dral statute-book also contains abundant evi- dence of the dean's work (Registrum Sta- tutorum Ecclesice Sancti Pauli, pp. 33 n. 2, 63, 109, 124, 125, &c., ed. W. Sparrow Simp- son, 1873). He built a deanery-house and a chapel within the cathedral precincts, which he bequeathed, together with the books, &c., with which he had furnished them, to his successors in office (see the bishop's confir- mation, Opera, ii. pref. p. Ixxiii). To the cathedral itself he gave a rich collection of precious reliques, as well as some books (DUGDALE, History of St. Paul's Cathedral, pp. 337, 320, 322, 324-8, ed. H. Ellis, 1818). Finally, in 1197 he instituted a 'fratery ' or guild for the celebration of religious offices and for the relief of the sick and poor (Re- gistrum, pp. 63-5). He died on 22 Nov. (SIMPSON, Documents, p. 72), in all proba- bility in 1202, though it is just possible that the date may be a year earlier or later. His anniversary was kept by the canons as that of ' Radulfus de Disceto, decanus bonus.'
The historical writings by which Diceto is chiefly remembered were the work of his old age. The prologue to the ' Abbrevia- tiones Chronicorum ' (Opera, i. 18) seems to show that this book was already in process of transcription in 1188, and there are signs that it cannot have been composed before 1181, and was probably begun a few years later. Some isolated passages, however, look as though they had been reduced to writing at an earlier time. The ' Abbreviationes,' which are based principally on Robert de Monte, run as far as 1147. Their continua- tion, the ' Ymagines Historiarum,' carries the history from 1149 to 25 March 1202, but Diceto's authorship cannot be extended with certainty beyond 27 May 1199, where the most valuable manuscript of the book stops short. As far as 1171, if not as far as 1183, Diceto seems to have continued to make use of the work of Robert de Monte,
though in these later years it is quite pos- sible that the two historians exchanged notes. Besides Robert, Diceto derived much of his information down to the date of Becket's murder from the letters of Gilbert Foliot. In later years he was assisted in the collection of materials for his work by Richard FitzNeal, who was bishop of London from 1189 to 1198, and was in all probability the author of the ' Gesta Henrici ' which pass under the name of Benedict of Peterborough, as well as by William Longchamp, the justiciar, and Walter of Coutances, bishop of Lincoln, and subsequently archbishop of Rouen. The peculiar advantages which Diceto thus pos- sessed for knowing the secrets of the govern- ment, while his position in the cathedral of London gave him facilities for hearing all the ordinary news of the day, makes his 1 Ymagines ' an authority of the first rank for the latter part of Henry IPs reign, and for the whole of that of Richard I. < It seems clear,' says Bishop Stubbs, ' that Ralph de Diceto wrote with a strong feeling of attachment to Henry II and the Angevin family ; with considerable political insight and acquaintance with both the details and the moving causes of public affairs; in a temperate and business-like style, but with irregularities in chronology, arrangement, and proportion of detail which mark a man who takes up his pen when he is growing old ; now and then he gossips, now and then he attempts to be eloquent, but he is at his best in telling a straightforward tale.'
Besides his two principal works Diceto wrote a variety of Opuscula, including reg- nal and pontifical lists and other historical abridgments and compendia, and a ' Series causse inter Henricum regem et Thomam archiepiscopum,' mainly taken from the 1 Ymagines.' Of all his historical writings we have the rare advantage of possessing manuscripts not merely contemporaneous, but written at St. Paul's and under the author's direct supervision. The greater part of the 'Abbreviationes' and the whole of the 'Ymagines' were printed by Twysden in the 'Scriptores Decem' (1652); all his histori- cal works are collected by Bishop Stubbs, ' Radulfi de Diceto Decani Lundoniensis Opera Historica/ in 2 vols. (Rolls Series, 1876).
Besides these Diceto wrote ' Postilla super Ecclesiasticum et super librum Sapientise/ of which a copy was long preserved in the old library of St. Paul's (DUGDALE, p. 393). He is also credited by Bale, possibly as a matter of course, with ' Sermones ' (Scriptt* Brit. Cat. iii 62, pp. 255 et seq., ed. 1557). Bale further unduly extends the list of his
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Dick
historical works by separating portions of the 1 Abbreviationes ' and ' Ymagines ' as distinct works.
[Except that the references have been verified, this notice is almost entirely based upon the elaborate biography and the criticism of Diceto's works contained in Bishop Stubbs's prefaces to his edition. Compare also W. Sparrow Simp- son's Documents illustrating the History of St. Paul's Cathedral, Camden Society, 1880.]
E. L. P.
DICK, SIR ALEXANDER (1703- 1785), physician, born in October 1703, was the third son of Sir William Cunyngham of Caprington, bart., by Janet, only child and heiress of Sir James Dick of Prestonfield near Edinburgh. Not sharing in the large fortunes inherited by his elder brother William, Alex- ander determined to qualify himself for a profession. He began the study of medicine at the university of Edinburgh, and afterwards proceeded to Leyden, where he became a pupil of Boerhaave, and proceeded M.D. 31 Aug. 1725. His inaugural dissertation, ' De Epi- lepsia,' was published. A similar degree was conferred on him two years later by the university of St. Andrews. In 1727 he began practising as a physician in Edinburgh, and on 7 Nov. of the same year he was enrolled a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. Ten years later he travelled on the continent with his friend Allan Ram- say the painter, son of the well-known Scot- tish poet. During his travels Cunyngham, as he was still called, added largely to his scientific acquirements, and on his return home he settled in Pembrokeshire, where he earned great reputation as a successful prac- titioner. Meanwhile he maintained a con- stant correspondence with Allan Ramsay the poet and other friends in Scotland.
In 1 746, by the death of his brother William, he succeeded to the baronetcy of Dick, and took up his residence in the family mansion of Prestonfield, which lies at the foot of Arthur's Seat, near Edinburgh. Abandoning his profession as a lucrative pursuit, he still cultivated it for scientific purposes, and in 1756 was elected president of the College of Physicians of Edinburgh, an office which he continued to hold for seven successive years. He voluntarily relinquished the chair in 1763 on the ground ' that it was due to the merits of other gentlemen that there should be some rotation.' He continued to devote some portion of his time to the service of the college, and contributed liberally to the building of the new hall. His portrait was afterwards placed in the college library as a mark of respect. Dick helped to obtain a charter for the Royal Society of Edinburgh,
and promoted the establishment of a medical school in the Royal Infirmary. When Dr. Mounsey of St. Petersburg first brought the seeds of the true rhubarb into Great Bri- tain, Dick, who probably knew the properties of the plant from his old master's nephew, A. K. Boerhaave, bestowed great care on its cultivation and pharmaceutical preparation. The Society of Arts presented him in 1774 with a gold medal ' for the best specimen of rhubarb.' Dick corresponded with Dr. Johnson, who paid a visit to Prestonfield during his celebrated journey to Scotland. Dick married first, in 1736, Sarah, daughter of Alexander Dick, merchant, in Edinburgh, a relative on his mother's side ; secondly, in 1762, Mary, daughter of David Butler, esq., of Pembrokeshire. He died at the age of eighty-two, on 10 Nov. 1785. A memoir of Dick, published soon after his death in the ' Edinburgh Medical Commentaries,' was re- printed for private distribution, in 1849, by Sir Robert Keith Dick-Cunyngham, his third son. An account of his * Journey from Lon- don to Paris in 1736 ' was also printed pri- vately.
[Gent. Mag. 1853, xxxix. 22 ; Irving's Book of Scotsmen ; Edinburgh Medical Commentaries, 1785.] E. H.
DICK, ANNE, LADY (d. 1741), verse writer, was a daughter of a Scotch law lord, Sir James Mackenzie (Lord Royston), a son of George Mackenzie, first earl of Cromarty. The date of Anne's birth does not appear, nor the date of her marriage to William Cunyngham, who adopted the name of Dick, and became Sir William Dick of Prestonfield, bart., in 1728, on the death of his maternal grandfather without male issue. Lady Dick made herself notorious by many unseemly pranks. She was in the habit of walking about the Edin- burgh streets dressed as a boy, her maid with her, likewise in boy's attire. She also was known as a writer of coarse lampoons and epigrams in verse, which drew upon her the reproof of friends who admired her undoubted gifts and desired her to turn them to better purpose. Three specimens of her verse are in C. Kirkpatrick Sharpe's ' Book of Ballads.' She died in 1741, childless ; and her husband, who survived her till 1746, was succeeded in his baronetcy by his brother, Sir Alexander Dick, physician [q. v.] A portrait of Lady Dick in a white dress at Prestonfield is men- tioned by C. K. Sharpe.
[Anderson's Scottish Nation, ii. 33 ; Sharpe's Ballad Book, pp. 118, 121, 131, 139.] J. H.
DICK, JOHN, D.D. (1764-1833), theo- logical writer, was born on 10 Oct. 1764 at Aberdeen, where his father was minister of
Dick i
the associate congregation of seceders. His | mother's name was Helen Tolmie, daughter of Captain Tolmie of Aberdeen, a woman of well cultivated intellect and deep piety, who j exercised a strong influence over her son. [ Educated at the grammar school and King's ! College, Aberdeen, he studied for the ministry | of the Secession church, under John Brown \ of Haddington. In 1785, immediately after j being licensed as a probationer, he was called by the congregation of Slateford, near Edin- burgh, and ordained to the ministry there. His love of nature and natural objects was intense, and at Slateford he had the oppor- tunity of gratifying it abundantly. A few years after his settlement he married Jane, daughter of the Rev. G. Coventry, Stitchell, Roxburghshire, and sister of Dr. Andrew Coventry of Shanwell, professor of agricul- ture in the university of Edinburgh.
At Slateford, Dick was a laborious student and a diligent pastor, and he began early to take an active share in the business of his church. In 1788, when Dr. M'Gill of Ayr alarmed the religious community of Scotland by an essay on the death of Christ, of uni- tarian tendencies, Dick published a sermon in opposition entitled ' The Conduct and Doom of False Teachers.' In 1796, when ob- jection had been tajjen by several ministers 'in his church to the teaching of the confes- sion of faith on the duty of the civil magis- trate to the church, he preached and published a sermon entitled ' Confessions of Faith shown to be necessary, and the duty of churches with respect to them explained.' He vindi- cated the use of confessions, but inculcated the duty of the church to be tolerant of minor disagreements. In 1799 this controversy was ended by the synod enacting a preamble to the confession, declaring that the church re- quired no assent to anything which favoured the principle of compulsory measures in reli- gion. A minority dissented from this find- ing, and, withdrawing from their brethren, formed a new body entitled * The Original Associate Synod.'
In 1800 he published an l Essay on the Inspiration of the Scriptures,' which gave him considerable standing as a theological writer. The occasion of this publication was, that in a dispute in the Secession church regarding the descending obligation of the Scottish cove- nants, it had been affirmed that those who were not impressed by arguments in its favour from the Old Testament, could not believe in the inspiration of the Old Testament books. Dick wrote his book to rebut this argument. The position assumed in it is thus stated by his biographer: 'He held the doctrine of plenary inspiration ; i.e. that all parts of scrip-
; Dick
ture were written by persons, moved, directed, and assisted by the Holy Spirit, his assistance extending to the words as well as to the ideas. But under the term t inspiration ' he included several kinds or degrees of super- natural influence, holding that sometimes a larger and sometimes a smaller degree of in- spiration was necessary to the composition of the books, according to the previous state of the minds of the writers and the matter of their writings.'
In 1801 he became minister of an important and prominent congregation in Glasgow, now called Greyfriars, in which charge he con- tinued up to the time of his death. In 1815 he received the degree of D.D. from Princeton College, New Jersey, one of the oldest colleges of America. In 1819 the death of Dr. Lawson of Selkirk left vacant the office of theological professor to the associate synod, which had been filled for a long time by him in a dis- tinguished manner, and in 1820 Dr. Dick was chosen to succeed him. In this charge he was eminently successful, enjoying at once the ap- proval of the church and the confidence and admiration of his students. He was now one of the leading men in his church. Regarding his theological standpoint, his son says : { He was distinguished from many theologians by the honour in which he held the scriptures, and by the strictness with which he adhered to the great protestant rule of making the Bible, in its plain meaning, the source of his reli- gious creed, and the basis of his theological system. His distrust of reason as a guide in religion was deeply sincere, and never wavered ; and so was his confidence in reve- lation. Both were the result of inquiry ; and the perfect reasonableness of his faith was in nothing more evident than in the limits which he set to it ; for he had taken pains to ascertain the bounds of revelation, and while within these he was teachable as a child, to everything beyond our own re- sources no man could apply the test of reason with more uncompromising boldness.'
In politics Dick sympathised with the re- forming party, and he objected to church establishments. He combined the offices of professor of divinity and minister of Grey- friars Church up to the time of his death, which occurred rather suddenly on 25 Jan. 1833.
Besides the sermons already noticed, and his ' Essay on the Inspiration of the Scrip- tures,' Dick published during his lifetime ' Lectures on some Passages of the Acts of the Apostles ; ' and, in 1833, after his death, his theological lectures were published in 4 vols. 8vo, a second edition being published in 1838.
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[Memoir of Dr. Dick, by his son, Andrew Co- ventry Dick, prefixed to Lectures in Theology ; McKerrow's Hist, of the Secession Church; Fune- ral Sermons by Rev. Andrew Marshall and Rev. Professor Mitchell, D.D. ; Memoir by Rev. W. Peddie, United Secession Mag. May 1833.1
W. G. B.
DICK, ROBERT (1811-1866), a self- taught geologist and botanist, son of an ex- ciseman, was born at Tulliboddy in Clack- mannanshire in January 1811, according to his tombstone, in 1810 according to his half- sister. Though an apt scholar he was not sent to college, but at the age of thirteen was apprenticed to a baker, mainly through the influence of his stepmother, who made his life miserable. Despite hard work he read largely, and acquired a knowledge of botany, and made a collection of plants while yet an apprentice. After serving as a journey- man in Leith, Glasgow, and Greenock, he went to Thurso in Caithness in 1830, where his father was then supervisor of excise, and set up as a baker, there being then only three bakers' shops in the county. While gradually making a business he began to study geology, and widened his knowledge of natural his- tory, making large collections of rocks, insects, and plants. He ultimately accumulated an almost perfect collection of the British flora by collection and exchange. About 1834 he re-discovered the Hierochloe borealis, or northern holy-grass, an interesting plant which had been dropped out of the British flora ; of this he contributed a brief account to the Botanical Society of Edinburgh (Ann. Nat. Hist. October 1854). In 1841 the ap- pearance of Hugh Miller's ' Old Red Sand- stone ' led Dick to make further searches for fossils, and ultimately to commence a corre- spondence with the author, greatly to the advantage of the latter, who received from the poor baker fine specimens of holoptychius and many other remarkable fishes, besides much information possessed by no other man. The facts which Dick furnished led to con- siderable modifications in the ' Old Red Sand- stone,' and were of great assistance in build- ing up the arguments of ' Footprints of the Creator.' ' He has robbed himself to do me service,' wrote Miller.
Dick's extreme modesty and bluff indepen- dence prevented him from writing for publi- cation, but he became a recognised authority on the geology and natural history of his county, and materially aided Sir Roderick Murchison and other scientific men in their researches. Among his intimate friends was Charles Peach [q. v.], a self-made naturalist and geologist like himself; His studies show a record of indefatigable perseverance under
poverty, pain, illness, and fatigue not easily surpassed. He often walked fifty to eighty miles between one baking and another, eating- nothing but a few pieces of biscuit. Com- petition and a loss of flour by shipwreck at length practically ruined him, and his last years were passed in great privation. He- died on 24 Dec. 1866, prematurely old at' ! fifty-five. A public funeral testified that his fellow-townsmen recognised his merits, if somewhat tardily.
Dick was never married, and was very solitary in his habits. His character is best revealed by his letters, which show him to- have had a deep love of nature, both its- history and its beauties, and a stern resolve to get at facts at first hand. He would la- bour for weeks, at every possible moment, to chisel out a single important specimen from the hardest rock, or when crippled with rheu- matism would spend hours in emptying pond& on the sea shore to disinter fossils he could not otherwise obtain. ' I have nearly killed myself several times with over-exertion,' he says. He had considerable culture, derived from both religious and general literature. His biographer says : ' To those who knew him best he was cheerful and social. He had a vein of innocent fun and satire about him, and he often turned his thoughts into- rhyme.' His moral character was blameless ; indeed his integrity was sternly scrupulous. It was with the greatest difficulty that he was persuaded to sell his fossils when in great privation ; but he lavishly gave them away to those whom he conceived entitled to them by their scientific eminence. Strange to say, all reference to Dick was omitted in Hugh Miller's life. A portrait of Dick etched by Raj on forms the frontispiece to his life.
[Smiles's Life of Robert Dick, 1878.]
G. T. B.
DICK, Sm ROBERT HENRY (1785 ?- 1846), major-general, was the son of Dr. Dick of Tullimet, Perthshire, and, if a ro- mantic story be true, must have been born in India about 1785. It is said ( Gent. Mag. for May 1846) that when Henry Dundas and Edmund Burke were staying with the Duke of Athole at Dunkeld, they accidentally met a farmer's daughter, who gave them re- freshment during a walk. Upon hearing their names she asked Dundas if he could help a young doctor (Dick) to whom she was betrothed, and who was too poor to marry. ' Dundas, hearing a good report of Dick, gave him an assistant-surgeoncy in the East India Company's service. Dick at once married and went to India, where he soon made a large fortune, with which he retired and pur-
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chased the estate of Tullimet. Robert Dick, the son of this fortunate doctor, entered the army as an ensign in the 75th regiment on 22 Nov. 1800, and was promoted lieutenant into the 62nd on 27 June 1802, and captain into the 78th, or Rosshire Buffs, on 17 April 1804. He accompanied the 2nd battalion of this regiment to Sicily in 1806, and was wounded at the battle of Maida in the same year. In 1807 his battalion formed part of General Mackenzie Fraser's expedition to Egypt, and Dick was wounded again at Ro- setta. He was appointed major on 24 April 1808, and exchanged into the 42nd High- landers (the Black Watch) on 14 July in that year. In June 1809 he accompanied the 2nd battalion of his regiment to Portugal, and was soon after selected to command a light battalion of detachments, which he did efficiently, at the battle of Busaco, in the lines of Torres Vedras, in the pursuit after Massena, and at the battle of Fuentes de Onoro. He then returned to regimental duty, and acted as senior major of the 42nd, 2nd battalion, at the assault of Ciudad Rodrigo, and in command of the 1st battalion at the battle of Salamanca and in the attacks upon Burgos and the retreat from that city. For these services he was promoted lieutenant- colonel by brevet on 8 Oct. 1812. He then returned to the majority of the 2nd bat- talion, which he held till the end of the Peninsular war, when he was made a C.B. At the peace of 1814 the 2nd battalion of the 42nd was disbanded, and Dick accompanied the only battalion left to Flanders, as senior major, in 1815. At Quatre Bras the 42nd bore the brunt of the engagement, and when Sir Robert Macara, K.C.B., the lieutenant- colonel, was killed, Dick, though severely wounded in the hip and the left shoulder, brought them out of action. He was neverthe- less present at the battle of Waterloo, and his commission as lieutenant-colonel of the 42nd was antedated to the day of that great battle, as a reward for his valour. He was pro- moted colonel on 27 May 1825, and soon after went on half-pay, and retired to his seat at Tullimet, which he had inherited on his father's death. In 1832 he was made a K.C.H., and on 10 Jan. 1837 was promoted major-general, and in 1838, in the honours con- ferred on the occasion of the queen's corona- tion, he was made a K.C.B. He now applied for employment on the general staff, and in December 1838 he was appointed to command the centre division of the Madras army, and as senior-general in the presidency he assumed the command-in-chief at Madras on the sudden death of Sir S. F. Whittingham in January 1841. This temporary post Dick VOL. xv.
held for nearly two years, until September 1842, when the Marquis of Tweeddale went out as governor and commander-in-chief to Madras. As it was thought undesirable to i send the general back to a divisional com- mand, he was transferred to the staff of the ; Bengal army. He at first took command of the division on the north-west frontier; but j his sturdy independence in holding his own 1 opinion as to an expected mutiny in certain of the regiments led to his removal by the governor-general, Lord Ellenborough, to the presidency division. He at once sent in his , resignation to the Horse Guards, but the I authorities refused to receive it. His old j comrade, Sir Henry Hardinge, went out as I governor-general, and the commander-in- ! chief, Sir Hugh Gough, gave him the com- mand of the Cawnpore division. From this ! post he was summoned by Sir Hugh Gough | in January 1846 to take command of the 3rd infantry division of the army in the field against the Sikhs, in the place of Major-general Sir John M'Caskill, K.O.B., who had been killed at the battle of Moodkee in the pre- vious December. Dick had thus lost the opportunity of being present at the first two important battles of the first Sikh war ; but he played a leading part in the third and crowning victory of Sobraon. On the morn- ing of 10 Feb. 1846 Sir Hugh Gough deter- mined to attack the strong entrenchments of the Khalsa army, and Dick's division was ordered to head the assault. At four A.M. his men advanced to a ravine about a thousand yards from the Sikh entrenchments, and lay down while the English artillery played upon the enemy over their heads. By nine A.M. sufficient damage had been done for the in- fantry to charge, and Dick led his first bri- gade into the Sikh entrenchments. When it had effected a lodgment he returned to lead his second brigade, headed by the 80th regiment. While leading this brigade from battery to battery, taking them in flank, Dick was struck down by one of the last shots fired during the day, and only survived until six o'clock on the same evening. His funeral the next day at Ferozepore was attended by the whole army, and Lord Gough thus speaks of him in his despatch announcing the vic- tory of Sobraon : 1 1 have especially to lament the fall of Major-general Sir Robert Dick, K.C.B., a gallant veteran of the Peninsular and Waterloo campaigns. He survived only till the evening the dangerous grapeshot wound, which he received close to the enemy's entrenchments whilst personally animating, by his dauntless example, the soldiers of her majesty's 80th regiment in their career of noble daring.'
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[Gent. Mag. May 1846 ; Eoyal Military Calen- dar; Colburn's United Service Magazine, June 1846, for his dispute with Lord Ellenborough, and Lord G-ough's Despatch for the battle of Sobraon ; information contributed by General Sir H. Bates.] H. M. S.
DICK, THOMAS (1774-1857), scientific writer, was born in the -Hilltown, Dundee, on 24 Nov. 1774. He was brought up in the strict tenets of the Secession church, of Scotland, and his father, Mungo Dick, a small linen manufacturer, designed him for his own trade. But the appearance of a brilliant meteor impressed him, when in his ninth year, with a passion for astronomy ; he read, sometimes even when seated at the loom, every book on the subject within his reach ; begged or bought some pairs of old spectacles, contrived a machine for grinding them to the proper shape, and, having mounted them in pasteboard tubes, began celestial ob- servations. His parents, at first afflicted by his eccentricities, left him at sixteen to choose his own way of life. He became assistant in a school at Dundee, and in 1794 entered the university of Edinburgh, supporting himself by private tuition. His philosophical and theological studies terminated, he set up a school, took out a license to preach in 1801, and officiated as probationer during some years at Stirling and elsewhere. An invita- tion from the patrons to act as teacher in the Secession school at Methven led to a ten years' residence there, distinguished by efforts on his part towards popular improvement, including a zealous promotion of the study of science, the foundation of a ' people's li- brary,' and of what was substantially a mecha- nics' institute. Under the name of t Literary and Philosophical Societies, adapted to the middling and lower ranks of the community,' the extension of such establishments was recommended by him in five papers published in the ' Monthly Magazine ' in 1814 : and, a year or two later, a society was organised near London on the principles there laid down, of which he was elected an honorary member.
On leaving Methven, Dick spent another decade as a teacher at Perth. During this interval he made his first independent ap- pearance as an author. 'The Christian Phi- losopher, or the Connexion of Science and Philosophy with Religion,' was published in 1823. It ran quickly through several edi- tions, the eighth appearing at Glasgow in 1842. Its success determined Dick's vocation to literature. He finally gave up school- teaching in 1827, and built himself a small cottage, fitted up with an observatory and library, on a hill overlooking the Tay at
Broughty Ferry, near Dundee. Here he wrote a number of works, scientific, philosophical,, and religious, which, from their lucidity and unpretending style, acquired prompt and wide popularity both in this country and in the United States. Their author, however, made such loose bargains with his publishers, that he derived little profit from them, and his poverty was relieved in 1847 by a pension from the crown of 50J. a year, and by a local subscription, bringing in a further annual sum of 201. or 30/. He died, at the age of eighty- three, on 29 July 1857. An honorary degree of LL.D. was conferred upon him early in his literary career by Union College, New York, and he was admitted to the Royal As- tronomical Society 14 Jan. 1853. A paper on l Celestial Day Observations,' giving the results of a series of observations on stars and planets made during the daytime with a small equatoreal at Methven in 1812-13, was communicated by him in 1855 to the ' Monthly Notices ' (xv. 222). He had writ- ten on the same subject forty-two years pre- viously in Nicholson's ' Journal of Natural Philosophy ' (xxxvi. 109).
Among his works may be mentioned : 1. 'The Mental Illumination and Moral Im- provement of Mankind,' New York, 1836, de- veloping a train of thought familiar to the writer during upwards of twenty-six years, and partially indicated in several contribu- tions to periodical literature. 2. ' Celestial Scenery, or the Wonders of the Heavens displayed,' London, 1837, New York, 1845. 3. 'The Sidereal Heavens, and other subjects connected with Astronomy,' London,1840 and 1850, New York, 1844 (with portrait of au- thor), presenting arguments for the plurality of worlds. 4. * The Practical Astronomer,' London, 1845, giving plain descriptions and instructions for the use of astronomical in- struments ; besides several small volumes published by the Religious Tract Society on ' The Telescope and Microscope,' ' The At- mosphere and Atmospherical Phenomena,' and ' The Solar System.' Several of the above works were translated into Welsh. Dick edited the first three volumes of the ' Educational Magazine and Journal of Chris- tian Philanthropy,' published in London in 1835-6.
[R. Chambers's Eminent Scotsmen (Thomson's ed. 1868); Monthly Notices, xviii. 98; Athe- naeum, 1857, p. 1008; Eoy. Soc. Cat. of Scientific Papers.] A. M. C.
DICK, SIR WILLIAM (1680 P-1655), provost of Edinburgh, was the only son of John Dick, a large proprietor in the Ork- neys, who had acquired considerable wealth by trading with Denmark, and becoming a
Dick
Dick
favourite of James VI, had taken up his resi- dence in his later years in Edinburgh. The son in 1618 advanced 6,000/. to defray the household expenses of James VI when he held <i parliament in Scotland in 1618. Through his influence with the government he greatly increased his wealth by farming the customs ;and excise ; he extended the trade of the Firth of Forth with the Baltic and Mediterranean ports, and he had a lucrative business in ne- gotiating bills of exchange. Besides his ex- tensive estates in the Orkneys, he acquired several properties in the south of Scotland, including in 1631 the barony of Braid in Midlothian. He was elected lord provost of Edinburgh in the critical years 1638-9, and was a zealous covenanter. His fortune about this time was estimated at 200,000 /., and the Scottish estates were chiefly indebted to his advances for the support of the army to main- tain the cause of the covenant. For the equip- ment of the forces of Montrose, despatched to the north of Scotland in 1639, he advanced two hundred thousand merks, and he was equally liberal in his advances for the southern army under Leslie. Sir Walter Scott, in the ' Heart of Midlothian/represents David Deans as affirm- ing that his ' father saw them toom the sacks of dollars out o' Provost Dick's window in- till the carts that carried them to the army at Dunse Law.' When Charles I visited Scot- land in 1641, a hundred thousand merks were borrowed from Dick to defray the expenses, for which he obtained security on the king's revenue. In the following January he re- ceived the honour of knighthood, and shortly afterwards he was created a baronet of Nova Scotia. On 19 June 1644 he presented a petition to the estates desiring payment of a portion of the sum of 840,000 merks then due to him, expressing his willingness to take the remainder by instalments (BAL- FOUR, Annals, iii. 189), and after the matter had been under consideration for some time by a committee, the parliament assigned him 40,OOOZ. sterling, ' owing of the brotherly as- sistance by the parliament of England,' and ordained him to have real execution upon his bond of two hundred thousand merks, in addi- tion to which they assigned him the excise of Orkney and Shetland, and also of the tobacco (ib. 291). These resolutions seem, however, to have had no practical effect, and in Decem- ber he again entreated them to ' take some serious notice of the debts owing to him by the public ' (id. 329). On 31 Jan. 1646 he was chosen one of the committee of estates as re- presenting Edinburgh. When the lord pro- vost of Edinburgh and several eminent citi- zens paid a visit to Cromwell at Moray House in October 1645, 'Old Sir William
Dick in name of the rest made a great ora- tion ' (RUSHWORTH, Historical Collection, pt. iv. p. 1295). He advanced 20,000/. for the service of Charles II in 1-650, and he was one of the committee of estates during the war with Cromwell. By the parliamentary party he was therefore treated as a malig- nant, and subjected to heavy fines, amount- ing in all to 64,934^. Being reduced almost to indigence, he went to London to obtain payment of the moneys lent by him on go- vernment security, the total of which then amounted to 160,8547. (Lamentable State of Sir William Dick). His petition of 1 March 1653 was referred to the Irish and Scotch committee (State Papers, Dom. Ser. 1652- 1653, p. 196), and a second petition of 3 July to the committee at Haberdashers' Hall (ib. 376), the result being that all he ever re- ceived was 1,000/. in August of that year. Continuing his residence in London to pro- secute his claims, he was more than once imprisoned for small debts. The common statement that he was thrown into prison by Cromwell is, however, erroneous, as is also the further assertion that he died in prison. His death took place at his lodg- ings in Westminster, 19 Dec. 1655, aged 75. Such were the straits to which he had been reduced, that money could not be raised sufficient to give him a decent funeral. The house of Sir William Dick in Edinburgh was situated in High Street, between Byre's and Advocates' Closes, and was subsequently oc- cupied by the Earl of Kintore. By his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of John Morrison of Preston Grange and Saughton Hall, he had five sons and two daughters. His fourth son, Alexander, was father of James Dick, created a Nova Scotia baronet in 1677, M.P. for Edinburgh 1681-2, provost of Edinburgh 1682-3, and a favourite of the Duke of York. He died in 1728, aged 85. By his wife, Anne Paterson, he had a daughter, Janet, married to Sir William Cunyngham, whose sons as- sumed the name of Dick [see DICK, ALEX- ANDER, and DICK, ANNE, LADY].
[The Lamentable Estate and Distressed Case of Sir William Dick, published in 1657, contains the petition of his family and other papers, the originals of which are included in the Lauder- dale Papers, Addit. MS. 23113. His case is set forth in verse as well as in prose, and is patheti- cally illustrated by three copperplates, one re- presenting him on horseback superintending the unloading of one of his rich argosies, the second as fettered in prison, and the third as lying in his coffin surrounded by disconsolate friends who do not know how to* dispose of the body. The tract, of which there is a copy in the British 1 Museum, is much valued by collectors, and has I been sold for 521. 10s. ; Acts of the Parliament
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of Scotland ; Balfour's Annals ; Spalding's Me- morials ; Gordon's Scots Affairs ; State Papers, Dom. Ser. 1652-3 ; Douglas's Baronage of Scot- land, i. 269-70 ; Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. vi. 457.] T. F. H.
DICKENS, CHARLES (1812-1870), novelist, was born 7 Feb. 1812 at 387 Mile End Terrace, Commercial Road, Landport, Portsea. His father, John Dickens, a clerk in the navy pay office, with a salary of 80/. a year, was then stationed in the Portsmouth dockyard. The wife of the first Lord Hough- ton told Mr. Wemyss Reid that Mrs. Dickens, mother of John, was housekeeper at Crewe, and famous for her powers of story-telling (WEMYSS REID, in Daily News, 8 Oct. 1887). John Dickens had eight children by his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Charles Barrow, a lieu- tenant in the navy. The eldest,Fanny ,was born in 1810. Charles, the second,, was christened Charles John Huffam (erroneously entered Huffham in the register), but dropped the last two names. Charles Dickens remembered the little garden of the house at Portsea, though his father was recalled to London when he was only two years old. In 1816 (probably) the family moved to Chatham. Dickens was small and sickly; he amused himself by reading and by watching the games of other boys. His mother taught him his letters, and he pored over a small collection of books belonging to his father. Among them were ' Tom Jones,' the 'Vicar of Wakefield,' 'Don Quixote,' 1 Gil Bias,' and especially Smollett's novels, by which he was deeply impressed. He wrote an infantine tragedy called ' Misnar,' founded on the ' Tales of the Genii.' James Lamert, the stepson of his mother's eldest sister, Mary (whose second husband was Dr. Lamert, an army surgeon at Chatham), had a taste for private theatricals. Lamert took Dickens to the theatre, in which the child greatly de- lighted. John Dickens's salary was raised to 200/. in 1819, and to 350/. in 1820, at which amount it remained until he left the service, 9 March 1825. It was, however, made in- sufficient by his careless habits, and in 1821 he left his first house, 2 (now 11) Ordnance Terrace, for a smaller house, 18 St. Mary's Place, next to a baptist chapel. Dickens was then sent to school with the minister, Mr. Giles (see LANGTON, Childhood of Dickens}. In the winter of 1822-3 his father was re- called to Somerset House, and settled in Bayham Street, Camden Town, whither his son followed in the spring. John Dickens, whose character is more or less represented by Micawber, was now in difficulties, and had to make a composition with his creditors. He was (as Dickens emphatically stated) a very affectionate father, and took a pride in
his son's precocious talents. Yet at this time (according to the same statement) he was en- tirely forgetful of the son's claims to a decent education. In spite of the family difficulties, the eldest child, Fanny, was sent as a pupil to the Royal Academy of Music, but Charles was left to black his father's boots, look after the younger children, and do small errands. Lamert made a little theatre for the child's amusement. His mother's elder brother, Thomas Barrow, and a godfather took notice of him occasionally. The uncle lodged in the upper floor of a house in which a book- selling business was carried on, and the pro- prietress lent the child some books. His lite- rary tastes were kept alive, and he tried his j hand at writing a description of the uncle's | barber. His mother now made an attempt j to retrieve the family fortunes by taking a house, 4 Gower Street North, where a brass ! plate announced ' Mrs. Dickens's establish- ment,' but failed to attract any pupils. The father was at last arrested and carried to the Marshalsea, long afterwards described in 'Little Dorrit.' (Mr. Langton thinks that the prison was the king's bench, where, as he says, there was a prisoner named Dorrett in 1824.) All the books and furniture went gradually to the pawnbroker's. James Lamert had become manager of a blacking warehouse,, and obtained a place for Dickens at 6s. or 7s. a week in the office at Hungerford Stairs. Dickens was treated as a mere drudge, and employed in making up parcels. He came home at night to the dismantled house in Gower Street till the family followed the father to the Marshalsea, and" then lodged in Camden Town with a reduced old lady, a Mrs. Roylance, the original of Mrs. Pipchin in l Dombey and Son.' Another lodging was found for him near the prison with a family which is represented by the Garlands in his ' Old Curiosity Shop.' The Dickenses were rather better off in prison than they had been previously. The maid-of-all-work who fol- lowed them from Bayham Street became the Marchioness of the ' Old Curiosity Shop.' The elder Dickens at last took the benefit of the Insolvent Debtors Act, and moved first to Mrs. Roylance's house, and then to a house in Somers Town. Dickens's amazing faculty of observation is proved by the use made in his novels of all that he now saw, especially in the prison scenes of ' Pickwick ' and in the earlier part of ' David Copperfield.' That he suffered acutely is proved by the singular bitterness shown in his own narrative printed by Forster. He felt himself degraded by his occupation. When his sister won a prize at the Royal Academy, he was deeply humiliated by the contrast of his own position, though
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le of envying her success. This was .atxmt April 1824.
The family circumstances improved. The elder Dickens had received a legacy which helped to clear off his debts ; he had a pen- sion, and after some time he obtained em- ployment as reporter to the ' Morning Chroni- cle.' About 1824 Dickens was sent to a school kept by a Mr. Jones in the Hampstead Road, and called the Wellington House Aca- demy. His health improved. His school- fellows remembered him as a handsome lad, overflowing with animal spirits, writing stories, getting up little theatrical perform- ances, and fond of harmless practical jokes, but not distinguishing himself as a scholar. After two years at this school, Dickens went to another kept by a Mr. Dawson in Hen- rietta Street, Brunswick Square. He then became clerk in the office of Mr. Molloy in New Square, Lincoln's Inn, and soon after- wards (from May 1827 to November 1828) •clerk in the office of Mr. Edward Blackmore, attorney, of Gray's Inn. His salary with Mr. Blackmore rose from 13s. 6d. to 15s. a week. Dickens's energy had only been stimu- lated by the hardships through which he had passed. He was determined to force his way upwards. He endeavoured to supplement his scanty education by reading at the British Museum, and he studied shorthand writing In the fashion described in ' David Copper- field.' Copperfield's youthful passion for Dora reflects a passion of the same kind in Dickens's own career, which, though hopeless, stimulated his ambition. He became re- markably expert in shorthand, and after two years' reporting in the Doctors' Commons and other courts, he entered the gallery of the House of Commons as reporter to the ( True Sun.' He was spokesman for the reporters in a successful strike. For two sessions he reported for the ' Mirror of Parliament/ started by a maternal uncle, and in the session of 1835 became reporter for the ' Morning Chronicle.' While still reporting at Doctors' Commons he had thoughts of becoming an actor. He made an application to George Bartley [q. v.], manager at Covent Garden, which seems to have only missed acceptance l»y an accident, and took great pains to prac- tise the art. He finally abandoned this scheme on obtaining his appointment on the ' Morn- Ing Chronicle' (FORSTER, ii. 179). His powers were rapidly developed by the requirements •of his occupation. He was, as he says (Let- ters, i. 438), 'the best and most rapid re- porter ever known.' He had to hurry to and from country meetings, by coach and post- chaise, encountering all the adventures in- cident to travelling in the days before rail-
roads, making arrangements for forwr write reports, and attracting the notice^of P receiv ployer's by his skill, resource,^and ensyrigb John Black [q. v.], the editor, became a wai^Ni friend, and was, he says, his ' first hearty out-
and-out appreciator.' He soon besra
gan to write in the periodicals. The appearance of his first article, ' A Dinner at Poplar Walk ' (reprinted as ' Mr. Minns and his Cousin '), in the * Monthly Magazine ' for December 1833, filled him with exulta- tion. Nine others followed till February 1835. The paper in August 1834 first bore the signature ' Boz.' It was the pet name of his youngest brother, Augustus, called ' Moses,' after the boy in the ' Vicar of Wakefield/ which was corrupted into Boses and Boz. An ' Evening Chronicle,' as an appendix to the ' Morning Chronicle,' was started in 1835 under the management of George Hogarth, formerly a friend of Scott. The * Monthly Magazine ' was unable to pay for the sketches, and Dickens now offered to continue his sketches in the new venture. His offer wa& accepted, and his salary raised from five to seven guineas a week. In the spring of 1836 the collected papers were published as ' Sketches by Boz,' with illustrations by Cruik- shank, the copyright being bought for 150/. by a publisher named Macrone. On 2 April £ 1836 Dickens married Catherine, eldest daugh- ter of Hogarth, his colleague on the * Morn- ing Chronicle.' He had just begun the ' Pick- wick Papers.' The ' Sketches,' in which it is now easy to see the indications of future success, had attracted some notice in their ori- ginal form. Albany Fonblanque had warmly praised them, and publishers heard of the young writer. Messrs. Chapman & Hall, then beginning business, had published a book called • The Squib Annual' in November 1835, with illustrations by Seymour. Sey- mour was anxious to produce a series of ' cockney sporting plates.' Chapman & HXll thought that it might answer to punish such a series in monthly parts accompanied by letterpress. Hall applied to Dickens, suggesting the invention of a Nimroa Club, the members of which should get in\x> comic difficulties suitable for Seymour's illustra- tions. Dickens, wishing for a freer hand, and having no special knowledge of sport, substituted the -less restricted scheme of the Pickwick Club, and wrote the first number, :br which Seymour drew the illustrations. The first two or three numbers excited less attention than the collected ' Sketches/ which aad just appeared. Seymour killed himself Before the appearance of the second number. Robert William Buss [q. v.] illustrated the third number. Thackeray, then an unknow
of Sco'
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™orip\, applied to Dickens for the post of ilius- i <"?'.-: but Dickens finally chose Hablot
Browne [q. v.], who illustrated the *<urth and all the subsequent numbers, as well as many of the later novels.
The success of ' Pickwick ' soon became ex- traordinary. The binder prepared four hun- dred copies of the first number, and forty thousand of the fifteenth. The marked suc- cess began with the appearance of Sam Wel- ler in the fifth number. Sam Weller is in fact the incarnation of the qualities to which the success was due. Educated like his creator in the streets of London, he is the
- ideal cockney. His exuberant animal spirits, humorous shrewdness, and kindliness under a mask of broad farce, made him the fa- vourite of all cockneys in and out of Lon- don, and took the grayest readers by storm. All that Dickens had learnt in his rough initiation into life, with a power of observa- tion unequalled in its way, was poured out witlt boundless vivacity and prodigality of invention. The book, beginning as farce, became admirable comedy, and has caused more hearty and harmless laughter than any book in the language. If Dickens's later works surpassed ' Pickwick ' in some ways, l Pick- wick ' shows, in their highest development, the qualities in which he most surpassed other writers. Sam Weller's peculiar trick of speech
- has been traced with probability to Samuel Vale, a popular comic actor, who in 1822 performed Simon Spatterdash in a farce called ' The Boarding House/ and gave currency to a similar phraseology {Notes and Queries, 6th ser. v. 388 ; and Origin of Sam Weller, with a facsimile of a contemporary piratical imita- tion of 'Pickwick/ 1883).
Dickens was now a prize for which pub- lishers might contend. In the next few years he undertook a great deal of work, with con- fidence natural to a buoyant temperament, 'encouraged by unprecedented success, and achieved new triumphs without permitting himself to fall into slovenly composition. Each new book was at least as carefully written as its predecessor. ' Pickwick ' ap- peared from April 1836 to November 1837. 4 Oliver Twist ' began, while ' Pickwick ' was still proceeding, in January 1837, and ran till March 1839. ' Nicholas Nickleby ' overlapped ' Oliver Twist/ beginning in April 1838 and ending in October 1839. In February 1838 — Dickens went to Yorkshire to look at the schools caricatured in Dotheboys Hall (for the original of Dotheboys Hall see Notes and Queries, 4th ser. vi. 245, and 5th ser. iii. 325). A short pause followed. Dickens had thought of a series of papers, more or less on the model of the old f Spectator/ in which there
this time
was to be a club, including the varied essays satirical and descriptive, occasional stories. The essays were to appear weekly, and for the whole he finally selected the title ' Master Humphrey's Clock.' The plan was carried out with modifications. It appeared at once that the stories were the popular part of the series ; the club and the intercalated essay disappeared, and ' Master Humphrey's Clock' resolved itself into the two stories, ' The Old Curiosity Shop ' and < Barnaby Rudge.' During 1840 and 1841 ' Oliver Twist ' seems to have been at first less popular than its fellow-stories ; but ' Ni- cholas Nickleby ' surpassed even ' Pickwick/ Sydney Smith on reading it confessed that Dickens had ' conquered him/ though he had - 1 stood out as long as he could.' * Master Humphrey's Clock' began with a sale of seventy thousand copies, which declined when there was no indication of a continuous story, but afterwards revived. The * Old Curiosity Shop/ as republished, made an extraordinary success. ' Barnaby Rudge ' has apparently never been equally popular.
The exuberant animal spirits, and the amaz- ing fertility in creating comic types, which made the fortune of ' Pickwick/ were now combined with a more continuous story. The ridicule of ' Bumbledom ' in < Oliver Twist/ and of Yorkshire schools in i Nicholas Nick- leby/ showed the power of satirical portrai- ture already displayed in the prison scenes of 'Pickwick.' The humorist is not yet lost in the satirist, and the extravagance of- the caricature is justified by its irresistible fun. Dickens was also showing the command of the pathetic which fascinated the ordinary - reader. The critic is apt to complain that Dickens kills his children as if he liked it, and makes his victims attitudinise before the footlights. Yet Landor, a severe critic, thought 1 Little Nell ' equal to any character in fiction, and Jeffrey, the despiser of sentimentalism, declared that there had been nothing so good since Cordelia (FORSTER, i. 177, 226). Dickens had written with sincere feeling, and with thoughts of Mary Hogarth, his wife's sister, whose death in 1837 had profoundly affected him, and forced him to suspend the publica- tion of ' Pickwick ' (no number was published in June 1837). When we take into account the command of the horrible shown by the murder in ' Oliver Twist/ and the unvary- ing vivacity and brilliance of style, the se- cret of Dickens's hold upon his readers is tolerably clear. l Barnaby Rudge ' is remark- able as an attempt at the historical novel, repeated only in his ' Tale of Two Cities ; ' but Dickens takes little pains to give genuine local colour, and appears to have regarded the
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eighteenth century chiefly as the reign of Jack Ketch.
Dickens's fame had attracted acquaintances, many of whom were converted by his ge- nial qualities into fast friends. In March 1837 he moved from the chambers in Furni- val's Inn, which he had occupied for some time previous to his marriage, to 48 Doughty Street, and towards the end of 1839 he moved to a * handsome house with a considerable garden ' in Devonshire Terrace, facing York Gate, Regent's Park. He spent summer holi- days at Broadstairs, always a favourite water- ing-place, Twickenham, and Petersham, and in the summer of 1841 made an excursion in Scotland, received the freedom of Edin- burgh, and was welcomed at a public dinner where Jeffrey took the chair and his health was proposed by Christopher North. He was at this time fond of long rides, and delighted in boyish games. His buoyant spirit and hearty good-nature made himacharminghost and guest at social gatherings of all kinds except the formal. He speedily became known to most of his literary contemporaries, such as Landor (whom he visited at Bath in 1841), Talfourd, Procter, Douglas Jerrold, Harrison Ainsworth, Wilkie, and Edwin Landseer. His closest intimates were Mac- ready, Maclise, Stanfield, and John Forster. Forster had seen him at the office of the I * True Sun,' and had afterwards met him at the house of Harrison Ainsworth. They had j become intimate at the time of Mary Ho- | garth's death, when Forster visited him, on ' his temporary retirement, at Hampstead. Forster, whom he afterwards chose as his biographer, was serviceable both by reading his works before publication and by helping his business arrangements.
Dickens made at starting some rash agree- ments. Chapman & Hall had given him 151. 15s. a number for ' Pickwick/ with ad- ditional payments dependent upon the sale. He received, Forster thinks, 2,500/. on the whole. He had also, with Chapman & Hall, rebought for 2,000/. in 1837 the copyright of the ' Sketches ' sold to Macrone in 1831 for 150/. The success of ' Pickwick ' had raised the value of the book, and Macrone proposed to reissue it simultaneously with ' Pickwick ' and ' Oliver Twist.' Dickens thought that this superabundance would be injurious to his reputation, and naturally considered Macrone to be extortionate. When, however, Macrone died, two years later, Dickens edited the 1 Pic-Nic Papers ' (1841) for the benefit of the widow, contributing the preface and a story, which was made out of his farce l The Lamplighter.' In November 1837 Chapman & Hall agreed that he should have a share
after five years in the copyright of ' Pick- wick,' on condition that he should write a similar book, for which he was to receive 3,000/., besides having the whole copyright after five years. Upon the success of ' Ni- cholas Nickleby,' written in fulfilment of this agreement, the publishers paid him an addi- tional 1,5001. in consideration of a further agreement, carried out by * Master Hum- phrey's Clock.' Dickens was to receive 50/. for each weekly number, and to have half the profits ; the copyright to be equally shared after five years. He had meanwhile agreed with Richard Bentley (1794-1871) [q. v.] (22 Aug. 1836) to edit a new magazine from January 1837, to which he was to supply a story ; and had further agreed to write two other stories for the same publisher. * Oliver Twist' appeared in ' Bentley's Miscellany' in accordance with the first agreement, and, on the conclusion of the story, he handed over the editorship to Harrison Ainsworth. In September 1837, after >some misunderstand- ings, it was agreed to abandon one of the novels promised to Bentley, Dickens under- taking to finish the other, ' Barnaby Rudge/ by November 1838. In June 1840 Dickens bought the copyright of ' Oliver Twist ' from Bentley for 2,250/., and the agreement for 'Barnaby Rudge' was cancelled. Dickens then sold ' Barnaby Rudge ' to Chapman & Hall, receiving 3,000/. for the use of the copy- right until six months after the publication of the last number. The close of this series of agreements freed him from conflicting and harassing responsibilities.
The weekly appearance of ' Master Hum- phrey's Clock 7 had imposed a severe strain. He agreed in August 1841 to write a new novel in the ' Pickwick ' form, for which he was to receive 200/. a month for twenty numbers, besides three-fourths of the profits. He stipu- lated, however, in order to secure the much- needed rest, that it should not begin until November 1842. During the previous twelve months he was to receive 150/. a month, to be deducted from his share of the profits. When first planning 'Master Humphrey's Clock ' he had talked of visiting America to obtain materials for descriptive papers. The publication of the ' Old Curiosity Shop ' had brought him a letter from Washington Ir- ' ving ; his fame had spread beyond the At- lantic, and he resolved to spend part of the interval before his next book in the United States. He had a severe illness in the autumn of 1841 ; he had to undergo a surgical opera- tion, and was saddened by the sudden death of his wife's brother and mother. He sailed from Liverpool 4 Jan. 1842. He reached Boston on 21 Jan. 1842, and travelled by
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New York and Philadelphia to Washington and Richmond. Returning to Baltimore, he started for the west, and went by Pittsburg and Cincinnati to St. Louis. He returned to Cincinnati, and by the end of April was j at the falls of Niagara. He spent a month i in Canada, performing in some private thea- tricals at Montreal, and sailed for England about the end of May. The Americans re- j ceived him with an enthusiasm which was at times overpowering, but which was soon mixed with less agreeable feelings. Dickens i had come prepared to advocate international copyright, though he emphatically denied, in answer to an article by James Spedding in the * Edinburgh Review ' for January 1843, that he had gone as a ' missionary ' in that cause. His speeches on this subject met with little response, and the general opinion was in favour of continuing to steal. As a staunch abolitionist he was shocked by the sight of slavery, and disgusted by the general desire in the free states to suppress any discussion of the dangerous topic. To the average English- man the problem seemed a simple question of elementary morality. Dickens's judgment of America was in fact that of the average Englishman, whose radicalism increased his disappointment at the obvious weaknesses of the republic. He differed from ordinary ob- servers only in the decisiveness of his utter- ances and in the astonishing vivacity of his impressions. The Americans were still pro- vincial enough to fancy that the first impres- sions of a young novelist were really of im- portance. Their serious faults and the super- ficial roughness of the half-settled districts thoroughly disgusted him; and though he strove hard to do justice to their good quali- ties, it is clear that he returned disillusioned and heartily disliking the country. The feeling is still shown in his antipathy to the northern states during the war (Letters, ii. 203, 240). In the ' American Notes,' pub- lished in October 1842, he wrote under constraint upon some topics, but gave careful accounts of the excellent institutions, which are the terror of the ordinary tourist in Ame- rica. Four large editions were sold by the end of the year, and the book produced a good deal of resentment. When Macready visited America in the autumn of 1843, Dickens refused to accompany him to Liverpool, thinking that the actor would be injured by any indications of friendship with the author of the ' Notes ' and of ' MaVtin Chuzzlewit.' The first of the twenty monthly numbers of this novel appeared in January 1843. The book shows Dickens at his highest power. Whether it has done much to enforce its intended moral, that selfishness is a bad thing,
may be doubted. But the humour and the tragic power are undeniable. Pecksniff and Mrs. Gamp at once became recognised types of character, and the American scenes, re- vealing Dickens's real impressions, are perhaps the most surprising proof of his unequalled power of seizing characteristics at a glance. Yet for some reason the sale was compara- tively small, never exceeding twenty-three thousand copies, as against the seventy thou- sand of l Master Humphrey's Clock.'
After Dickens's return to England, his sister- in-law,Miss Georgina Hogarth, became, as she remained till his death, an inmate of his household. He made an excursion to Corn- wall in the autumn of 1842 with Maclise, Stanfield, and Forster, in the highest spirits, ' choking and gasping, and bursting the buckle off the back of his stock (with laughter) all the way.' He spent his summers chiefly at Broadstairs, and took a leading part in many social gatherings and dinners to his friends. He showed also a lively interest in bene- volent enterprises,especially in ragged schools. In this and similar work he was often as- sociated with Miss Coutts, afterwards Baro- ness Burdett-Coutts, and in later years he gave much time to the management of a house for fallen women established by her in Shepherd's Bush. He was always ready to throw himself heartily into any philan- thropical movement, and rather slow to see any possibility of honest objection. His im- patience of certain difficulties about the rag- ged schools raised by clergymen of the esta- blished church led him for a year or two to join the congregation of a Unitarian minister, Mr. Edward Tagart. For the rest of his life his sympathies, we are told, were chiefly with the church of England, as the least sectarian of religious bodies, and he seems to have held that every dissenting minister was a Stiggins. • It is curious that the favourite author of the middle classes should have been so hostile to their favourite form of belief.
The relatively small sale of ' Chuzzlewit ' led to difficulties with his publishers. The ' Christmas Carol,' which appeared at Christ- mas 1843, was the first of five similar books which have been enormously popular, as none of his books give a more explicit state- ment of what he held to be the true gospel of the century. He was, however, greatly disappointed with the commercial results. Fifteen thousand copies were sold,and brought him only 726/., a result apparently due to the too costly form in which they were pub- lished. Dickens expressed a dissatisfaction, which resulted in a breach with Messrs. Chap- man & Hall and an agreement with Messrs. Bradbury & Evans, who were to advance
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2,800/. and have a fourth share of all his writings for the next eight years. Dickens's irritation under these worries stimulated his characteristic restlessness. He had many claims to satisfy. His family was rapidly increasing ; his fifth child was born at the beginning of 1844. Demands from more dis- tant relations were also frequent, and though he received what, for an author, was a very large income, he thought that he had worked chiefly for the enrichment of others. He also "felt the desire to obtain wider experience natural to one who had been drawing so freely upon his intellectual resources. He resolved, therefore, to economise and refresh his mind in Italy.
Before starting he presided, in February 1844, at the meetings of the Mechanics' In- stitution in Liverpool and the Polytechnic in Birmingham. He wrote some radical articles in the ' Morning Chronicle.' After the usual farewell dinner at Greenwich, where J. M. W. Turner attended and Lord Normanby took the chair, he started for Italy, reaching Mar- seilles 14 July 1844. On 16 July he settled in a villa at Albaro, a suburb of Genoa, and set to work learning Italian. He afterwards moved to the Peschiere Palace in Genoa. There, though missing his long night walks in London streets, he wrote the ' Chimes/ and came back to London to read it to his friends. He started 6 Nov., travelled through Northern Italy, and reached London at the end of the month. He read the ' Chimes ' at Forster's house to Carlyle, Stanfield, Maclise, Laman Blanchard, Douglas Jerrold, Fox, Harness, and Dyce. He then returned to Genoa. In the middle of January he started with his wife on a journey to Rome, Naples, and Florence. He returned to Genoa for two months, and then crossed to St. Gothard, and returned to England at the end of June 1845. On coming home he took up a scheme for a private theatrical performance, which had been started on the night of reading the * Chimes.' He threw himself into this with his usual vigour. Jonson's ' Every Man in his Humour' was performed on 21 Sept. at Fanny Kelly's theatre in Dean Street. Dickens took the part of Bobadil, Forster appear- ing as Kitely, Jerrold as Master Stephen, and Leech as Master Matthew. The play succeeded to admiration, and a public per- ! formance was afterwards given for a charity. | Dickens is said by Forster to have been a very vivid and versatile rather than a finished actor, but an inimitable manager. His con- \ tributions to the ' Morning Chronicle ' seem to have suggested his next undertaking, the only one in which he can be said to have de- ! cidedly failed. He became first editor of the !
i ' Daily News,' the first number of which ap- | peared 21 Jan. 1846. He had not the neces- sary qualifications for the function of editor of a political organ. On 9 Feb. he resigned his post, to which Forster succeeded for a time. He continued to contribute for about three months longer, publishing a series of. letters descriptive of his Italian journeys. His most remarkable contribution was a series of letters on capital punishment. (For the fullest account of his editorship see WAKD, pp. 68, 74.) He then gave up the connection, resolving to pass the next twelve months in Switzerland, and there to write another book on the old model. He left England on 31 May, having previously made a rather singular overture to government for an appointment to the paid magistracy of London, and hav- ing also taken a share in starting the General Theatrical Fund. He reached Lausanne 11 June 1846, and took a house called Rose- mont. Here he enjoyed the scenery and sur- rounded himself with a circle of friends, some of whom became his intimates through life. He specially liked the Swiss people. He now began ' Dombey,' and worked at it vigorously, though feeling occasionally his oddly cha- racteristic craving for streets. The absence of streets ' worried him * in a most singular manner,' and he was harassed by having on hand both ' Dombey ' and his next Christmas book, 'The Battle of Life,' For a partial remedy of the first evil he made a short stay at Geneva at the end of September. The 'Battle of Life' was at last completed, and he was cheered by the success of the first numbers ! of 'Dombey.' In November he started for ! Paris, where he stayed for three months. He 1 made a visit to London in December, when he arranged for a cheap issue of his writings, which began in the following year. He was finally brought back to England by an illness of his eldest son, then at King's College School. His house in Devonshire Terrace was still let to a tenant, and he did not re- turn there until September 1847. ' Dombey and Son ' had a brilliant success. The first five numbers, with the death, truly or falsely pathetic, of Paul Dombey, were among his most striking pieces of work, and the book has had great popularity, though it after- wards took him into the kind of social satire in which he was always least successful. For the first half-year he received nearly 3,000/., and henceforth his pecuniary affairs were pro- sperous and savings began. Hefound time dur- ing its completion for gratifying on a large scale his passion for theatrical performances. In 1847 a scheme was started for the benefit of Leigh Hunt. Dickens became manager of a company which performed Jonson's comedy
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at Manchester and Liverpool in July 1847, ' and added four hundred guineas to the benefit i fund. In 1848 it was proposed to buy Shake- speare's house at Stratford-on-Avon and to , endow a curatorship to be held by Sheridan j u. Knowles. Though this part of the scheme | rich dropped, the projected performances were bout given for Knowles's benefit. The l Merry j 61 Wives of Windsor/ in which Dickens played j Shallow, Lemon Falstaff, and Forster Master 3 Ford, was performed at Manchester, Liver- pool, Edinburgh, Birmingham, and Glasgow, the gross profits from nine nights being 2,55 1/, i In November 1850 ' Every Man in his Hu- j mour ' was again performed at Knebworth, j Lord Lytton's house. The scheme for a 'Guild j of Literature and Art ' was suggested at j Knebworth. In aid of the funds, a comedy by j Lytton, * Not so bad as we seem,' and a farce j by Dickens and Lemon, ' Mr. Nightingale's j Diary,' were performed at the Duke of Devon- shire's house in London (27 May 1851), when the queen and prince consort were present. Similar performances took place during 1851 and 1852 at various towns, ending with Man- chester and Liverpool. A dinner, with Lyt- ton in the chair, at Manchester had a great success, and the guild was supposed to be effectually started. It ultimately broke down, though Dickens and Bulwer Lytton were en- thusiastic supporters. During this period Dickens had been exceedingly active. The ' Haunted Man or Ghostly Bargain,' the idea of which had occurred to him at Lau- sanne, was now written and published with great success at Christmas 1848. He then began ' David Copperfield,' in many respects the most satisfactory of his novels, and espe- cially remarkable for the autobiographical element, which is conspicuous in so many suc- ^essful fictions. It contains less of the purely farcical or of the satirical caricature than most of his novels, and shows his literary genius mellowed by age without loss of spon- taneous vigour. It appeared monthly from May 1849 to November 1850. The sale did not exceed twenty-five thousand copies ; but the book made its mark. He was now ac- _ cepted by the largest class of readers as the ~ undoubted leader among English novelists. While it was proceeding he finally gave shape to apian long contemplated for a weekly jour- nal. It was announced at the close of 1849, when Mr. W. H. Wills was selected as sub- editor, and continued to work with him until compelled to retire by ill-health in 1868. After many difficulties, the felicitous name, * Household Words/ was at last selected, and the first number appeared 30 March 1849, with the beginning of a story by Mrs. Gas- kell. During the rest of his life Dickens
gave much of his energy to this journal and its successor, 'All the Year Round.' He gathered many contributors, several of whom became intimate friends. He spared no pains in his editorial duty ; he frequently amended his contributors' work and occasionally in- serted passages of his own. He was singularly quick and generous in recognising and en- couraging talent in hitherto unknown writers. Many of the best of his minor essays appeared in its pages. Dickens's new relation to his readers helped to extend the extraordinary popularity which continued to increase dur- ing his life. On the other hand, the excessive strain which it involved soon began to tell seriously upon his strength. In 1848 he had been much grieved by the loss of his elder sister Fanny. On 31 March 1851 his father, for whom in 1839 he had taken a house in Exeter, died at Malvern. Dickens, after at- tending his father's death, returned to town and took the chair at the dinner of the Gene- ral Theatrical Fund 14 April 1851. After his speech he was told of the sudden death of his infant daughter, Dora Annie (born 16 Aug. 1850). Dickens left Devonshire Ter- race soon afterwards, and moved into Tavi- stock House, Tavistock Square. Here, in November 1851, he began i Bleak House/ which was published from March 1852 to September 1853. It was followed by ' Hard Times/ which appeared in ' Household Words' between 1 April and 12 Aug. 1854 ; and by 1 Little Dorrit/ which appeared in monthly numbers from January 1856 to June 1857. Forster thinks that the first evidences of excessive strain appeared during the compo- sition of l Bleak House.' ' The spring/ says Dickens, ' does not seem to fly back again directly, as it always did when I put my own work aside and had nothing else to do.' The old buoyancy of spirit is decreasing ; the hu- mour is often forced and the mannerism more strongly marked ; the satire against the court of chancery, the utilitarians, and the * cir- cumlocution office' is not relieved by the irresistible fun of the former caricatures, nor strengthened by additional insight. It is superficial without being good-humoured. Dickens never wrote carelessly; he threw his whole energy into every task which he undertook ; and the undeniable vigour of his books, the infallible instinct with which he gauged the taste of his readers, not less than his established reputation, gave him an in- creasing popularity. The sale of l Bleak House ' exceeded thirty thousand ; * Hard Times ' doubled the circulation of ' House- hold Words ; ' and ' Little Dorrit ' ' beat even " Bleak House" out of the field; ' thirty-five thousand copies of the second number were
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d. * Bleak House ' contained sketches of ' Landor as Lawrence Boythorn, and of Leigh I Hunt as Harold Skimpole. Dickens defended himself for the very unpleasant caricature i of Hunt in ' All the Year Round,' after Hunt's death. While Hunt was still living, Dickens had tried to console him by explaining away the likeness as confined to the flatter- ing part ; but it is impossible to deny that he gave serious ground of offence. During this period Dickens was showing signs of increasing restlessness. He sought relief from his labours at ' Bleak House ' by spending ! three months at Dover in the autumn of 1852. In the beginning of 1853 he received a tes- timonial at Birmingham, and undertook in return to give a public reading at Christmas on behalf of the New Midland Institute. He read two of his Christmas books and made a great success. He was induced, after some hesitation, to repeat the experiment several times in the next few years. The summer of 1853 was spent at Boulogne, and in the autumn he made a two months' tour through Switzerland and Italy, with Mr. Wilkie Col- lins and Augustus Egg. In 1854 and 1856 he again spent summers at Boulogne, gaining materials for some very pleasant descriptions ; and from November 1855 to May 1856 he was ^ at Paris, working at ' Little Dorrit.' Dur- ing 1855 he found time to take part in some political agitations.
In March 1856 Dickens bought Gadshill Place. When a boy at Rochester he had conceived a childish aspiration to become its owner. On hearing that it was for sale in 1855, he began negotiations for its purchase. He bought it with a view to occasional occu- pation, intending to let it in the intervals ; but he became attached to it, spent much money on improving it, and finally in 1860 sold Tavistock House and made it his per- manent abode. He continued to improve it till the end of his life.
In the winter of 1856-7 Dickens amused himself with private theatricals at Tavistock House, and after the death of Douglas Jer- rold (6 June 1857) got up a series of per- formances for the benefit of his friend's family, one of which was Mr. Wilkie Collins's ' Frozen Deep,' also performed at Tavistock House. For the same purpose he read the ' Christmas Carol ' at St. Martin's Hall (30 June 1857), with a success which led him to carry out a • plan, already conceived, of giving public read- ings on his own account. He afterwards made an excursion with Mr. Wilkie Collins in the north of England, partly described in 1 A Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices.'
A growing restlessness and a craving for any form of distraction were connected with
domestic unhappiness. In the beginning of 1858 he was preparing his public readings. Some of his friends objected, but he decided to undertake them, partly, it would seem, from the desire to be fully occupied. He gave a reading, 15 April 1858, for the benefit of the Children's Hospital in Great Ormond Street, in which he was keenly interested, and on 29 April gave the first public reading for his own benefit. This was immediately followed by the separation from his wife. The eldest son lived with the mother, whil e the rest of the children remained with Dickens. Car- lyle, mentioning the newspaper reports upon this subject to Emerson, says : ' Fact of separa- tion, I believe, is true, but all the rest is mere lies and nonsense. No crime and no misde- meanor specifiable on either side ; unhappy to- gether, these two, good many years past, and they at length end it' (CARLYLE and EMER- SON, Correspondence, ii. 269). Dickens chose to publish a statement himself in l Household Words,' 12 June 1858. He entrusted another and far more indiscreet letter to Mr. Arthur Smith, who now became the agent for his public readings, which was to be shown, if ne- cessary, in his defence. It was published with- out his consent in the ' New York Tribune.' The impropriety of both proceedings needs no comment. But nothing has been made ' public which would justify any statement as to the merits of the question. Dickens'^ publication in * Household Words,' and their refusal to publish the same account in ' Punch,' led to a quarrel with his publishers, which ended in his giving up the paper. He began an exactly similar paper, called ' All the Year Round ' (first number 30 April 1859), and returned to his old publishers, Messrs. Chapman & Hall. Dickens seems to have thought that some public statement was made necessary by the quasi-public character which he now assumed. From this time his read- ings became an important part of his work. They formed four series, given in 1858-9, in 1861-3, in 1866-7, and in 1868-70. They finally killed him, and it is impossible not ta regret that he should have spent so much energy in an enterprise not worthy of his best powers. He began with sixteen nights at St. Martin's Hall, from 29 April to 22 July 1858. A provincial tour of eighty-seven read- ings followed, including Ireland and Scotland; He gave a series of readings in London in the beginning of 1859, and made a provincial tour in October following. He was everywhere received with enthusiasm ; he cleared 300/. a week before reaching Scotland, and in Scot- land made 500/. a week. The readings were from the Christmas books, ' Pickwick,' ' Dom- bey,' ' Chuzzlewit,' and the Christmas num-
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bers of ' Household Words.' The Christmas numbers in his periodicals, and especially in
* All the Year Round,' had a larger circula- tion than any of his writings, those in • All the Year Round ' reaching three hundred thou- sand copies. Some of his most charming papers appeared, as the ' Uncommercial Tra- veller,' in the last periodical. For his short story, * Hunted Down,' first printed in the
* New York Ledger,' afterwards in ' All the Year Round,' he received 1,000/. This and a similar sum, paid for the ' Holiday Romance ' and 'George Silverman's Explanation' in a child's magazine published by Mr. Fields and in the ' Atlantic Monthly,' are mentioned by Forster as payments unequalled in the history of literature.
In March 1861 he began a second series of readings in London, and after waiting to finish ' Great Expectations ' in ' All the Year Round,' he made another tour in the autumn and winter. He read again in St. James's Hall in the spring of 1862, and gave some readings at Paris in 'January 1863. The success was enormous, and he had an offer of 10,000/., ' afterwards raised,' for a visit to Australia. He hesitated for a time, but the plan was finally abandoned, and America, which had been suggested, was closed by the civil war. For a time he returned to writing. The 'Tale of Two Cities ' had ap- peared in ' All the Year Round ' during his first series of readings (April to Novem- ber 1859). ' Great Expectations ' appeared in the same journal from December 1860 to August 1861, during part of the second series. He now set to work upon ' Our Mu- tual Friend,' which came out in monthly numbers from May 1864 to November 1865. It succeeded with the public ; over thirty thousand copies of the first number were sold a-'. Scarting, and, though there was a drop in the sale of the second number, this circulation was much exceeded. The gloomy river scenes in this and in ' Great Expecta- tions ' show Dickens's full power, but both stories are too plainly marked by flagging invention and spirits. Forster publishes ex- tracts from a book of memoranda kept from 1855 to 1865, in which Dickens first began to preserve notes for future work. He seems to have felt that he could no longer rely upon spontaneous suggestions of the moment.
His mother died in September 1863, and his son Walter, for whom Miss Coutts had obtained a cadetship in the 26th native in- fantry, died at Calcutta on 31 Dec. following.
He began a third series of readings under ominous symptoms. In February 1865 he had a severe illness. He ever afterwards suffered from a lameness in his left foot,
which gave him great pain and puzzled his\ physicians. On 9 June 1865 he was in a terrible railway accident at Staplehurst. The carriage in which he travelled left the line, but did not, with others, fall over the via- duct. The shock to his nerves was great and permanent, and he exerted himself excessively to help the sufferers. The accident is vividly described in his letters (ii. 229-33). In spite of these injuries he never spared himself; after sleepless nights he walked distances too great for his strength, and he now undertook a series of readings which involved greater labour than the previous series. He was anxious to make a provision for his large fa- mily,and, probably conscious that his strength would not long be equal to such performances, he resolved, as Forster says, to make the most money possible in the shortest time without regard to labour. Dickens was keenly affected by the sympathy of his audience, and the visible testimony to his extraordinary popularity and to his singular dramatic power was no doubt a powerful attraction to a man who was certainly not without vanity, and who had been a popular idol almost from boyhood.
After finishing ' Our Mutual Friend,' he accepted (in February 1866) an offer, from Messrs. Chappell of Bond Street, of 507. a night for a series of thirty readings. The ar- rangements made it necessary that the hours not actually spent at the reading-desk or in bed should be chiefly passed in long railway journeys. He began in March and ended in June 1866. In August he made a new agree- ment for forty nights at 60/. a night, or 2,500/. for forty-two nights. These readings took ! place between January and May 1867. The success of the readings again surpassed all precedent, and brought many invitations from America. Objections made by W. H. Wills and Forster were overruled. Dickens said that he must go at once if he went at all, to avoid clashing with the presidential election of 1868. He thought that by going he could realise ' a sufficient fortune.' He ' did not want money,' but the ' likelihood of making a very great addition to his capital in half a year ' was an ' immense consideration.' In July Mr. Dolby sailed to America as his agent. An inflam mation of the foot, followed by erysipelas, gave a warning which was not heeded. On 1 Oct. 1867 he telegraphed his acceptance of the engagement, and after a great farewell banquet at Freemasons' Hall (2 Nov.), at which Lord Lytton presided, he sailed for Boston 9 Nov. 1867, landing on the 19th.
Americans had lost some of their pro- vincial sensibility, and were only anxious to
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show that old resentments were forgotten. ; (J. T. FIELDS, p. 24(5). He passed the — ;
Dickens first read in Boston on 2 Dec.; thence | at Gadshill, leaving it occasionally to atte! and
he went to New York ; he read afterwards at
Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, again
at Philadelphia, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo,
Springfield, Portland, New Bedford, and
finally at Boston and New York again.
He received a public dinner at New York
(18 April), and reached England in the first
week of May 1868. He made nearly 20,0007.
in America, but at a heavy cost in health.
He was constantly on the verge of a break-
a few meetings, and working at his His last readings were given at St. James's Hall from January to March. On 1 March he took a final leave of his hearers in a few graceful words. In April appeared the first number of ' Edwin Drood.' In the same month he appeared for the last time in public, taking the cha
lair at the newsvendors' dinner, and replying for ' literature ' at the dinner of the Royal Academy (30 April), when he
down. He naturally complimented Ameri- : spoke feelingly of the death of his old friend cans, not only for their generous hospitality, | Maclise. He was at work upon his novel at but for the many social improvements since Gadshill in June, and showed unusual fatigue, his previous visits, though politically he saw On 8 June he was working in the ' chalet/ little to admire. He promised that no future j which had been presented to him in 1859 by edition of his ' Notes ' or < Chuzzlewit ' should | Fechter, and put up as a study in his garden, be issued without a mention of the improve- He came into the house about six o'clock, ments which had taken place in America, or and, after a few words to his sister-in-law, in his state of mind. As a kind of thank- I fell to the ground. There was an effusion offering, he had a copy of the l Old Curiosity j on the brain; he never spoke again, and died Shop ' printed in raised letters, and presented ; at ten minutes past six on 9 June 1870. He it to an American asylum for the blind. was buried with all possible simplicity in
Unfortunately Dickens was induced upon | Westminster Abbey 14 June following, his return to give a final series of readings Dickens had ten children by his wife : in England. He was to receive 8,0007. for a Charles, born 1837 ; Mary, born 1838 ; Kate, hundred readings. They began in October born 1839, afterwards married to Charles
Allston Collins [q. v.], and now Mrs. Peru- gini; Walter Landor, born 1841, died 12 Dec. 1863 (see above) ; Francis Jeffrey, born 1843; Alfred Tennyson, born 1845, settled in Aus- tralia ; Sydney Smith Haldemand, born 1847, in the navy, buried at sea 2 May 1867 ; Henry Fielding, born 1849 ; Dora Annie, born 1850, died 14 April 1851 ; and Edward Bulwer Lytton, born 1852, settled in Australia.
Dickens's appearance is familiar by in- numerable photographs. Among portraits
1868. Dickens had preferred as a novelty a reading of the murder in ' Oliver Twist.' He had thought of this as early as 1863, but it was ' so horrible ' that he was then ' afraid to try it in public ' (Letters, ii. 200). The performance was regarded by Forster as in itself ' illegitimate,' and Forster's protest led to a ' painful correspondence.' In any case, it involved an excitement and a degree of physical labour which told severely upon his declining strength. He was to give weekly
readings in London alternately with readings ' maybe mentioned (1) by Maclise in 1839 (en-
in the country. In February 1869 he was forced to suspend his work under medical advice. After a few days' rest he began again, in spite of remonstrances from his friends and family. At last he broke down at Preston. On 23 April Sir Thomas Watson held a con- sultation with Mr. Beard, and found that he had been l on the brink of an attack of paralysis of his left side, and possibly of apoplexy,' due to overwork, worry, and ex- citement. He was ordered to give up his readings, though after some improvement Sir Thomas consented to twelve readings with- out railway travelling, which Dickens was anxious to give as some compensation to Messrs. Chappell for their disappointment. In the same autumn he began f Edwin Drood.' He was to receive 7,5007. for twenty-five thousand copies, and fifty thousand were sold during his life. It ' very, very far outstripped every one of its predecessors'
graved as frontispiece to l Nicholas Nickleby '), original in possession of Sir Alfred Jodrell of Bayfield, Norfolk ; (2) pencil drawing by Maclise in 1842 (with his wife and sister) ; (3) oil-painting by E. M. Ward in 1854 (in possession of Mrs. Ward); (4) oil-painting by Ary Scheffer in 1856 (in National Portrait Gallery) ; (5) oil-painting by W. P. Frith in 1859 (in Forster collection at South Ken- sington). Dickens was frequently compared in later life to a bronzed sea captain. In early portraits he has a dandified appearance, and was always a little over-dressed. He pos- sessed a wiry frame, implying enormous ner- vous energy rather than 'muscular strength, and was most active in his habits, though not really robust. He seems to have over- taxed his strength by his passion for walk- ing. All who knew him, from Carlyle down- wards, speak of his many fine qualities : his generosity, sincerity, and kindliness. He
bers of
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fV^Sitensely fond of his children (see Mrs. ^J^kens's interesting account in Cornhill ' Magazine, January 1880) ; he loved dogs, and had a fancy for keeping large and even- tually savage mastiffs and St. Bernards ; and he was kind even to contributors. His weaknesses are sufficiently obvious, and are reflected in his writings. If literary fame could be safely measured by popularity with the half-educated, Dickens must claim the highest position among English novelists. It is said, apparently on authority (Mr. Mow- bray Morris in Fortnightly Review for De- cember 1882) that 4,239,000 volumes of his works had been sold in England in the twelve years after his death. The criticism of more severe critics chiefly consists in the assertion that his merits are such as suit the half- educated. They admit his fun to be irresis- tible ; his pathos, they say, though it shows boundless vivacity, implies little real depth or tenderness of feeling; and his amazing powers of observation were out of proportion to his powers of reflection. The social and political views, which he constantly inculcates, imply a deliberate preference of spontaneous in- stinct to genuine reasoned conviction; his style is clear, vigorous, and often felicitous, but mannered and more forcible than deli- cate ; he writes too clearly for readers who cannot take a joke till it has been well ham- mered into their heads ; his vivid perception of external oddities passes into something like hallucination ; and in his later books the constant strain to produce effects only legi- timate when spontaneous becomes painful. His books are therefore inimitable caricatures of contemporary ' humours ' rather than the masterpieces of a great observer of human nature. The decision between these and more eulogistic opinions must be left to a future edition of this dictionary.
Dickens's works are : 1. ' Sketches by Boz, illustrative of Everyday Life and Everyday People,' 2 vols. 1835, 2nd series, 1 vol. De- cember 1836, illustrated by Cruikshank (from the ' Monthly Magazine,' the ' Morning ' and * Evening Chronicle,' ' Bell's Life in London,' and the ' Library of Fiction '). 2. ' Sunday under Three Heads : as it is ; as Sabbath-bills would make it ; as it might be. By Timothy Sparks,' illustrated by H. K. Browne, June 1836. 3. 'The Strange Gentleman,' a comic burletta in two parts 1837 (produced 29 Sept. 1836 at the St. James's Theatre). 4. ' The Vil- lage Coquettes,' a comic opera in two parts, December 1836 (songs separately in 1837).
5. ' Is she his Wife ? or Something Singular ; ' a comic burletta acted at St. James's Thea- tre, 6 March 1837, printed at Boston, 1877.
6. ' Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club,'
i November 1837 (originally in monthly num- bers from April 1836 to November 1837), illustrated by Seymour, Bass, and H. K. Browne. 7. ' Mudfog Papers,' in ' Bentley's Miscellany ' (1837-9) ; reprinted in 1880.
' 8. ' Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi ; edited by Boz,' 2 vols. 1838. 9. ' Oliver Twist ; or the Parish Boy's Progress,' 2 vols. October 1838 (in 'Bentley's Miscellany,' January 1837 to March 1839), illustrated by Cruikshank.
10. ' Sketches of Young Gentlemen,' illus- trated by H. K. Browne, 1838. 11. ' Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby,' Octo- ber 1839 (in monthly numbers April 1838 to October 1839). 12. -'Sketches of Young Couples, with an Urgent Remonstrance to the
I Gentlemen of England (being bachelors or widowers) at the present alarming Crisis,' 1840, illustrated by H. K. Browne. 13. ' Mas- ter Humphrey's Clock,' in eighty-eight weekly numbers, from 4 April 1840 to 27 Nov. 1841, first volume published September 1840 ; se- cond volume published March 1841 ; third November 1841 ; illustrated by George Cat- termole and H. K. Browne (' Old Curiosity Shop ' from vol. i. 37 to vol. ii. 223 ; ' Barnaby Rudge' from vol. ii. 229 to vol. iii. 420). 14. ' The Pic-Nic Papers,' by various hands, edited by Charles Dickens, who wrote the pre- face and the first story, ' The Lamplighter ' (the farce on which the story was founded was printed in 1879), 3 vols. 1841 (Dickens had nothing to do with the third volume, Letters,
11. 91). 15. 'American Notes for General Cir- culation,' 2 vols. 1842. 16. 'A Christmas Carol in Prose ; being a Ghost Story of Christmas,' illustrated by Leech, 1843. 17. 'The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit,' il- lustrated by H. K. Browne, July 1844 (ori- ginally in monthly numbers from January 1843 to July 1844). 18. ' Evenings of a Working Man,' by John Overs, with a pre- face relative to the author by Charles Dickens, 1844. 19. 'The Chimes; a Goblin Story of some Bells that Rang an Old Year out and a New Year in,' Christmas, 1844 ; illustrated by Maclise, Stanfield, R. Doyle, and J. Leech. 20. 'The Cricket on the Hearth; a Fairy Tale of Home,' Christmas, 1845 ; illustrated by Maclise, Stanfield, C. Landseer, R. Doyle, and J. Leech. 21. ' Pictures from Italy,' 1846 (originally in ' Daily News ' from Janu- ary to March 1846, where it appeared as a series of ' Travelling Letters written on the Road'). 22. 'The Battle of Life; a Love Story,' Ciiristmas, 1846 ; illustrated by Mac- lise, Stanfield, R. Doyle, and J. Leech. 23. ' Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son, Wholesale, Retail, and for Exportation,' April 1848; illustrated by H. K. Browne (originally in monthly numbers from October
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1846 to April 1848). 24. 'The Haunted Man, and the Ghost's Bargain ; a Fancy for Christ- mas Time/ Christinas, 1848 ; illustrated by Stanfield, John Tenniel, Frank Stone, and J. Leech. 25. 'The Personal History of David Copperfield/ November 1850; illus- trated by H.K. Browne (originally in monthly parts from May 1849 to November 1850). 26. 'Bleak House,' September 1853; illus- trated by H. K. Browne (originally in monthly numbers from March 1852 to Sep- tember 1853). 27. ' A Child's History of England/ 3 vols. 1854 (originally in ' House- hold Words ' from 25 Jan. 1851 to 10 Dec. i 1853). 28. ' Hard Times for these Times/ August 1854 (originally in 'Household Words' from 1 April to 12 Aug. 1854). 29. ' Little Dorrit/ June 1857 ; illustrated by H. K. Browne (originally in monthly numbers from December 1855 to June 1857). 30. 'A Tale of Two Cities/ November 1859 ; illustrated by H. K. Browne (originally in 'All the Year Round/ from 30 April to 26 Nov. 1859). I 31. ' Great Expectations/ 3 vols. August 1861 ; illustrated (when published in one volume 1862) by Marcus Stone (originally in 'All the Year Round ; from 1 Dec. I860 to 3 Aug. 1861). 32. 'Our Mutual Friend/ November 1865 ; illustrated by Marcus Stone , (originally in monthly numbers, May 1864 to November 1865). 33. 'Religious Opinions of the late Rev. Chauncy Hare Townshend/ edited by Charles Dickens, 1869. 34. ' The Mystery of Edwin Drood ' (unfinished) ; il- lustrated by S. L. Fildes (six numbers from April to September 1870).
The following appeared in the Christmas numbers of ' Household Words ' and ' All the Year Round : ' ' A Christmas Tree/ in Christ- mas ' Household Words/ 1850 ; ' What Christmas is as we grow Older/ in ' What Christmas is/ ib. 1851 ; ' The Poor Rela- tion's Story' and 'The Child's Story/ in
* Stories for Christmas/^. 1852 ; ' The School- boy's Story ' and ' Nobody's Story/ in ' Christ- mas Stories/ ib. 1853; 'In the Old City of Rochester/ ' The Story of Richard Double- dick/ and ' The Road/ in ' The Seven Poor Travellers/ #. 1854; 'Myself/ ' The Boots/ and ' The Till/ in ' The Holly Tree/ ib. 1855 ; 4 The Wreck/ in ' The Wreck of the Golden Mary/ ib. 1856 ;' The Island of Silver Store ' and "' The Rafts on the River/ in ' The Perils of certain English Prisoners/ ib. 1857 ;
* Going into Society/ in ' A House to Let/ ib. 1 858 ; ' The Mortals in the House ' and ' The Ghost in Master B.'s Room/ in ' The Haunted House/ ' All the Year Round/ 1859 ; ' The Village' (nearly the whole), 'The Money/ and ' The Restitution/ in ' A Message from the Sea/ ib. 1860; 'Picking up Soot and
Cinders/ ' Picking up Miss Kimmeens/ and ' Picking up the Tinker/ in ' Tom Tiddler's Ground/ ib. 1861 ; ' His Leaving it till called for/ ' His Boots/ ' His Brown Paper Parcel/ and ' His Wonderful End/ in ' Somebody's Luggage/ ib. 1862 ; ' How Mrs. Lirriper carried on the Business/ and ' How the Par- lour added a few Words/ in ' Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings/ ib. 1863 : ' Mrs. Lirriper relates how she went on and went over ' and ' Mrs. Lirriper relates how Jemmy topped up/ in 'Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy/ ib. 1864; 'To be Taken Immediately/ ' To be Taken for Life/ and ' The Trial/ in ' Dr. Marigold's Prescrip- tions/ ib. 1865 ; ' Barbox Brothers/ 'Barbox Brothers & Co.' ' The Main Line/ the ' Boy at Mugby/ and ' No. 1 Branch Line : the Signalman/ in ' Mugby Junction/ ib. 1866 ; ' No Thoroughfare ' (with Mr. Wilkie Collins), ib. 1867.
Besides these Dickens published the ' Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices ' (with Mr. Wilkie Collins) in ' Household Words ' for October 1857 ; ' Hunted Down ' (originally in the ' New York Ledger ') in ' All the Year Round/ August 1860 ; ' The Uncommercial Traveller ' (a series of papers from 28 Jan. to 13 Oct. 1860, collected in December 1860). Eleven fresh papers from the same were added to an edition in 1868, and seven more were written to 5 June 1869. A ' Holiday Ro- mance/ originally in ' Our Young Folks/ and ' George Silverman's Explanation/ originally in the ' Atlantic Monthly/ appeared in ' All the Year Round/ from 5 Jan. to 22 Feb. 1868. His last paper in ' All the Year Round ' was ' Lander's Life/ 5 June 1869. A list of various articles in newspapers, &c., is given in R. H. Shepherd's ' Bibliography/
The first collective edition of Dickens's works was begun in April 1847. The first- series closed in September 1852 ; a second closed in 1861 ; and a third in 1874. The first library edition began in 1857. The ' Charles Dickens ' edition began in America, and was issued in England from 1868 to 1870. ' Plays and Poems/ edited by R. H. Shepherd, were published in 1882, suppressed as containing copyright matter, and reissued without this in 1885. ' Speeches ' by the same in 1884.
For minuter particulars see ' Hints to Col- lectors/ by J. F. Dexter, in 'Dickens Me- mento/ 18'70; ' Hints to Collectors . . /by C. P.Johnson, 1885; 'Bibliography of Dickens/ by R. H. Shepherd, 1880 ; and ' Bibliography of the Writings of Charles Dickens/ by James Cook, 1879.
[Life of Dickens, by John Forster, 3 vols. 1872, 1874 ; Letters (edited by Miss Hogarth and Miss Dickens), 2 vols. 1880, vol. iii. 1882; Charles Dickens, by G. A. Sala(1870); Charles Dickens
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as I Knew Him, by George Dolby, 1885 ; Yester- days -with Authors, by James T. Fields, 1872; Charles Kent's Charles Dickens as a Header, 1872 ; Percy Fitzgerald's Recreations of a Lite- rary Man, 1882, pp. 48-172; E. Yates's Recol- lections and Experiences, 1884, pp. 90-128 ; Kate Field's Pen Photographs of C. Dickens's Readings, 1868 ; James Payn's Literary Recol- lections, 1884; Frith's Autobiography, 1887; Cornhill Mag. for January 1880, Charles Dickens at Home (by Miss Dickens) ; Macmillan's Mag. July 1870, In Memoriam, by Sir Arthur Helps; Macmillan's Mag. January 1871, Amateur Thea- tricals ; Gent. Mag. July 1870, In Memoriam, by Blanchard Jerrold; Gent. Mag. February 1871, Guild of Literature and Art, by R. H. Home; Dickensiana, by F. G. Kitton, 1886 ; Charles Dickens, by Frank T. Marzials, Great Writers series, 1887 ; Dickens, by A. W. Ward, in Men of Letters series, 1882 ; Childhood and Youth of Dickens, by Robert Langton, 1883.] L. S.
DICKENSON, JOHN (/U594), romance- writer, was the author of: 1. 'Arisbas, Eu- phues amidst his Slumbers, or Cupids Journey to Hell,' &c., 1594, 4to, dedicated ' To the right worshipfull Maister Edward Dyer, Es- quire.' 2. ' Greene in Conceipt. Nvew raised from his graue to Write the Tragique His- torie of Faire Valeria of London,' &c., 1598, 4to, with a woodcut on the title-page repre- senting Robert Greene in his shroud, writ- ing at a table. 3. ' The Shepheardes Com- plaint; a passionate Eclogue, written in English Hexameters : Wherevnto are an- nexed other Conceits,' &c., n. d. (circ. 1594), 4to, of which only one copy (preserved at Lamport Hall) is extant. Dickenson was a pupil in the school of Lyly and Greene. He had a light hand for verse (though little can be said in favour of his 'passionate Eclogue') and introduced some graceful lyrics into his romances. Three short poems from ' The Shepheardes Complaint ' are included in 1 England's Helicon,' 1600.
There was also a John Dickenson who re- sided in the Low Countries and published : 1. 'Deorum Consessus, siue Apollinis ac Mineruae querela,' &c., 1591, 8vo, of which there is a unique copy in the Bodleian Li- brary. 2. 'Specvlum Tragicvm, Regvm, Prin- cipvm & Magnatvm superioris saeculi cele- briorum ruinas exitusque calamitosos bre- viter complectens,' &c., Delft, 1601, 8vo, re- printed in 1602, 1603, and 1605. 3. ' Mis- cellanea ex Historiis Anglicanis concinnata,' &c.,Leyden, 1606, 4to. It is not clear whether this writer, whose latinity (both in verse and prose) has the charm of ease and elegance, is to be identified with the author of the romances. Dr. Grosart has included the romances among his ' Occasional Issues.'
[Grosart's Introduction to Dickenson's Works ;
I Collier's Bibl. Cat. i. 219-20; England's Helicon, ed. Bullen, p. xviii.] A. H. B.
DICKIE, GEORGE, M.D. (1812-1882), botanist, born at Aberdeen 23 Nov. 1812, was educated at Marischal College in that city, where he graduated A.M. in 1830, and pro- secuted the study of medicine in the univer- sities of Aberdeen and Edinburgh. From 1839 he lectured on botany for ten years in King's College, Aberdeen, and in that university for shorter periods on natural history and materia medica. In 1849 he was appointed professor of natural history in Belfast, where he taught botany, geology, physical geography, and zoo- logy. From this he was transferred in 1860 to the chair of botany at Aberdeen, which he held until 1877, when failing health caused his retirement.
He was a fellow of the Royal and Linnean Societies, and was a constant contributor to many scientific journals, as may be seen by reference to the list given in the Royal So- ciety's * Catalogue of Scientific Papers.' His separate works are : 1. ' Flora of Aberdeen,' in 1838. 2. ' Botanist's Guide to the Counties of Aberdeen, Banff, and Kincardine,' in 1860. 3. ' Flora of Ulster,' in 1864. In conjunction with Dr. M'Cosh he wrote 'Typical Forms and Special Ends in Creation,' 1856 ; he also supplied much information to Macgillivray's ( Natural History of Deeside and Braemar,r 1855, and certain arctic narratives. His earlier articles deal with vegetable morphology and physiology, but from 1844 onwards his atten- tion was increasingly devoted to algae, and during his later years this group entirely en- grossed his attention. His knowledge of marine algae was very extensive, and collec- tions which were received at Kew were regu- larly sent to him for determination and de- scription. In 1861 a severe illness withdrew him from active fieldwork, while bronchial troubles and increasing deafness made him an invalid during his later years. He died at Aberdeen on 15 July 1882.
[Proc. Linn. Soc. 1882-3, p. 40 ; Cat. Scientific Papers, H. 283, vii. 531.] B. D. J.
DICKINSON, CHARLES (1792-1842), bishop of Meath, was born in Cork in August 1792, being the son (the youngest but one of sixteen children) of a respectable citizen, whose father, an English gentleman from Cumberland, had in early life settled in that city. His mother, whose maiden name was Austen, was of an old family in the same part of Ireland. He was a precocious child, and his readiness at arithmetical calculation when only five or six years old was surprising. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1810, under the tutorship of the Rev. Dr. Mere-
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dith. Here lie had some able competitors in his class, which was called ' All the Talents,' especially Hercules Henry Graves, son of Dr. Graves, fellow of the college, and subse- quently regius professor of divinity and dean of Ardagh, and James Thomas O'Brien, subse- quently a fellow, and bishop of Ossory, Ferns, and Leighlin. In 1813 Dickinson was elected a scholar, and about the same time he began
Church Reform,' Dublin, 1833; 'An Appeal in behalf of Church Government,' London, 1840; * Correspondence with the Rev. Maurice James respecting Church Endowments/ 1833 ; * Conversation with two Disciples of Mr. Ir- ving,' 1836 ; and ' Letter to two Roman Ca- tholic Bishops [Murray and Doyle] on the subject of the Hohenlo'he Miracles,' Dublin, 1823. He was author likewise of the follow-
to take a leading part in the College Histori- ' ing : l Obituary Notice of Alexander Knox cal Society. He graduated B. A. in 1815, and Esq.,' in the 'Christian Examiner' (July
he stood for a fellowship unsuccessfully. A marriage engagement prevented him from again competing. In 1818 he entered into holy orders, and became curate of Castle-
was awarded the gold medal for distinguished 1831), xi. 562-4 ; and ' Vindication of a Me- answering at every examination during his morial respecting Church Property in Ire- undergraduate course. He became M.A. in land,' &c., Dublin, 1836
1820, and B.D. and D.D. in 1834. In 1817 m • fT> • , ^ ,- .., D.
[Kemains of Bishop Dickinson, with a Biogra- phical Sketch by John West, D.D., London, 1845; Dublin University Calendars; Todd's Ca- talogue of Dublin Graduates, 155 ; Cotton's Fasti , Ecclesise Hibernicse, iii. 125, v. 223; Slacker's knock, near Dublin, and in the following ; Contributions towards a proposed Bibliotheca year was appointed assistant chaplain of the ! Hibernica, No. vi.,in the Irish Ecclesiastical Ga- Magdalen Asylum, Dublin. In April 1820 I zette (April 1876), xviii. 115.] B. H. B.
he married Elizabeth, daughter of Abraham
Russell of Limerick, and sister of his friend and class-fellow, the late Archdeacon Rus- sell, by whom he had a numerous family. In the same year he succeeded to the chap- laincy of the Magdalen Asylum, which, how- ever, he resigned after a few months. In 1822 he accepted the offer of the chaplaincy of the Female Orphan House, Dublin. In 1832, while he held this chaplaincy, he first attracted the special notice of Archbishop Whately. The archbishop was frequently present at the lessons given by Dickinson in the asylum. Dickinson became one of the archbishop's chaplains, as assistant to Dr. Hinds ; and early in 1833, on Hinds's retire- ment, became domestic chaplain and secretary. In July 1833 the archbishop collated him to the vicarage of St. Anne's, Dublin, which he held with the chaplaincy. He was inti- mately associated with Whately till 1840. In October of that year he was promoted to the bishopric of Meath, and on 27 Dec. he was consecrated in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. He set about his new duties zeal- ously, but fell ill of typhus fever, and died 12 July 1842. There is a monument in Ard- braccan churchyard, co. Meath, where he is buried, andan inscription in St. Anne's Church, Dublin.
A memoir by his son-in-law, John West, D.D., has been published, with a selection from his sermons and tracts. It includes : ' Ten Sermons ; ' ' Fragment of a Charge in- tended to have been delivered on 12 July
DICKINSON or DICKENSON, ED- MUND, M.D. (1624-1707), physician and al- chemist, son of the Rev. William Dickinson, rector of Appleton in Berkshire, by his wife Mary, daughter of Edmund Colepepper, was born on 26 Sept. 1624. He received his pri- mary education at Eton, and in 1642 entered Merton College, Oxford, where he was ad- mitted one of the Eton postmasters. He took the degree of B.A. 22 June 1647, and was elected probationer-fellow of his college, ' in respect of his great merit and learning.' On 27 Nov. 1649 he had the degree of M.A. con- ferred upon him. Applying himself to the study of medicine, he obtained the degree of M.D. on 3 July 1656. About this time he made the acquaintance of Theodore Mundanus, a French adept in alchemy, who prompted him to devote his attention to chemistry. On leaving college he began to practise as a phy- sician in a house in High Street, Oxford, where he ' spent near twenty years practising in these parts ' (WooD, Athence, iv. 477). The wardens of the college made him superior reader of Linacre's lectures, in succession to Dr. Ly- dall, a post which he held for some years. •
He was elected honorary fellow of the College of Physicians in December 1664, but was not admitted a fellow till 1677. In 1684 he came up to London and settled in St. Mar- tin's Lane. Among his patients here was the Earl of Arlington, lord chamberlain, whom he was fortunate enough to cure of an ob-
stinate tumour. By him the doctor was re-
' Pastoral Epistle from his Holiness commended to the king (Charles II), who 'ope to some Members of the University appointed him one of his physicians in qrdi- ford,' 4th ed. London, 1836 ; ' Obser- j nary and physician to the household. The on Ecclesiastical Legislature and monarch being a great lover of chemistry took •v. D
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the doctor into special favour and had a laboratory built under the royal bedchamber, with communication by means of a private staircase. Here the king was wont to retire with the Duke of Buckingham and Dickin- son, the latter exhibiting many experiments for his majesty's edification. Upon the ac- cession of James II (1685), Dickinson was confirmed in his office as king's physician, and held it until the abdication of James (1688).
Being much troubled with stone, Dickin- son now retired from practice and spent the remaining nineteen years of his life in study and in the making of books. He died on 3 April 1707, aged 83, and was buried in the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, where a monument bearing an elaborate Latin in- scription was erected to his memory. While still a young man he published a book under the title of ' Delphi Phoanicizantes,' Oxford, 1665, in which he attempted to prove that the Greeks borrowed the story of the ' Pythian Apollo ' from the Hebrew scriptures. An- thony a Wood says that Henry Jacob, and not Dickinson, was the author of this book. This was followed by ' Diatriba de Noae in Italiam Adventu,' Oxford, 1655. In maturer age Dickinson published his notions of al- chemy, in which he seems to have believed, in * Epistola ad T. Mundanum de Quintessentia Philosophorum,' Oxford. 1686. The great work on which he spent his latest years was a system of philosophy set forth in a book entitled ' Physica vetus et vera,' Lond. 4to, 1702. In this laborious work, on which years had been spent, and part of which he had to write twice in consequence of an accident by fire to the manuscript, the author pretends to establish a philosophy founded on principles collected out of the < Pentateuch.' In a very confused manner he mixes up his notions on the atomic theory with passages from Greek and Latin writers as well as from the Bible. The book, however, attracted attention, and was published in Rotterdam, 4to, 1703, and in Leoburg, 12mo, 1.705. Besides these he left behind him in manuscript a treatise in the Latin on the ' Grecian Games,' which Blomberg published in the second edition of his life of the author. Evelyn went to see him and thus records the visit : ' I went to see Dr. Dickinson the famous chemist. We had a long conversation about the philosopher's elixir, which he believed attainable and had seen projection himself by one who went under the name of Mundanus, who sometimes came among the adepts, but was' unknown as to his country or abode ; of this the doctor has written a treatise in Latin, full of very astonishing relations. He is a very learned
person, formerly a fellow of St. John's Col- lege, Oxford, in which city he practised physic, but has now altogether given it over, and lives retired, being very old and infirm, yet continuing chymistry.'
[Wood's Athense Oxon. (Bliss), i. 45, iii. 331, 477, 610, 1030; Fasti, ii. 103, 121, 193; Biog. Brit. (Kippis); Dickinson's Life and Writings by Blomberg, 1737, 2nd edit. 1739; Watt's Bibl. Brit. ; Munk's Coll. of Phys. i. 394-6 ; Evelyn's Diary, ii. 375.] E. H.
DICKINSON, JAMES (1659-1741), quaker, born in 1659 at Lowmoor House, Dean, Cumberland, was the son of quaker parents of fair means and position, both of whom he lost when very young. He seems to have had more than the average education, and from his earliest years to have been very- susceptible to religious influences and some- what of a visionary. When nineteen he felt it his duty to become a quaker minister, of which body he was a birthright member. His first effort was at a presbyterian meeting at Tallentire, near Cockermouth; when being put out of the conventicle he continued his discourse through the window until thrown down and injured by the congregation. Till 1682 he chiefly laboured in the north of Eng- land, but in this year he visited Ireland and did much to strengthen the footing quakerism had already gained in Ulster. In 1669, after visiting Scotland, he went to New Jersey for a few months, and subsequently made a prolonged preaching excursion in England, frequently being ill-treated, but escaping im- prisonment. At an open-air meeting in the Isle of Portland he was seized by a constable and was dragged by the legs along the road and beaten till almost dead (see Piety Pro- moted}. On his recovery he visited Holland, being chased on the way by a Turkish ship. Dickinson claims to have had a ' sight of this strait ' and to have been assured that he should not be captured. As he could not speak Dutch, and was obliged to speak through an inter- preter, his visit was not successful. After another tour in England and Ireland he went into Scotland and laboured for some time with Robert Barclay of Ury, at whose death, which was occasioned by a disease contracted during this j ourney , he was present. Dickinson now sailed for Barbadoes in a ship which formed part of a convoy, the whole of which, with the exception of the ship he was in and two others, was captured by the French fleet, and these only escaped through a succession of fogs. After staying in Barbadoes a sufficient time to visit the different quaker meetings in the island, he went on to New York, and thence travelled through the New England states. Of this journey he gives a full and
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graphic account in his ' Journal.' At Salem he was successful in partially healing the dissensions the defection of George Keith had caused among the Friends. In 1692 he left for Barbadoes in a ship so leaky that he barely escaped shipwreck. He returned to Scotland in 1693, and then visited most of the quaker meetings in the south of that country and England. He shortly after- wards married a quakeress, whose name is not positively known ; and a few weeks after his marriage he went to London, when, hearing of the death of Queen Mary, he was 'commanded' to go through the streets, crying ' Wo, wo, wo from the Lord ! ' but does not appear to have been molested. In 1696 he again visited America, returning the following year, and from that time till 1702 chiefly laboured in Ireland. In 1713 he visited America for the last time, re- turning to England at the end of the follow- ing year, and until 1726, when he lost his wife, was engaged in a series of preaching : excursions in England and Ireland. He I had for some time been in a weak state of health, and his grief at the death of his wife brought on an attack of paralysis, which closed his active ministry, although he con- tinued to attend to the affairs of the Society of Friends in the north, and on several oc- casions was present at the yearly meeting in London. Until about a year before his death an increase in his disorder totally in- capacitated him. He was buried on 6 June 1741 in the Friends' burial-ground near his | house at Eaglesfield, Cumberland, having | been a minister for sixty-five years. He ' was a powerful and successful preacher, and ! his careful avoidance of party questions, his j humility, prudence, and blameless character caused him not only to escape persecution, but to be one of the most prominent and respected members of the second generation of quaker ministers. His writings, with the exception of his ' Journal 'published in 1745, are unimportant.
[Dickinson's Journal, W. & T. Evans's edition, 1848; George Fox's Journal, 1765; Besse's Sufferings; Smith's Catalogue of Friends' Books; Eutly's History of the Friends in Ireland ; Bowden's History of the Society of Friends in America.] A. C. B.
DICKINSON, JOHN (1815-1876), writer on India, the son of an eminent papermaker of Nash Mills, Abbots Langley, Hertfordshire — who with Henry Fourdrinier [q. v.] first patented a process for manufacturing paper of an indefinite length, and so met the increasing demands of the newspaper press — was born -on 28 Dec. 1815. In due time he was sent to Eton, and afterwards invited to take part in
his father's business. ' He had, however, no taste either for accounts or for mechanical processes ; and being in delicate health he was indulged in a wish to travel on the con- tinent, where, with occasional visits to nis friends at home, he spent several years, occu- pied in the study of languages, of art, and of foreign politics. His sympathies were en- tirely given to the struggling liberal party o«i the continent, in whose behalf he wrote de- sultory essays in periodicals of no great note. It was not till 1850 that by an irresistible impulse he found his vocation as an inde- pendent Indian reformer. His Uncle, General Thomas Dickinson, of the Bombay engineers, and his cousin, Sebastian Stewart Dickinson, encouraged and assisted John in the prose- cution of this career. In 1850 and 1851 a series of letters appeared in the * Times ' on the best means of increasing the produce and promoting the supply to English manufac- turing towns of Indian cotton. These were from Dickinson's pen, and were afterwards published in a collected form, as * Letters on the Cotton and Roads of Western India' (1851). A public works commission was ap- pointed by Lord Dalhousie the next year to inquire into the deficiencies of administration pointed out by Dickinson and his friends.
On 12 March 1853 a meeting was held in Dickinson's rooms, and a society was formed under the name of the India Reform Society. The debate in parliament that year on the renewal of the East India Company's charter gave the society and Dickinson, as its honorary secretary, constant occupation. Already in 1852 the publication of ' India, its Govern- ment under a Bureaucracy ' — a small volume of 209 pages — had produced a marked effect. It was reprinted in 1853 as one of a series of 1 India Reform Tracts,' and had a very large circulation. The maintenance of good faith and good will to the native states was the substance of all these writings. Public atten- tion was diverted from the subject for a time by the Crimean war, but was roused again in 1857 by the Indian mutiny. Dickinson wonked incessantly throughout the two years of mutiny and pacification and afterwards, when the transfer of the Indian government from the company to the crown was carried into effect. He spared neithertime nor money in various efforts to moderate public excite- ment, and to prevent exclusive attention to penal and repressive measures. With this view he organised a series of public meetings, which were all well attended. After 1859 the India Reform Society began to languish, and at a meeting in 1861 Mr. John Bright resigned the chairmanship, and carried by a unanimous vote a motion appointing Dickin-
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son his successor. The publication in 1864-5 of two pamphlets entitled ' Dhar not re- stored ' roused in Calcutta a feeling- of great indignation against the writer, Dickinson, who was stigmatised as a 'needy adven- turer.'
On the death of his father in 1869 Dickin- son, who inherited a large fortune, was much occupied in the management of his property, and being in weak health he gave a less close attention to the business of the society than he had done. Still, he kept alive to the last his interest in India, corresponding with Holkar, maharajah of Indore, with great re- gularity. He indignantly repelled the accu- sation made against Holkar in the affair of Colonel Durand [see DURAND, SIK HENRY MARION].
In 1872 Dickinson was deeply grieved by the death of his youngest son, and in 1875 felt still more deeply the loss of his wife, whom he did not long survive. On 23 Nov. 1876 he was found dead in his study, at 1 Upper Grosvenor Street, London. From the papers lying on the table it was evident that he had been engaged in writing a reply to Holkar's assailants, which was afterwards completed and published by his friend Major Evans Bell under the title of ' Last Counsels of an Unknown Counsellor.'
The published works of Dickinson, chiefly in pamphlet form, are as follows : 1. 'India, its Government under Bureaucracy,' Lon- don, 1852, 8vo. 2. ' The Famine in the North- West Provinces of India,' London, 1861, 8vo. 3. * Reply to the Indigo Planters' pamphlet en- titled "Brahmins and Pariahs," published by the Indigo manufacturers of Bengal,' London, 1861, 8vo. 4. 'A Letter to Lord Stanley on the Policy of the Secretary of State for India/ London, 1863, 8vo. 5. ' Dhar not re- stored,' 1864. 6. 'Sequel to "Dhar not re- stored," and a Proposal to extend the Prin- ciple of Restoration,' London, 1865, 8vo.
7. < A Scheme for the Establishment of Effi- cient Militia Reserves,' London, 1871, 8vo.
8. ( Last Counsels of an Unknown Counsel- lor,' edited by E. Bell, London, 1877, 8vo, of which a special edition, with portrait, was published in 1883, 8vo.
[Memoir by Major Evans Bell prefixed to Last Counsels of an Unknown Counsellor.]
E. H.
DICKINSON, JOSEPH, M.D. (d. 1865), botanist, took the degree of M.B. at Dublin 1837, and proceeded M.A. and M.D. in 1843, taking also an ad eundem degree at Cambridge. About 1839 he became physician to the Liver- pool Royal Infirmary, and subsequently also to the Fever Hospital, Workhouse, and South
Dispensary. He lectured on medicine and on botany at the Liverpool School of Medi- cine, and in 1851 published a small 'Flora of Liverpool,' to which a supplement was issued in 1855. He served as president of the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society, and was a fellow of the Royal and Linnean Societies, and of the Royal College of Physicians. He died at Bedford Street South, Liverpool, in July 1865.
[Medical Directory, 1864; local press; Flora of Liverpool.] G. S. B.
DICKINSON, WILLIAM (1756-1822), topographer and legal writer, whose origi- nal name was William Dickinson Rastall, was the only son of Dr. William Rastall, vicar-general of the church of Southwell. He was born in 1756, and became a fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1777, M.A. in l780(GmduatiCanta- brigienses, ed. 1856, p. 316). On leaving the university he devoted himself to the study of the law. In 1795, at the request of Mrs. Henrietta Dickinson of Eastward Hoo, he assumed the name of Dickinson only. His residence was at Muskam Grange, near New- ark, and he was a justice of the peace for the counties of Nottingham, Lincoln, Middlesex, Surrey, and Sussex. He died in Cumberland Place, New Road, London, on 9 Oct. 1822. By his wife Harriet, daughter of John Ken- rick of Bletchingley, Surrey, he had a nume- rous family.
His works are : 1. ' History of the Anti- quities of the Town and Church of South- well, in the County of Nottingham,' London, 1787, 4to ; second edition, improved, 1801-3, to which he added a supplement in 1819, and prefixed to which is his portrait, engraved by Holl, from a painting by Sherlock. 2. < The History and Antiquities of the Town of Newark, in the County of Nottingham (the Sidnaeester of the Romans), interpersed with Biographical Sketches,' two parts, Newark, 1806, 1819, 4to. These histories of South- well and Newark form four parts of a work which he entitled : ' Antiquities, Historical,. Architectural, Chorographical, and Itinerary,, in Nottinghamshire and the adjacent Coun- ties,' 2 vols. Newark, 1 801-19, '4to. 3. ' A Practical Guide to the Quarter and other Sessions of the Peace,' London, 1815, 8vo ; 6th edition, with great additions by Thomas Noon Talfourd and R. P. Tyrwhitt, London, 1845, 8vo. 4. ' The Justice Law of the last five years, from 1813 to 1817,' London, 1818, 8vo. 5. ( A Practical Exposition of the Law relative to the Office and Duties of a Justice of the Peace,' 2nd edition, 3 vols. London,. 1822, 8vo.
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[Gent. Mag. Ivii. 424, Ixxi. 925, Ixxiii. 1045, Ixxvi. 1025, xcii. 376; Evans's Cat. of Engraved Portraits, No. 3141 ; Biogr. Diet, of Living Au- thors (1816), p. 94; Cat. of Printed Books in Brit. Mus. ; Lowndes's Bibl. Man. (Bohn), 2051 ; Clarke's Bibl. Legum, p. 120; Marvin's Legal Bibliography, p. 266; Upcott's English Topo- graphy, ii. 1062-5.1 T. C.
DICKINSON, WILLIAM (1746-1823), mezzotint engraver, was born in London in 1746. Early in life he began to engrave in mezzotint, mostly caricatures and portraits after R. E. Pine, and in 1767 he was awarded a premium by the Society of Arts. In 1773 he commenced publishing his own works, and in 1778 entered into partnership with Thomas Watson, who engraved in both stipple and mezzotint, and who died in 1781. Dickinson appears to have been still carrying on the business of a printseller in 1791, but he after- wards removed to Paris, where he continued the practice of his art, and died in the sum- mer of 1823.
Some of Dickinson's plates are among the most brilliant examples of mezzotint en- graving. -They are excellent in drawing and render with much truth the characteristics of Reynolds and other painters after whose works they were engraved. Fine proofs of these have become very scarce, and fetch high prices when sold by public auction. Dickinson's most important works are por- traits, especially those after Sir Joshua Rey- nolds, which include full-length portraits of George III in his coronation robes, Charles, duke of Rutland, Elizabeth, countess of Derby, Diana, viscountess Crosbie, Mrs. Sheridan as 4 St. Cecilia,' Mrs. Pelham, Mrs. Mathew, Lord Robert Manners, and Richard Barwell and son; and three-quarter or half-length por- traits of Jane, duchess of Gordon, Emilia, duchess of Leinster, Lady Charles Spencer, Lady Taylor, Richard, earl Temple, Admiral Lord Rodney, Sir Joseph Banks, Dr. Percy, bishop of Dromore, Soame Jenyns, and the Hon. Richard Edgcumbe. He engraved also portraits of John, duke of Argyll, after Gains- borough ; Lord-chancellor Thurlow (full- length), Admiral Lord Keppel, Thomas, lord Grantham, Sir Charles Hardy, Dr. Law, bi- shop of Carlisle, Isaac Reed, and Miss Ra- mus (afterwards Lady Day), after Romney ; George II (full-length), Ferdinand, duke of Brunswick, David Garrick, Miss Nailer as 4 Hebe,' Mrs. Yates (full-length), John Wilkes {two plates), and James Worsdale, after Pine ; Richard, first earl Grosvenor (full-length), after Benjamin West ; the Duke and Duchess of York (two full-lengths), after Hoppner ; Mrs. Siddons as ' Isabella ' (full-length), after Beach ; Charles, second earl Grey, and Wil-
liam, lord Auckland, after Sir Thomas Law- rence; Samuel Wesley when a boy (full- length), after Russell ; Mrs. Gwynne and Mrs. Bunbury as the ' Merry Wives of Windsor,' after D. Gardner ; Sir Robert Peel, after North- cote; Charles Bannister, after W. C. Lind- say ; Mrs. Hartley as ' Elfrida.' after Nixon ; Napoleon I, after Gerard (1815) ; Catharine, empress of Russia ; and others after Angelica Kauffmann, Dance, Wheatley, Gainsborough, Dupont, Stubbs, and Moiiand. Besides these he engraved a ' Holy Family,' after Correggio ; heads of Rubens, Helena Forman (Rubens's second wife), and Vandyck, after Rubens ; ' The Gardens of Carlton House, with Nea- politan Ballad-singers,' after Bunbury ; ' The Murder of David Rizzio ' and ' Margaret of Anjou a Prisoner before Edward IV,' after J. Graham ; ' Lydia,' after Peters ; and * Ver- tumnus and Pomona ' and ; Madness,' after Pine, some of which are in the dotted style. Mr. Chaloner Smith, in his ' British Mezzo- tinto Portraits,' describes ninety-six plates by Dickinson.
[Eedgrave's Diet, of Artists of the English School, 1878; Chaloner Smith's British Mezzo- tinto Portraits, 1878-83, i. 171-203; Blanc's Manuel de 1' Amateur d'Estampes, 1854-7, ii. 125-6.] E. E. GK
DICKONS, MARIA (1770 P-1833), vo- calist, whose maiden name was Poole, is said to have been born in London about 1770, though the right date is probably a few years later. She developed a talent for music at an early age : when six she played Han- del's concertos, and when thirteen she sang at Vauxhall. She was taught singing by Rauzzini at Bath, and after appearing at the Antient concerts in 1792, was engaged at Covent Garden, where she made her debut as Ophelia on 9 Oct. 1793, introducing the song of 'Mad Bess.' On the 12th of the same month she appeared as Polly in the ' Beggar's Opera,' in which part she was said to be delightful. After 1794 Miss Poole seems to have confined herself chiefly to the provinces. She was married in 1800, and for a time retired, but her husband having sus- tained losses in trade, she resumed her pro- fessional career, and reappeared at Covent Garden on 20 Oct. 1807 as Mandane in ' Ar- taxerxes.' In 1811 she joined the Drury Lane company, then performing at the Ly- ceum, where she appeared on 22 Oct. as Clara in the ' Duenna.' On 18 June 1812 she sang the Countess in Mozart's ' Nozze di Figaro ' to the Susanna of Catalan!, on the production of the work at the King's Theatre for the first time in England. She also sang at the Drury Lane oratorios in 1813 and 1815. When Catalani left England she took Mrs.
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Dickons to sing with her at Paris, but the English soprano had no success there, and went on to Italy, where she was more ap- preciated. At Venice she was elected an honorary member of the Institute Filarmo- nico. She was engaged to sing with Velluti, but the death of a near relation recalled her to England, where she reappeared at Co vent Garden on 13 Oct. 1818 as Rosina in Bishop's perversion of Rossini's ( Barbiere di Siviglia.' She also sang the Countess in a similar version of the ' Nozze di Figaro ' on 6 March 1819, in which her success was brilliant. About 1820 she retired from the profession. The reason of her taking this step is said by some to have been ill-health, and by others a bequest which rendered her in- dependent. She is said to have suffered from cancer, and latterly from paralysis. She died at her house in Regent Street, 4 May 1833. Not many detailed accounts of Mrs. Dickons's singing are extant, but her voice seems to have been 'powerful and mellifluous,' and she possessed ' a sensible and impressive into- nation and a highly polished taste.' Another account says that when she sang sacred music ' religion seemed to breathe from every note.' The following portraits of her were en- graved : 1. Full face, painted by Miss E. Smith, engraved by Woodman, junior, and published 1 May 1808. 2. Profile to the right, engraved by Freeman, and published 1 July 1808. 3. Full face, holding a piece of music, engraved by M. A. Bourlier, and published 1 July 1812. 4. Full face, holding up the first finger of her left hand, painted by Bradley, engraved by Penry, and published 1 May 1819. Mathews's theatrical gallery in the Garrick Club also contains a portrait. Her mother died at Newingtonin March 1807, and her father at Islington 17 Jan. 1812.
[Grove's Diet, of Music, i. ; Fetis's Biographie des Musiciens, iii. 16 ; Genest's Hist, of the Stage, via. 696 ; Pohl's Mozart und Haydn in London, i. 148 ; Busby's Anecdotes, iii. 21 ; Parke's Musical Memoirs, i. 136 ; Quarterly Musical Eeview, i. 62, 403, 406; Gent. Mag. for 1807, p. 283, 1812, p. 93, 1833, p. 649; Georgian Era, iv. 302 ; playbills and prints in Brit. Mus.] W. B. S.
DICKSON, ADAM (1721-1776), writer on agriculture, son of the Rev. Andrew Dick- son, minister of Aberlady, East Lothian, was born in 1721 at Aberlady, and studied at Edinburgh University, where he took the degree of M. A. From boyhood he had been destined by his father for the ministry, and was in due time appointed minister of Dunse in Berwickshire in 1750, after a long lawsuit on the subject of the presentation. He soon lived down the opposition of a party which
this raised in his parish. After residing' twenty years at Dunse, he was transferred in 1769 to Whittinghame in East Lothian, and died there seven years after in conse- quence of a fall from his horse on returning from Innerwick. He married, 3 April 1742, Anne Haldane. One of his two daughters gave a short biography of her father to the editor to be prefixed to his chief work, ' The Husbandry of the Ancients.' He had also a son, William. Dickson was a man of quick apprehension and sound judgment. He died universally regretted, not merely as a clergy- man and scholar, but still more on account of his benevolence and good works, and his readiness in counsel. He passed his life be- tween his cherished country employments on a large farm of his father's, where he lost no- opportunity of gathering experience from the conversation of the neighbouring farmers,. and the duties of his holy office. Having early shown a great taste for agriculture, he watched its processes carefully, and made rapid progress in it, as he always connected practice with theory. On moving to Dunse he found more real improvements in the artr and also more difficulties to be surmounted than had been the case in East Lothian. Observing that English works on agriculture were ill adapted to the soil and climate of Scotland, and consisted of theories rather than facts supported by experience, he de- termined to compose a ' Treatise on Agricul- ture ' on a new plan. The first volume of this appeared in 1762, and was followed by a second in 1770. This treatise is practical and excellently adapted to the farming of Scotland, its first four books treating of soils, tillage, and manures in general, the other four of schemes of managing farms, usual in Scotland at that time, and suggestions for their improvement. Dickson's^next publi- cation was an * Essay on Manures ' (1772), among a collection termed ' Georgical Es- says.' His views are quite in accordance with modern practice. It was directed against a Mr. Tull, who held that careful ploughing alone provided sufficient fertilisation for the soil, and is almost a reproduction, word for word, of a section in Dickson's ' Treatise.' He also wrote ' Small Farms Destructive to the Country in its present Situation,' Edin- burgh, 1764.
Twelve years after his death (1788) the work by which Dickson is best known was; printed with a dedication to the Duke of Buccleuch. 'The Husbandry of the An- cients ' was composed late in life, and cost the author much labour. He collects the agricultural processes of the ancients under their proper heads, and compares them with
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modern practice, in which his experience ren- ders him a safe guide. The first volume con- tains accounts of the Roman villa, crops, manures, and ploughs ; the second treats of the different ancient crops and the times of sowing. He translates freely from the * Scrip- tores Rei Rusticse,' and subjoins the origi- nal passages ; but if his practical knowledge enabled him to clear up difficulties which had been passed by in former commentators, his scholarship, according to Professor Ram- say {Diet, of Greek and Roman Antiquities, 'Agricultura '), was so imperfect that in many instances he failed to interpret correctly the originals. The book was translated into French by M. Paris (Paris, 1802).
[An account of the author, probably the one written by his daughter, is prefixed to the Hus- bandry of the Ancients, which forms the sub- stance of the notices of him in Didot, Nouvelle