Chapter 15

Authorities.—See John Leland,A View of the Principal Deistical Writers(2 vols., 1754-1756; ed. 1837); G. V. Lechler,Geschichte des englischen Deismus(2 vols., 1841); L. Noack,Die Freidenker in der Religion(Bern, 1853-1855); John Hunt,Religious Thought in England(3 vols., 1870-1872); Leslie Stephen,History of English Thought in the 18th Century(2 vols., 1876); A. S. Farrar,A Critical History of Free Thought(1862, Bampton Lectures); J. H. Overton and F. Relton,The English Church from the Accession of George I. to the end of the 18th Century(1906; especially chap. iv., “The Answer to Deism”); A. W. Benn,History of English Rationalism in the 19th Century(1906); i. 111 ff.; J. M. Robertson,Short History of Free Thought(1906); G. Ch. B. Pünjer,Geschichte der christlichen Religionsphilosophie seit der Reformation(Brunswick, 1880); M. W. Wiseman,Dynamics of Religion(London, 1897), pt. ii.; article “Deismus” in Herzog-Hauck,Realencyklopädie(vol. iv., 1898).

1The right of the orthodox party to use this name was asserted by the publication in 1715 of a journal calledThe Freethinker, conducted by anti-deistic clergymen. The termlibertinappears to have been used first as a hostile epithet of the Brethren of the Free Spirit, a 13th-century sect which was accused not only of free-thought but also of licentious living.2See the separate biographies of these writers. The three most significant names after Lord Herbert are those of Toland, Wollaston and Tindal.

2See the separate biographies of these writers. The three most significant names after Lord Herbert are those of Toland, Wollaston and Tindal.

DEISTER,a chain of hills in Germany, in the Prussian province of Hanover, about 15 m. S.W. of the city of Hanover. It runs in a north-westerly direction from Springe in the S. to Rodenberg in the N. It has a total length of 14 m., and rises in the Höfeler to a height of 1250 ft. The chain is well-wooded and abounds in game. There are some coal mines and sandstone quarries.

DÉJAZET, PAULINE VIRGINIE(1798-1875), French actress, born in Paris on the 30th ofAugust1798, made her first appearance on the stage at the age of five. It was not until 1820, when she began her seven years’ connexion with the recently founded Gymnase, that she won her triumphs in soubrette and “breeches” parts, which came to be known as “Dêjazets.” From 1828 she played at the Nouveautés for three years, then at the Variétés, and finally became manager, with her son, of the Folies, which was renamed the Théâtre Déjazet. Here, even at the age of sixty-five, she had marvellous success in youthful parts, especially in a number of Sardou’s earlier plays, previously unacted. She retired in 1868, and died on the 1st of December 1875, leaving a great name in the annals of the French stage.

See Duval’sVirginie Déjazet(1876).

DE KALB,a city of De Kalb county, Illinois, U.S.A., in the N. part of the state, about 58 m. W. of Chicago. Pop. (1890) 2579; (1900) 5904 (1520 foreign-born); (1910) 8102. De Kalb is served by the Chicago Great Western, the Chicago & North-Western, and the Illinois, Iowa & Minnesota railways, and by interurban electric lines. It is the seat of the Northern Illinois state normal school (opened in 1899). The principal manufactures of De Kalb are woven and barbed wire, waggons and agricultural implements, pianos, shoes, gloves, and creamery packages. The city has important dairy interests also. De Kalb was first settled in 1832, was known as Buena Vista until 1840, was incorporated as a village in 1861, and in 1877 was organized under the general state law as a city.

DE KEYSER, THOMAS(1596 or 1597-1667), Dutch painter, was born at Amsterdam, the son of the architect and sculptor Hendrik de Keyser. We have no definite knowledge of his training, and but scant information as to the course of his life, though it is known that he owned a basalt business between 1640 and 1654. Aert Pietersz, Cornelis vanider Voort, Werner van Valckert and Nicolas Elias are accredited by different authorities with having developed his talent; and M. Karl Woermann, who has pronounced in favour of Nicolas Elias is supported by the fact that almost all that master’s pictures were formerly attributed to De Keyser, who, in like fashion, exercised some influence upon Rembrandt when he first went to Amsterdam in 1631. De Keyser chiefly excelled as a portrait painter, though he also executed some historical and mythological pictures, such as the “Theseus” and “Ariadne” in the Amsterdam town hall. His portraiture is full of character and masterly in handling, and often, as in the “Old Woman” of the Budapest gallery, is distinguished by a rich golden glow of colour and Rembrandtesque chiaroscuro. Some of his portraits are life-size, but the artist generally preferred to keep them on a considerably smaller scale, like the famous “Group of Amsterdam Burgomasters” assembled to receive Marie de’ Medici in 1638, now at the Hague museum. The sketch for this important painting, together with three other drawings, was sold at the Gallitzin sale in 1783 for the sum of threepence. The German emperor owns an “Equestrian Portrait of a young Dutchman,” by De Keyser, a late work which in general disposition and in the soft manner of painting recalled the work of Cuyp. Similar pictures are in the Dresden and Frankfort museums, in the Heyl collection at Worms, and the Liechtenstein Gallery in Vienna. The National Gallery, London, owns a characteristic portrait group of a “Merchant with his Clerk”; the Hague museum, besides the group already referred to, a magnificent “Portrait of a Savant,” and the Haarlem museum a fine portrait of “Claes Fabricius.” At the Ryks Museum in Amsterdam there are no fewer than twelve works from his brush, and other important examples are to be found in Brussels, Munich, Copenhagen and St Petersburg.

DEKKER, EDWARD DOUWES(1820-1887), Dutch writer, commonly known asMultatuli, was born at Amsterdam on the 2nd of March 1820. His father, a ship’s captain, intended his son for trade, but this humdrum prospect disgusted him, and in 1838 he went out to Java, and obtained a post in the Inland Revenue. He rose from one position to another, until, in 1851, he found himself assistant-resident at Amboyna, in the Moluccas. In 1857 he was transferred to Lebak, in the Bantam residency of Java. By this time, however, all the secrets of Dutch administration were known to him, and he had begun to protest against the abuses of the colonial system. In consequence he was threatened with dismissal from his office for his openness of speech, and, throwing up his appointment, he returned to Holland in a state of fierce indignation. He determined to expose in detail the scandals he had witnessed, and he began to do so in newspaper articles and pamphlets. Little notice, however, was taken of his protestations until, in 1860, he published, under the pseudonym of “Multatuli,” his romance entitledMax Havelaar. An attempt was made to ignore this brilliant and irregular book, but in vain; it was read all over Europe. The exposure of the abuse of free labour in the Dutch Indies was complete, although there were not wanting apologists who accused Dekker’s terrible picture of being over-coloured. He was now fairly launched on literature, and he lost no time in publishingLove Letters(1861), which, in spite of their mild title, proved to be mordant satires of the most rancorous and unsparing kind. The literary merit of Multatuli’s work was much contested; he received an unexpected and most valuable ally in Vosmaer. He continued to write much, and to faggot his miscellanies in uniform volumes calledIdeas, of which seven appeared between 1862 and 1877. Douwes quitted Holland, snaking off her dust from his feet, and went to live at Wiesbaden. He now made several attempts to gain the stage, and one of his pieces,The School for Princes, 1875 (published in the fourth volume ofIdeas), pleased himself so highly that he is said to have styled it the greatest drama ever written. It is a fine poem, written in blank verse, like an English tragedy, and not in Dutch Alexandrines; but it is undramatic, and has not held the boards. Douwes Dekker moved his residence to Nieder Ingelheim, on the Rhine, and there he died on the 19th of February 1887.

Towards the end of his career he was the centre of a crowd of disciples and imitators, who did his reputation no service; he is now, again, in danger of being read too little. To understand his fame, it is necessary to remember the sensational way in which he broke into the dulness of Dutch literature fifty years ago, like a flame out of the Far East. He was ardent, provocative, perhaps a little hysterical, but he madehimselfheard all over Europe. He brought an exceedingly severe indictment against the egotism and brutality of the administrators of Dutch India, and he framed it in a literary form which was brilliantly original. Not satisfied with this, he attacked, in a fury that was sometimes blind, everything that seemed to him falsely conventional in Dutch religion, government, society and morals. He respected nothing, he left no institution untouched. Now that it is possible to look back upon Multatuli without passion, we see in him, not what Dutch enthusiasm saw,—“the second writer of Europe in the nineteenth century” (Victor Hugo being presumably the first),—but a great man who was a powerful and glowing author, yet hardly an artist, a reckless enthusiast, who was inspired by indignation and a burning sense of justice, who cared little for his means if only he could produce his effect. He is seen to his best and worst inMax Havelaar; hisIdeas, hard, fantastic and sardonic, seldom offer any solid satisfaction to the foreign reader. But Multatuli deserves remembrance, if only on account of the unequalled effect his writing had in rousing Holland from the intellectual and moral lethargy in which she lay half a century ago.

(E. G.)

DEKKER, JEREMIAS DE(1610-1666), Dutch poet, was born at Dort in 1610. His father was a native of Antwerp, who, having embraced the reformed religion, had been compelled to take refuge in Holland. Entering his father’s business at an early age, he found leisure to cultivate his taste for literature and especially for poetry, and to acquire without assistance a competent knowledge of English, French, Latin and Italian. His first poem was a paraphrase of the Lamentations of Jeremiah (Klaagliederenvan Jeremias), which was followed by translations and imitations of Horace, Juvenal and other Latin poets. The most important of his original poems were a collection of epigrams (Puntdichten) and a satire in praise of avarice (Lof der Geldzucht). The latter is his best-known work. Written in a vein of light andyet effective irony, it is usually ranked by critics along with Erasmus’sPraise of Folly. Dekker died at Amsterdam in November 1666.

A complete collection of his poems, edited by Brouerius van Nideck, was published at Amsterdam in 1726 under the titleExercices poétiques(2 vols. 4to.). Selections from his poems are included in Siegenbeck’sProeven van nederduitsche Dichtkunde(1823), and from his epigrams in Geijsbeek’sEpigrammatische Anthologie(1827).

DEKKER(orDecker),THOMAS(c.1570-1641), English dramatist, was born in London. His name occurs frequently in Henslowe’sDiaryduring the last three years of the 16th century; he is mentioned there as receiving loans and payments for writing plays in conjunction with Ben Jonson, Drayton, Chettle, Haughton, Wilson, Day and others, and he would appear to have been then in the most active employment as a playwright. The titles of the plays on which he was engaged from April 1599 to March 1599/1600 areTroilus and Cressida,Orestes Fures,Agamemnon,The Gentle Craft,The Stepmother’s Tragedy,Bear a Brain,Pagge of Plymouth,Robert the Second,The Whole History of Fortunatus,Patient Grissel,Truth’s Supplication to Candlelight,The Spanish Moor’s Tragedy,The Seven Wise Masters. At that date it is evident that Dekker’s services were in great request for the stage. He is first mentioned in the Diary under date 8th of January 1597/1598, as having sold a book,i.e.the manuscript of a play; the payments in 1599 are generally made in advance, “in earnest” of work to be done. In the case of three of the above plays,Orestes Fures,Truth’s SupplicationandThe Gentle Craft, Dekker is paid as the sole author. OnlyThe Gentle Crafthas been preserved; it was published anonymously in 1600 under the title ofThe Shoemaker’s Holiday. It would be unsafe to argue from the classical subjects of some of these plays that Dekker was then a young man from the university, who had come up like so many others to make a living by writing for the stage. Classical knowledge was then in the air; playwrights in want of a subject were content with translations, if they did not know the originals. However educated, Dekker was then a young man just out of his teens, if he spoke with any accuracy when he said that he was threescore in 1637. And it was not in scholarly themes that he was destined to find his true vein. The call for the publication ofThe Gentle Craft, which deals with the life of the city, showed him where his strength lay.

To give a general idea of the substance of Dekker’s plays, there is no better way than to call him the Dickens of the Elizabethan period. The two men were as unlike as possible in their habits of work, Dekker having apparently all the thriftlessness and impecunious shamelessness of Micawber himself. Henslowe’sDiarycontains two notes of payments made in 1597/1598 and 1598/1599 to release Dekker from prison, and he is supposed to have spent the years between 1613 and 1616 in the King’s Bench. Dekker’s Bohemianism appears in the slightness and hurry of his work, a strong contrast to the thoroughness and rich completeness of every labour to which Dickens applied himself; perhaps also in the exquisite freshness and sweetness of his songs, and the natural charm of stray touches of expression and description in his plays. But he was like Dickens in the bent of his genius towards the representation of the life around him in London, as well as in the humorous kindliness of his way of looking at that life, his vein of sentiment, and his eye for odd characters, though the random pickings of Dekker, hopping here and there in search of a subject, give less complete results than the more systematic labours of Dickens. Dekker’s Simon Eyre, the good-hearted, mad shoemaker, and his Orlando Friscobaldo, are touched with a kindly humour in which Dickens would have delighted; his Infelices, Fiamettas, Tormiellas, even his Bellafront, have a certain likeness in type to the heroines of Dickens; and his roaring blades and their gulls are prototypes of Sir Mulberry Hawk and Lord Frederick Verisopht. Only there is this great difference in the spirit of the two writers, that Dekker wrote without the smallest apparent wish to reform the life that he saw, desiring only to exhibit it; and that on the whole, apart from his dramatist’s necessity of finding interesting matter, he cast his eye about rather with a liking for the discovery of good under unpromising appearances than with any determination to detect and expose vice. The observation must also be made that Dekker’s personages have much more individual character, more of that mixture of good and evil which we find in real human beings. Hack-writer though Dekker was, and writing often under sore pressure, there is no dramatist whose personages have more of the breath of life in them; drawing with easy, unconstrained hand, he was a master of those touches by which an imaginary figure is brought home to us as a creature with human interests. A very large part of the motive power in his plays consists in the temporary yielding to an evil passion. The kindly philosophy that the best of natures may be for a time perverted by passionate desires is the chief animating principle of his comedy. He delights in showing women listening to temptation, and apparently yielding, but still retaining sufficient control over themselves to be capable of drawing back when on the verge of the precipice. The wives of the citizens were his heroines, pursued by the unlawful addresses of the gay young courtiers; and on the whole Dekker, from inclination apparently as well as policy, though himself, if Ben Jonson’s satire had any point, a bit of a dandy in his youth, took the part of morality and the city, and either struck the rakes with remorse or made the objects of their machinations clever enough to outwit them. From Dekker’s plays we get a very lively impression of all that was picturesque and theatrically interesting in the city life of the time, the interiors of the shops and the houses, the tastes of the citizens and their wives, the tavern and tobacco-shop manners of the youthful aristocracy and their satellites. The social student cannot afford to overlook Dekker; there is no other dramatist of that age, except Thomas Middleton, from whom we can get such a vivid picture of contemporary manners in London. He drew direct from life; in so far as he idealized, he did so not in obedience to scholarly precepts or dogmatic theories, but in the immediate interests of good-natured farce and tender-hearted sentiment.

In all the serious parts of Dekker’s plays there is a charming delicacy of touch, and his smallest scraps of song are bewitching; but his plays, as plays, owe much more to the interest of the characters and the incidents than to any excellence of construction. We see what use could be made of his materials by a stronger intellect inWestward Ho!which he wrote in conjunction with John Webster. The play, somehow, though the parts are more firmly knit together, and it has more unity of purpose, is not so interesting as Dekker’s unaided work. Middleton formed a more successful combination with Dekker than Webster; there is some evidence that inThe Honest Whore, orThe Converted Courtesan, which is generally regarded as the best that bears Dekker’s name, he had the assistance of Middleton, although the assistance was so immaterial as not to be worth acknowledging in the title-page. Still that Middleton, a man of little genius but of much practical talent and robust humour, was serviceable to Dekker in determining the form of the play may well be believed. The two wrote another play in concert,The Roaring Girl, for which Middleton probably contributed a good deal of the matter, as well as a more symmetrical form than Dekker seems to have been capable of devising. InThe Witch of Edmonton, except in a few scenes, it is difficult to trace the hand of Dekker with any certainty; his collaborators were John Ford and William Rowley; to Ford probably belongs the intense brooding and murderous wrath of the old hag, which are too direct and hard in their energy for Dekker, while Rowley may be supposed to be responsible for the delineation of country life.The Virgin Martyr, one of the best constructed of his plays, was written in conjunction with Massinger, to whom the form is no doubt due. Dekker’s plays contain a few songs which show him to have been possessed of very great lyrical skill, but of this he seems to have made sadly little use. His poem ofCanaans Calamitie—if indeed it be his, which is hard to believe—is exceedingly poor stuff, and the verse portion of hisDreame, though containing some good lines, is, as a whole, not much better.

When Gerard Langbaine wrote hisAccount of the English Dramatic Poetsin 1691, he spoke of Dekker as being “more famous for the contention he had with Ben Jonson for the bays,than for any great reputation he had gained by his own writings.” This is an opinion that could not be professed now, when Dekker’s work is read. In the contention with Ben Jonson, one of the most celebrated quarrels of authors, the origin of which is matter of dispute, Dekker seems to have had very much the best of it. We can imagine that Jonson’s attack was stinging at the time, because it seems to be full of sarcastic personalities, but it is dull enough now when nobody knows what Dekker was like, nor what was the character of his mother. There is nothing in thePoetasterthat has any point as applied to Dekker’s powers as a dramatist, while, on the contrary,Satiromastix, or the Untrussing of the Humorous Poetis full of pungent ridicule of Jonson’s style, and of retorts and insults conceived in the happiest spirit of good-natured mockery. Dekker has been accused of poverty of invention in adopting the character of thePoetaster, but it is of the very pith of the jest that Dekker should have set on Jonson’s own foul-mouthed Captain Tucca to abuse Horace himself.

Works.—The Pleasant Comedie of Old Fortunatus(1600);The Shomakers Holiday. Or The gentle Craft. With the humorous life of Simon Eyre, shoomaker, and Lord Maior of London(1600);Satiromastix. Or The untrussing of the Humorous Poet(1602);The Pleasant Comodie of Patient Grissill(1603), with Chettle and Haughton;The Honest Whore. With The Humours of the Patient Man, and the Longing Wife(1604);North-Ward Hoe(1607), with John Webster;West-Ward Hoe(1607), with John Webster;The Whore of Babylon(1607);The Famous History of Sir Thomas Wyat. With the Coronation of Queen Mary, and the coming in of King Philip(1607), with John Webster;The Roaring Girle. Or Moll Cut-Purse(1611), with Thomas Middleton;The Virgin Martir(1622), with Massinger;If It Be Not Good, the Divel is in it(1612);The Second Part of the Honest Whore. With the Humors of the Patient Man, the Impatient Wife; the Honest Whore, perswaded by strong Arguments to turne Curtizan againe; her brave refuting those Arguments. And lastly, the Comicall Passages of an Italian Bridewell, where the Scaene ends(1630);A Tragi-Comedy: Called, Match mee in London(1631);The Wonder of a Kingdome(1636);The Witch of Edmonton. A known true Story. Composed into a Tragi-Comedy(1658), with William Rowley and John Ford.The Sun’s Darling(1656) was possibly written by Ford and Dekker, or may be perhaps more correctly regarded as a recast by Ford of a masque by Dekker, perhaps his lost play ofPhaëton. The pageants for the Lord Mayor’s shows of 1612 and 1629 were written by Dekker, and both are preserved. His tracts are invaluable for the light which they throw on the London of his time, especially in their descriptions of the circumstances of the theatre. Their titles, many of which are necessarily abbreviated, are:Canaans Calamitie, Jerusalems Miserie, and Englands Mirror(1598), in verse;The Wonderfull Yeare 1603. Wherein is shewed the picture of London lying sicke of the Plague(1603);The Batchelars Banquet(1603); a brilliant adaptation ofLes Quinze Joyes de mariage; theSeven Deadly Sinnes of London(1606);Newes from Hell, Brought by the Divells Carrier(1606), reprinted in the next year with some interesting additions asA Knights Conjuring; Jests to make you Merie(1607), with George Wilkins;The Belman of London: Bringing to Light the most notorious villanies that are now practised in the Kingdome(1608); followed by a second part and enlarged editions under other titles;The Dead Tearme(1608);The Ravens Almanacke, foretelling of a Plague, Famine and Civill Warre(1609), ridiculing the almanac makers;The Guls Horne-booke(1609), the most famous of all his tracts, providing a code of manners for the Elizabethan gallant, in the aisle of St Paul’s, at the ordinary, at the playhouse, and other resorts;Worke for Armorours, or the Peace is Broken(1609);Foure Birds of Noahs Ark(1609);A Strange Horse-Race(1613);Dekker his Dreame ...(1620), in verse and prose, illustrated with a woodcut of the dreamer; andA Rod for Run-awayes(1625). This long list does not exhaust Dekker’s work, much of which is lost.Authorities.—An edition of the collected dramatic works of Dekker by R. H. Shepherd appeared in 1873; his prose tracts and poems were included in Dr A. B. Grosart’sHuth Library(1884-1886): both these contain memoirs of him, but by far the most complete account of his life and writings is to be found in the article by A. H. Bullen in theDictionary of National Biography. See also the elaborate discussion of his plays in Mr Fleay’sBiographical Chronicle(1891), i. 115, &c., and, for his quarrel with Ben Jonson, Prof. J. H. Penniman’sWar of the Theatres(Boston, 1897) and Mr R. A. Small’sStage Quarrel between Ben Jonson and the so-called Poetasters(Breslau, 1899). A selection from his plays was edited for the Mermaid Series (1887; new series, 1904) by Ernest Rhys. An essay on Dekker by A. C. Swinburne appeared inThe Nineteenth Centuryfor January 1887.

Authorities.—An edition of the collected dramatic works of Dekker by R. H. Shepherd appeared in 1873; his prose tracts and poems were included in Dr A. B. Grosart’sHuth Library(1884-1886): both these contain memoirs of him, but by far the most complete account of his life and writings is to be found in the article by A. H. Bullen in theDictionary of National Biography. See also the elaborate discussion of his plays in Mr Fleay’sBiographical Chronicle(1891), i. 115, &c., and, for his quarrel with Ben Jonson, Prof. J. H. Penniman’sWar of the Theatres(Boston, 1897) and Mr R. A. Small’sStage Quarrel between Ben Jonson and the so-called Poetasters(Breslau, 1899). A selection from his plays was edited for the Mermaid Series (1887; new series, 1904) by Ernest Rhys. An essay on Dekker by A. C. Swinburne appeared inThe Nineteenth Centuryfor January 1887.

(W. M.; R. B. McK.)

DE LA BECHE, SIR HENRY THOMAS(1796-1855), English geologist, was born in the year 1796. His father, an officer in the army, possessed landed property in Jamaica, but died while his son was still young. The boy accordingly spent his youth with his mother at Lyme Regis among the interesting and picturesque coast cliffs of the south-west of England, where he imbibed a love for geological pursuits and cultivated a marked artistic faculty. When fourteen years of age, being destined, like his friend Murchison, for the military profession, he entered the college at Great Marlow, where he distinguished himself by the rapidity and skill with which he executed sketches showing the salient features of a district. The peace of 1815, however, changed his career and he devoted himself with ever-increasing assiduity to the pursuit of geology. When only twenty-one years of age he joined the Geological Society of London, continuing throughout life to be one of its most active, useful and honoured members. He was president in 1848-1849. Possessing a fortune sufficient for the gratification of his tastes, he visited many localities of geological interest, not only in Britain, but also on the continent, in France and Switzerland. His journeys seldom failed to bear fruit in suggestive papers accompanied by sketches. Early attachment to the south-west of England led him back to that region, where, with enlarged experience, he began the detailed investigation of the rocks of Cornwall and Devon. Thrown much into contact with the mining community of that part of the country, he conceived the idea that the nation ought to compile a geological map of the United Kingdom, and collect and preserve specimens to illustrate, and aid in further developing, its mineral industries. He showed his skilful management of affairs by inducing the government of the day to recognize his work and give him an appointment in connexion with the Ordnance Survey. This formed the starting point of the present Geological Survey of Great Britain, which was officially recognized in 1835, when De la Beche was appointed director. Year by year increasing stores of valuable specimens were transmitted to London; and the building at Craig’s Court, where the young Museum of Economic Geology was placed, became too small. But De la Beche, having seen how fruitful his first idea had become, appealed to the authorities not merely to provide a larger structure, but to widen the whole scope of the scientific establishment of which he was the head, so as to impart to it the character of a great educational institution where practical as well as theoretical instruction should be given in every branch of science necessary for the conduct of mining work. In this endeavour he was again successful. Parliament sanctioned the erection of a museum in Jermyn Street, London, and the organization Of a staff of professors with laboratories and other appliances. The establishment, in which were combined the offices of the Geological Survey, the Museum of Practical Geology, The Royal School of Mines and the Mining Record Office, was opened in 1851. Many foreign countries have since formed geological surveys avowedly based upon the organization and experience of that of the United Kingdom. The British colonies, also, have in many instances established similar surveys for the development of their mineral resources, and have had recourse to the parent survey for advice and for officers to conduct the operations.

De la Beche published numerous memoirs on English geology in theTransactions of the Geological Society of London, as well as in theMemoirs of the Geological Survey, notably theReport on the Geology of Cornwall, Devon and West Somerset(1839). He likewise wroteA Geological Manual(1831; 3rd ed., 1833); and a work of singular breadth and clearness—Researches in Theoretical Geology(1834)—in which he enunciated a philosophical treatment of geological questions much in advance of his time. An early volume,How to Observe Geology(1835 and 1836), was rewritten and enlarged by him late in life, and published under the title ofThe Geological Observer(1851; 2nd ed., 1853). It was marked by wide practical experience, multifarious knowledge, philosophical insight and a genius for artistic delineation of geological phenomena. He was elected F.R.S. in 1819. He received the honour of knighthood in 1848, and near the close of his life was awarded the Wollaston medal—the highest honour in the gift of the Geological Society of London. After a life of constant activity he began to suffer from partial paralysis, but, though becoming gradually worse, continued able to transacthis official business until a few days before his death, which took place on the 13th of April 1855.

See Sir A. Geikie’sMemoir of Sir A. C. Ramsay(1895), which contains a sketch of the history of the Geological Survey, and of the life of De la Beche (with portrait); alsoSummary of Progress of the Geological Survey for 1897(1898).

DELABORDE, HENRI FRANÇOIS,Count(1764-1833), French soldier, was the son of a baker of Dijon. At the outbreak of the French Revolution he joined the “Volunteers of the Côte-d’Or,” and passing rapidly through all the junior grades, was made general of brigade after the combat of Rhein-Zabern (1793). As chief of the staff he was present at the siege of Toulon in the same year, and, promoted general of division, he was for a time governor of Corsica. In 1794 Delaborde served on the Spanish frontier, distinguishing himself at the Bidassoa (July 25) and Misquiriz (October 16). His next command was on the Rhine. At the head of a division he took part in the celebrated campaigns of 1795-97, and in 1796 covered Moreau’s right when that general invaded Bavaria. Delaborde was in constant military employment during the Consulate and the early Empire. Made commander of the Legion of Honour in 1804, he received the dignity of count in 1808. In that year he was serving in Portugal under Junot. Against Sir Arthur Wellesley’s English army he fought theskillfulbrilliant rear-guard action of Rolica. In 1812 he was one of Mortier’s divisional leaders in the Russian War, and in the following year was grand cross and governor of the castle of Compiègne. Joining Napoleon in the Hundred Days, he was marked for punishment by the returning Bourbons, sent before a court-martial, and only escaped condemnation through a technical flaw in the wording of the charge. The rest of his life was spent in retirement.

DELACROIX, FERDINAND VICTOR EUGÈNE(1798-1863), French historical painter, leader of the Romantic movement, was born at Charenton-St-Maurice, near Paris, on the 26th of April 1798. His father Charles Delacroix (1741-1805) was a partisan of the most violent faction during the time of the Revolution, and was foreign minister under the Directory. The family affairs seem to have been conducted in the wildest manner, and the accidents that befell the child, well authenticated as they are said to be, make it almost a miracle that he survived. He was first nearly burned to death in the cradle by a nurse falling asleep over a novel and the candle dropping on the coverlet; this left permanent marks on his arms and face. He was next dropped into the sea by anotherbonne, who was climbing up a ship’s side to see her lover. He was nearly poisoned, and nearly choked, and, to crown all, he tried to hang himself, without any thought of suicide, in imitation of a print exhibiting a man in that position of final ignominy. The prediction of a charlatan founded on his horoscope has been preserved: “Cet enfant deviendra un homme célèbre, mais sa vie sera des plus laborieuses, des plus tourmentées, et toujours livrée à la contradiction.”

Delacroix the elder (also known as Delacroix de Contaut) died at Bordeaux when Eugène was seven years of age, and his mother returned to Paris and placed him in the Lycée Napoléon. Afterwards, on his determining to be a painter, he entered theatelierof Baron Guérin, who affected to treat him as an amateur. His fellow-pupil was Ary Scheffer, who was alike by temperament and antecedents the opposite of thebizarreDelacroix, and the two remained antagonistic to the end of life. Delacroix’s acknowledged power and yet want of success with artists and critics—Thiers being his only advocate—perhaps mainly resulted from his bravura and rude dash in the use of the brush, at a time when smooth roundness of surface was general. His first important picture, “Dante and Virgil,” was painted in his own studio; and when Guérin went to see it he flew into a passion, and told him his picture was absurd, detestable, exaggerated. “Why ask me to come and see this? You knew what I must say.” Yet his work was received at the Salon, and produced an enthusiasm of debate (1822). Some said Géricault had worked on it, but all treated it with respect. Still in private his position, even after the larger tragic picture, the “Massacre of Chios,” had been deposited in the Luxembourg by the government (1824), became that of an Ishmaelite. The war for the freedom of Greece then going on moved him deeply, and his next two pictures—“Marino Faliero Decapitated on the Giant’s Staircase of the Ducal Palace” (which has always remained a European success), and “Greece Lamenting on the Ruins of Missolonghi”—with many smaller works, were exhibited for the benefit of the patriots in 1826. This exhibition was much visited by the public, and next year he produced another of his important works, “Sardanapalus,” from Byron’s drama. After this, he says, “I became the abomination of painting, I was refused water and salt,”—but, he adds with singularly happy naïveté, “J’étais enchanté de moi-même!” The patrimony he inherited, or perhaps it should be said, what remained of it, was 10,000livres de rente, and with economy he lived on this, and continued the expensive process of painting large historical pictures. In 1831 he reappeared in the Salon with six works, and immediately after left for Morocco, where he found much congenial matter. Delacroix never went to Italy; he refused to go on principle, lest the old masters, either in spirit or manner, should impair his originality and self-dependence. His greatest admiration in literature was the poetry of Byron; Shakespeare also attracted him for tragic inspirations; and of course classic subjects had their turn of his easel.

He continued his work indefatigably, having his pictures very seldom favourably received at the Salon. These were sometimes very large, full of incidents, with many figures. “Drawing of Lots in the Boat at Sea,” from Byron’sDon Juan, and the “Taking of Constantinople by the Christians” were of that character, and the former was one of his noblest creations. In 1845 he was employed to decorate the library of the Luxembourg, that of the chamber of deputies in 1847, the ceiling of the gallery of Apollo in the Louvre in 1849 and that of the Salon de la Paix in the hôtel de ville in 1853. He died on the 13th of August 1863, and in August 1864 an exhibition of his works was opened on the Boulevard des Italiens. It contained 174 pictures, many of them of large dimensions, and 303 drawings, showing immense perseverance as well as energy and versatility. As a colourist, and a romantic painter, he now ranks among the greatest of French artists.

See also A. Robaut,Delacroix(1885); E. Dargenty,Delacroix par lui-même(1885); G. Moreau,Delacroix et son œuvre(1893); Dorothy Bussy,Eugène Delacroix(1907).

DE LA GARDIE, MAGNUS GABRIEL,Count(1622-1686), Swedish statesman, the best-known member of an ancient family of French origin (the D’Escouperies of Languedoc) which had been settled in Sweden since the 14th century. After a careful education, completed by the usual grand tour, Magnus learned the art of war under Gustavus Horn, and during the reign of Christina (1644-1654), whose prime favourite he became, though the liaison was innocent enough, he was raised to the highest offices in the state and loaded with distinctions. In 1646 he was sent at the head of an extraordinary mission to France, and on his return married the queen’s cousin Marie Euphrosyne of Zweibrücken, who, being but a poor princess, benefited greatly by her wedding with the richest of the Swedish magnates. Immediately afterwards, De la Gardie was made a senator, governor-general of Saxony during the last stages of the Thirty Years’ War, and, in 1652, lord high treasurer. In 1653 he fell into disgrace and had to withdraw from court. During the reign of Charles X. (1654-1660) he was employed in the Baltic provinces both as a civilian and a soldier, although in the latter capacity he gave the martial king but little satisfaction. Charles X. nevertheless, in his last will, appointed De la Gardie grand-chancellor and a member of the council of regency which ruled Sweden during the minority of Charles XI. (1660-1672). During this period De la Gardie was the ruling spirit of the government and represented the party of warlike adventure as opposed to the party of peace and economy led by Counts Bonde and Brahe (qq.v.). After a severe struggle De la Gardie’s party finally prevailed, and its triumph was marked by that general decline of personal and political morality which has given to this regency its unenviable reputation.It was De la Gardie who first made Sweden the obsequious hireling of the foreign power which had the longest purse. The beginning of this shameful “subsidy policy” was the treaty of Fontainebleau, 1661, by a secret paragraph of which Sweden, in exchange for a considerable sum of money, undertook to support the French candidate on the first vacancy of the Polish throne. It was not, however, till the 14th of April 1672 that Sweden, by the treaty of Stockholm, became a regular “mercenarius Galliae,” pledging herself, in return for 400,000écusper annum in peace and 600,000 in war time, to attack with 16,000 men those German princes who might be disposed to assist Holland. The early disasters of the unlucky war of 1675-1679 were rightly attributed to the carelessness, extravagance, procrastination and general incompetence of De la Gardie and his high aristocratic colleagues. In 1675 a special commission was appointed to inquire into their conduct, and on the 27th of May 1682 it decided that the regents and the senate were solely responsible for dilapidations of the realm, the compensation due by them to the crown being assessed at 4,000,000daleror £500,000. De la Gardie was treated with relative leniency, but he “received permission to retire to his estates for the rest of his life” and died there in comparative poverty, a mere shadow of his former magnificent self. The best sides of his character were his brilliant social gifts and his intense devotion to literature and art.

See Martin Veibull,Sveriges Storhetstid(Stockholm, 1881);Sv. Hist.iv.; Robert Nisbet Bain,Scandinavia(Cambridge, 1905).

(R. N. B.)

DELAGOA BAY(Port. for the bay “of the lagoon”), an inlet of the Indian Ocean on the east coast of South Africa, between 25° 40′ and 26° 20′ S., with a length from north to south of over 70 m. and a breadth of about 20 m. The bay is the northern termination of the series of lagoons which line the coast from Saint Lucia Bay. The opening is toward the N.E. The southern part of the bay is formed by a peninsula, called the Inyak peninsula, which on its inner or western side affords safe anchorage. At its N.W. point is Port Melville. North of the peninsula is Inyak Island, and beyond it a smaller island known as Elephant’s Island.

In spite of a bar at the entrance and a number of shallows within, Delagoa Bay forms a valuable harbour, accessible to large vessels at all seasons of the year. The surrounding country is low and very unhealthy, but the island of Inyak has a height of 240 ft., and is used as a sanatorium. A river 12 to 18 ft. deep, known as the Manhissa or Komati, enters the bay at its northern end; several smaller streams, the Matolla, the Umbelozi, and the Tembi, from the Lebombo Mountains, meet towards the middle of the bay in the estuary called by the Portuguese the Espirito Santo, but generally known as the English river; and the Maputa, which has its headwaters in the Drakensberg, enters in the south, as also does the Umfusi river. These rivers are the haunts of the hippopotamus and the crocodile.

The bay was discovered by the Portuguese navigator Antonio de Campo, one of Vasco da Gama’s companions, in 1502, and the Portuguese post of Lourenço Marques was established not long after on the north side of the English river. In 1720 the Dutch East India Company built a fort and “factory” on the spot where Lourenço Marques now stands; but in 1730 the settlement was abandoned. Thereafter the Portuguese had—intermittently—trading stations in the Espirito Santo. These stations were protected by small forts, usually incapable, however, of withstanding attacks by the natives. In 1823 Captain (afterwards Vice-Admiral) W. F. W. Owen, of the British navy, finding that the Portuguese exercised no jurisdiction south of the settlement of Lourenço Marques, concluded treaties of cession with native chiefs, hoisted the British flag, and appropriated the country from the English river southwards; but when he visited the bay again in 1824 he found that the Portuguese, disregarding the British treaties, had concluded others with the natives, and had endeavoured (unsuccessfully) to take military possession of the country. Captain Owen rehoisted the British flag, but the sovereignty of either power was left undecided till the claims of the Transvaal Republic rendered a solution of the question urgent. In the meantime Great Britain had taken no steps to exercise authority on the spot, while the ravages of Zulu hordes confined Portuguese authority to the limits of their fort. In 1835 Boers, under a leader named Orich, had attempted to form a settlement on the bay, which is the natural outlet for the Transvaal; and in 1868 the Transvaal president, Marthinus Pretorius, claimed the country on each side of the Maputa down to the sea. In the following year, however, the Transvaal acknowledged Portugal’s sovereignty over the bay. In 1861 Captain Bickford, R.N., had declared Inyak and Elephant islands British territory; an act protested against by the Lisbon authorities. In 1872 the dispute between Great Britain and Portugal was submitted to the arbitration of M. Thiers, the French president; and on the 19th of April 1875 his successor, Marshal MacMahon, declared in favour of the Portuguese. It had been previously agreed by Great Britain and Portugal that the right of pre-emption in case of sale or cession should be given to the unsuccessful claimant to the bay. Portuguese authority over the interior was not established until some time after the MacMahon award; nominally the country south of the Manhissa river was ceded to them by the Matshangana chief Umzila in 1861. In 1889 another dispute arose between Portugal and Great Britain in consequence of the seizure by the Portuguese of the railway running from the bay to the Transvaal. This dispute was referred to arbitration, and in 1900 Portugal was condemned to pay nearly £1,000,000 in compensation to the shareholders in the railway company. (SeeLourenço MarquesandGazaland.)

For an account of the Delagoa Bay arbitration proceedings see Sir E. Hertslet,The Map of Africa by Treaty, iii. 991-998 (London, 1909). Consult also the British blue-book,Delagoa Bay, Correspondence respecting the Claims of Her Majesty’s Government(London, 1875); L. van Deventer,La Hollande et la Baie Delagoa(The Hague, 1883); G. McC. Theal,The Portuguese in South Africa(London, 1896), andHistory of South Africa since September 1795, vol. v. (London, 1908).The Narrative of Voyages to explore the shores of Africa ... performed ... under direction of Captain W. F. W. Owen, R.N.(London, 1833) contains much interesting information concerning the district in the early part of the 19th century.

DELAMBRE, JEAN BAPTISTE JOSEPH(1749-1822), French astronomer, was born at Amiens on the 19th of September 1749. His college course, begun at Amiens under the abbé Jacques Delille, was finished in Paris, where he took a scholarship at the college of Plessis. Despite extreme penury, he then continued to study indefatigably ancient and modern languages, history and literature, finally turning his attention to mathematics and astronomy. In 1771 he became tutor to the son of M. d’Assy, receiver-general of finances; and while acting in this capacity, attended the lectures of J. J. Lalande, who, struck with his remarkable acquirements, induced M. d’Assy in 1788 to install an observatory for his benefit at his own residence. Here Delambre observed and computed almost uninterruptedly, and in 1790 obtained for his Tables of Uranus the prize offered by the academy of sciences, of which body he was elected a member two years later. He was admitted to the Institute on its organization in 1795, and became, in 1803, perpetual secretary to its mathematical section. He, moreover, belonged from 1795 to the bureau of longitudes. From 1792 to 1799 he was occupied with the measurement of the arc of the meridian extending from Dunkirk to Barcelona, and published a detailed account of the operations inBase du système métrique(3 vols., 1806, 1807, 1810), for which he was awarded in 1810 the decennial prize of the Institute. The first consul nominated him inspector-general of studies; he succeeded Lalande in 1807 as professor of astronomy at the Collège de France, and filled the office of treasurer to the imperial university from 1808 until its suppression in 1815. Delambre died at Paris on the 19th of August 1822. His last years were devoted to researches into the history of science, resulting in the successive publication of:Histoire de l’astronomie ancienne(2 vols., 1817);Histoire de l’astronomie au moyen âge(1819);Histoire de l’astronomie moderne(2 vols., 1821); andHistoire de l’astronomie au XVIIIesiècle, issued in 1827 under the care of C. L. Mathieu. These books show marvellous erudition; but some of the judgments expressed in them are warped by prejudice; they are diffuse in style and overloaded withcomputations. He wrote besides:Tables écliptiques des satellites de Jupiter, inserted in the third edition of J. J. Lalande’sAstronomie(1792), and republished in an improved form by the bureau of longitudes in 1817;Méthodes analytiques pour la détermination d’un arc du méridien(1799);Tables du soleil (publiées par le bureau des longitudes)(1806);Rapport historique sur les progrès des sciences mathématiques depuis l’an 1789(1810);Abrégé d’astronomie(1813);Astronomie théorique et pratique(1814); &c.

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