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DIBDIN, REV. THOMAS FROGNALL. 



DIC.EARCHUS. 



682 



of strolling players in Essex, and for several years wandered through 

 the country in that profession. In 1795 he returned to London, where 

 he wrote a number of very successful pieces for the minor theatres ; 

 and in 1797 he was engaged as an actor at Covent Garden Theatre, 

 with which, as actor or author, he continued to be connected for four- 

 teen years. The latter part of his life was spent in indigence. At 

 the time of his death he was engaged in compiling an edition of his 

 father's sea-songs, for which he received an allowance from the Lords 

 of the Admiralty. He died at Pentonville on the 16th of September 

 1841, leaving children by each of two marriages. Thomas Dibdin's 

 comedies, operas, and farces are numerous enough to fill a long para- 

 graph with their bare names. Many of them were composed for tem- 

 porary purposes ; and many others had little or no success. But there 

 are one or two, as the opera of the ' Cabinet,' which, either through 

 merits of their own or by their adaptation to particular actors and 

 singers, still maintain a place on the stage. 



DIBDIN, REV. THOMAS FROGNALL, the most conspicuous 

 English writer on Bibliography in the earlier half of the nineteenth 

 century, was born at Calcutta in 1776. His father, Captain Thomas 

 Dibdin, the commander of a sloop of war in the Indian Ocean, was 

 the elder brother of Charles Dibdin, the celebrated naval song-writer. 

 [DIBDIS, CHARLES.] Both he and his wife, whom he had first met in 

 the Kast Indies, died on their passage home in the year 1780, and Frog- 

 nail Dibdin first landed on the English shore an orphan of four years 

 old. His mother's brother, Mr. Compton, took charge of him from 

 that age to man's estate ; and of other relations he saw so little, that, 

 he tells us in his ' Reminiscences,' he conversed with his famous uncle 

 Charles but once in his life, though Charles lived till 1814, when Frog- 

 nail was eight-and-thirty. He was sent to St. John's College, Oxford, 

 but quitted the university without taking a degree, and studied the 

 law under Mr. Basil Montague, whose office he left to practise in the 

 unusual character of a provincial counsel at Worcester. 



Finding no prospect of success, he soon abandoned the law for the 

 church ; and a passage in his ' Reminiscences,' in which he describes 

 his studies, furnishes the key-note of much of his subsequent career. 

 " In Greek Testaments my little library was rather richly stored. I 

 revelled in choice copies of the first Erasmus, and of the first Stephen, 

 and defied any neighbouring clergyman to match me in Elzevirs and 

 in Touson." In London, to which he speedily returned, and where he 

 became a preacher at some fashionable chapels at the west-end, he 

 was less known in the clerical than in the literary, or rather the book- 

 selling world. At that time, the 'bibliomania,' as it was called, or 

 fancy fur purchasing rare and curious books at extravagant prices, 

 was advancing to a height which it had never before attained in Eng- 

 land or elsewhere. It reached its culminating point at the celebrated 

 sale of the library of the Duke of Roxburghe, in June 1812, where a 

 copy of an early edition of Boccaccio, printed by Valdarfer, at 

 Florence, in 1471, was sold to the Marquis of Blandford, afterwards 

 Duke of Marlborough, for the sum of 22602. ; and it was afterwards 

 discovered that an imperfect copy of the same book was in the 

 Sunderland library at Blenheim, at the very time of the purchase, but 

 had three times over escaped being mentioned in the catalogue. 



Dr. Dibdin proposed, at a dinner party at Baron Holland's, even 

 before the Valdarfer was sold, the establishment of a club, to dine 

 together in honour of Bibliography. The club was established 

 under the name of the Roxburghe Club : and he became the first vice- 

 pr. sident. This club afterwards adopted the rule that each of its 

 members should every year reprint a book, to be presented to every 

 member; and this practice eeems to have led to the establishment of 

 the numerous printing and publishing clubs now in existence, more 

 liberal in their regulations than the original. The rise and progress 

 of the bibliomania was stimulated and recorded by different publica- 

 tions of Dr. Dibden : an ' Introduction to the Greek and Roman 

 Classics,' in 1802; a dialogue, entitled 'Bibliomania,' in 1809, which 

 was reprinted, with great enlargements in 2 vols., in 1811 ; and the 'Bib- 

 liographical Decameron,' in three large vols., in 1817. A new edition ol 

 Ames s ' Typographical Antiquities ' was also commenced by him, and 

 carried as far as four volumes, between 1810 and 181 9 ; and a minute 

 account of the rare book:) in Earl Spencer's library, under the title ol 

 the ' Bibhotheca Spenceriana,' which occupied four volumes, and was 

 extended by thu ' .Kelts Althorpiauso,' a description of Earl Spencer's 

 seat at Altborp ; and by an account of the Cassano library purchased 

 by him ; in the whole seven volumes. In 1818, Dr. Dibdin made a 

 tour abroad, to purchase books for the same patron, and the result 

 was, a ' Bibliographical, Antiquarian, and Picturesque Tour in Fr.uict 

 and Germany,' 3 vols. 8vo, 1821. These works, particularly the ' Bib 

 Hographical Decameron ' and the ' Tour,' present beautiful specimens ol 

 typography and engraving, produced at an expense which the author 

 was never weary of proclaiming. In ' The Library Companion ; or 

 ij{ man's Guide aud Old Man's Comfort in the Choice of a Library 

 (1824), be apparently aspired at producing something of more genera 

 and permanent use ; but the result was disastrous. The flippant am 

 frivolous character of his remarks, and the inaccurate aud superlicia 

 character of bis information, were commented upon in so severe a tone 

 by some of the leading reviews, in particular the ' Quarterly ' and the 

 ' Westminster,' that his reputation never recovered the shock. In th 

 preceding year he had obtained, by the patronage of Karl Spencer, hi 

 lint preferment in the church the living of Exning, near New 



market; he was afterwards appointed to the rectory of St. Mary, 

 Sryanstone Square ; and his publications for some years were chiefly 

 f a theological character. He returned' to the field of bibliography 

 n his ' Reminiscences of a Literary Life' (2 vols. 1836), and in his 

 Bibliographical, Antiquarian, and Picturesque Tour in the Northern 

 bounties of England and in Scotland' (3 vols. 1838). He also made, 

 ot Ion? before his death, a tour in Belgium, of which he also intended 

 o publish an account. He died oa the 18th of November 1847, 

 fter a long illness, of paralysis of the brain. His latter years had 

 ieen much clouded with pecuniary difficulties. 



Many of the publications of Dr. Dibdiu have already been enume- 

 rated, but it will be necessary to recur to some of them to afford a 

 uller notion of their character. The most important is the ' Typo- 

 ;raphical Antiquities of Great Britain." The meritorious work of 

 \.mea on that subject, professing to give an account of all the works 

 >rinted in England from the introduction of the art to the year 1600, 

 lad been expanded from one' volume to three by Herbert, who made 

 iuch extensive additions that the work might justly be regarded as 

 no longer Ames's, but his own. There was still room for extensive 

 mprovement on Herbert a very simple alteration even in the 

 arrangement would have much increased its value to nearly all who 

 consulted it. The titles of the books are disposed under the names of 

 he printers : had they b^en disposed instead, according to Panzer's 

 Jan, in his ' Annals of German Literature,' in the plain order of date, 



host of particulars would have presented themselves in combination 

 which are now scattered and inaccessible. It would have been far 

 Vom uninteresting to observe what books issued from the press in 

 England during the year in which Henry broke up the monasteries, 

 n which Mary lighted the fires of Smithueld, or in which Shakspere 

 irst came to London. Dibdiu has preserved the old arrangement, and 

 iae so much augmented the matter that the four volumes of his edition, 

 which was left imperfect, carry the record no further than the middle 

 of the second volume of Herbert's three. Some of the matter which 

 le has added is of interest, in particular his more minute account of 

 ,he productions of C'axton, but much is mere idle surplusage 

 riographies of book-collectors of the 18th century, illustrated with 

 heir portraits, which have nothing whatever to do with the history 

 of printing in the 15th and 16th centuries. Much too of the additional 

 matter for which he has obtained credit is taken from the manuscript 

 notes which Herbert had prepared for a second edition, and inserted 

 n a copy of his work which is now in the British Museum. It is to 

 )e hoped that the whole subject will be resumed ere long by some 

 competent scholar, with the numerous additional materials now at 

 lis command in our public libraries, when, with some industry aud 

 ntelligence, a work may be produced which will interest not only 

 ;he bibliographer but all who have a tincture of feeling for literary 

 matters. The ' Bibliotheca Spenceriana,' from its containing parti- 

 culars of many books not accessible to the public in general, is often 

 used as a work of reference ; but those who have consulted it the 

 oftenest regard it with the most distrust. Such was Dr. Dibdin's habit 

 of inaccuracy, that in two accounts of the origin of the Roxburgho 

 Club, to him a matter of great importance and interest, given in two 

 of his works, the dates are utterly irreconcileable. In the ' Decameron' 

 [vol. iii., p. 69), he distinctly states that the dinner at which he proposed 

 it was on the 4th of June ; in the ' Reminiscences' (p. 367), he states no less 

 distinctly that it was " on the evening before the sale of the ' Boccaccio ' 

 of 1471, which took place on the 17th of June 1812." It may easily 

 be conceived that his accounts of the dates of rare books are not to 

 be depended on till after they have been verified. It may be remarked 

 also thai his way of describing a book has too little of the scholar aud 

 the man of letters, and too much of the bookseller and the bookbinder. 

 The width of the margin, and the kind of leather in which a book is 

 coated, attract as much of his attention a* the particulars which all 

 copies of the book have in common. The 'Tours' are a singular 

 compound of anecdotes of rare interest mixed up with the most idle 

 and irrelevant matter. The ' Decameron ' is by far the best of Dr. 

 Dibdin's works, as comprising the least of detail and the most of 

 anecdote ; and it is written in many portions with a degree of care 

 and spirit often wanting in his other works. The ' Reminiscences' 

 afford singular proof that, although the author of an ' Introduction to 

 the Classics,' his acquaintance with some of them was more than usually 

 deficient. On the whole, though his bibliographical works abound 

 with much that the reader wishes away, they are indispensable in any 

 large library of English literature. His other productions, which are 

 numerous, will be/ound mentioned in his own 'Reminiscences.' 



DIC/EARCHUS,. the son of Phidias, was born in the city of 

 Messana in Sicily. He was a scholar of Aristotle, aud is called a 

 peripatetic philosopher by Cicero (' De Officiis,' ii. 5); but though he 

 wrote some works on philosophical subjects, ho seems to have devoted 

 his attention principally to geography and statistics. His chief philo- 

 sophical work was one ' On the Soul,' in two dialogues, each divided 

 into three books : one dialogue being supposed to be held at Corinth, 

 the other at Mitylene. In these he argued againt the Platonic 

 doctrine of the soul, and indeed altogether denied its existence. In 

 the second and third books of the Corinthian dialogue, Cicero tells us 



(' Tuscul. Disput.,' I 10), he introduced an old Pthiote named Phere- 

 crates, maintaining that the soul was absolutely nothing ; that the 



word was a mere empty sound j that there was no soul either in man 



