672 



DANIELL 



besides saying for himself that ' his manner better 

 fitted prose.' Of modern critics, Coleridge, Lamb, 

 and Hazlitt unite in praising him. Asa sonneteer 

 Daniel is altogether admirable. Some of the 

 ' Delia ' series rank near the best examples of this 

 form in English. Daniel is indeed an elegant if 

 not a great poet. His writings are pervaded by a 

 moral thougntfulness and purity of taste remark- 

 able indeed, but lacking that vital energy of move- 

 ment and memorableness of exprecsion which 

 spring from genuine inspiration. The ' well- 

 languaged Daniel ' is therefore not the most in- 

 teresting of the Elizabethans, although his style 

 is quite modern. His works include sonnets, 

 epistles, masks, and dramas ; but his chief pro- 

 duction is a poem in eight books, entitled a History 

 of the Civil Wars between York and Lancaster. 

 His Defence of Ryme ( 1602) is written in admirable 

 prose. Dr Grosart reprinted Daniel's works in the 

 Huth Library (3 vols. 1885-87). 



Daniell, JOHN FREDERIC, scientist, was born in 

 London, March 12, 1790. He was for a time engaged 

 in a sugar-refining work, but was elected a Fellow of 

 the Royal Society in 1814, and devoted himself to 

 chemistry and meteorology. In 1823 he published 

 his Meteorological Essays, and in 1824 the Horti- 

 cultural Society awarded him their silver medal 

 for an essay on artificial climate. In 1831 he 

 was appointed professor of Chemistry in King's 

 College, London ; and in 1839 published his In- 

 troduction to Chemical Philosophy. In 1843 he 

 received the degree of D.C.L. from the university 

 of Oxford, and obtained all the three medals in 

 the gift of the Royal Society. He invented a 

 hygrometer ( 1820), and a new pyrometer ( 1830), as 

 well as the electric battery known by his name ; 

 and he wrote many valuable papers on chemistry, 

 especially on voltaic combinations and electro- 

 lysis. He died suddenly, March 13, 1845. 



Danish Literature. See DENMARK. 



Danitcs, or DESTROYING ANGELS, a secret 

 society of Mormon devotees organized in 1838, pro- 

 fessedly for the defence of the Mormon sect against 

 the mob, and supposed by the "gentiles" to have 

 acted under the authority of the Mormon officials. 

 Historians of that sect, however, claim that the 

 band was organized by one Sampson Avard on his 

 own responsibility for purposes of plunder, and that 

 as soon as the practices of the band became known 

 Avard and all who persisted in them were cut off 

 from the church. The members, originally some 

 300 in number, were bound by terrible oaths and 

 penalties to sustain one another in all things, and 

 assassinations and other outrages were laid to their 

 charge. Remembrance of the society's operations 

 was revived by the trial, conviction, and execution 

 of John D. Lee, in 1877, for the massacre of a train 

 of 140 non-Mormon emigrants at Mountain Meadow, 

 near Pinto, Utah, twenty years before. 



Dannecker, JOHANN HEINRICH VON, a Ger- 

 man sculptor, was born at Waldenbuch, in the dis- 

 trict of Stuttgart, loth October 1758. His parents 

 were in the humblest circumstances ; but through 

 the favour of the Duke of Wlirtemberg, he received 

 a good education at the military academy at 

 Ludwigsburg. His artistic talents were rapidly 

 developed. In 1780 he obtained the prize for the 

 best model of 'Milo;' and in 1783 went to Paris, 

 where he studied for two years ; after which he 

 returned to Rome, where he met Goethe, Herder, 

 and Canova, to the last of whom he was in- 

 debted for much valuable instruction. At Rome 

 Dannecker remained till 1790. Here he executed 

 in marble his statues of ' Ceres ' and ' Bacchus. ' 

 On his return to Germany, the Duke of Wiirtem- 

 berg appointed him professci of Sculpture in the 

 Academy of Stuttgart, in which city he resided till 



DANTE 



his death, 8th December 1841. Dannecker was un- 

 doubtedly one of the best of modern sculptors. His 

 forte lay in expressing individual characteristics, 

 in which respect he has not been surpassed. This 

 gives a great value to his busts of distinguished 

 persons, such as Schiller, Lavater, and Gluck. 

 His earlier works are chiefly pagan in their subjects, 

 while his later ones are Christian, and are pervaded 

 by a pensive idealism. 'Ariadne on the Panther' 

 ( 1816 ; at Frankfort) i: his masterpiece. 



Dannevirke ('Danes work'), the rampart 

 built by the Danes about 808 across Sleswick (q.v.), 

 just north of the Eider ; the scene of fighting in 

 1849, and razed by the Germans in 1850. 



D'Annunzio, GABRIELE, an Italian realist 

 poet and novelist, born in 1864 on board ship in 

 the Adriatic. His novels show great gifts as a 

 story-teller, and combine decadentism, jcstheticism, 

 pessimism, and egoism. They attracted notice out- 

 side of Italy in French translations before they 

 were translated into English (The Triumph of 

 Death, 1896, &c.). 



Dante Alighieri (also written ALDIGHIERI, 

 ALAGHIERI, and otherwise), 'that singular splen- 

 dour of the Italian race,' as Boccaccio, his first bio- 

 grapher, calls him, was born in May 1265, the exact 

 day being unknown. The house in which he was 

 born is still shown in the Piazza di San Martino at 

 Florence. His father was a lawyer, his mother, 

 who was his father's second wife, was named Bella, 

 but her surname is not known. The future poet 

 was baptised with the Christian name of Durante, 

 afterwards contracted into Dante, in the beautiful 

 baptistery of Florence, towards which in his later 

 years the tenderest thoughts of the hopeless exile 

 turned (see Inf. xix. 17; Far. xxv. 1-12). The fancy 

 of the old biographers loved to dtoell on the appro- 

 priateness of both names, ' the much-enduring," 

 and ' the giver.' As with many other great men, a 

 halo of legend surrounds the circumstances of his 

 birth and early years. But the curtain is first lifted 

 on his actual history, and that by himself, in his 

 Vita Nuova, the New (i.e. probably Early) Life, 

 when he relates how he first set eyes on ' the glorious 

 lady of his heart, Beatrice,' he being then about 

 nine years of age, and she a few months younger. 

 To Boccaccio, and to his statement alone, we owe 

 the generally accepted fact that she was the 

 daughter of Folco Portinari, for Dante himself 

 never gives the slightest clue as to her family name. 

 Owing to his reticence on this point, combined with 

 the extraordinary and, to modern notions, almost 

 unintelligible amount of idealisation in Dante's 

 language about her, some critics have ( as might be 

 expected ) denied that she was a real person at all. 

 That chance meeting in May 1274 determined the 

 whole future course of the poet's life. The story of 

 his boyish but unquenchable passion is told with 

 exquisite pathos in the Vita Nuova. There is no 

 evidence that any similar feeling was aroused in tho 

 heart of Beatrice Portinari. She was married at an 

 early age to one Simone de' Bardi, but neither this 

 nor the poet's own subsequent marriage interfered 

 with his pure and Platonic devotion to her. This 

 became even intensified after her death, which took 

 place on June 9, 1290, when she was in her 24th 

 year. Shortly after this Dante married Gemma 

 Donati, a member of one of the most powerful 

 families of the Guelph faction at Florence. Accord- 

 ing to Boccaccio, this marriage was recommended 

 by his friends, alarmed at the condition of his health 

 through overmuch sorrow. It has commonly been 

 assumed that the marriage was an unhappy one. 

 This, however, is merely a conjecture, supported 

 mainly by the fact that after Dante's exile in 1301 

 he never appears to have seen, or cared to see, his 

 wife again. 



