352 



THE STANDARD DICTIONARY OF FACTS 



when he seats Bardolph and Page at table, he tells them 

 they must take "his" good will for their assurance of 

 welcome. 



Dawfyd The Betrothed, Scott. ".The one-eyed" 

 freebooter chief. 



Daukins. Oliver Twist. Dickens. Known by the 

 sobriquet of the "Artful Dodger." He is one of Fagin's 

 tools. Jack Dawkins is a scamp, but of a cheery, buoy- 

 ant temper. 



Deans, Douce Davie. A poor herdsman at Edin- 

 burgh, and the father of Effie and Jennie Deans, in Sir 

 Walter Scott's novel, "The Heart of Mid-Lothian." 



Deans, little. A beautiful but unfortunate charac- 

 ter in Sir Walter Scott's "Heart of Mid-Lothian." 



Deans, .leanie. The heroine of "The Heiirt of Mid- 

 lothian," characterized by her kindness, stun li ness, 

 and good sense. She journeys from Edinburgh to 

 London, and obtains pardon for her sister Effie, con- 

 demned for child murder. 



De'bon. One of the heroes who accompanied Brute 

 to Britain. According to British fable, Devonshire is 

 the county or share of Debon. 



Decameron. A volume of one hundred tales told 

 bv Boccaccio. Ten ladies and their gentlemen assem- 

 bled in one place agree that each shall tell one story 

 every day for the entertainment of the rest. Thus ten 

 stories daily are told for ten consecutive days. Chaucer 

 borrowed the plan but reconstructed it for his ".Canter- 

 bury Tales." 



Dedlock, Sir Leicester. A character in Bleak 

 House, by Charles Dickens. An honorable and 

 truthful man but of such fixed ideas that no man could 

 shake his prejudices. He had an idea that the one 

 thing of greatest importance to the world was a certain 

 family by the name of Dedlock. He loved his wife 

 Lady Dedlock and believed in her implicitly. His 

 pride had a terrible fall when he learned the secret of 

 her life before her marriage and knew the terrible fact 

 she had been hiding from him that she had a daughter. 



Dedlock, Lady. Wife of Sir Leicester, beautiful, 

 and apparently cold and heartless but suffering con- 

 stant remorse. The daughter's name is Esther Sum- 

 merson, the heroine of the novel. 



Dedlock, Volumnia. Cousin of Sir Leicester, a 

 young lady of sixty, who had the disagreeable habit 

 of entering into other people's business. 



Deerslayer. The hero of a novel by the same name, 

 by James Fenimore Cooper. A strong fine character, hon- 

 orable, truthful, brave, without cultivation but without 

 reproach. This character appears under different 

 names in five of Cooper's novels. "The Deerslayer," 

 "The Pathfinder," "The Last of the Mo'hicans," ".The 

 Pioneers," and "The Prairie." 



Defarge, Mpns. Tale of Two Cities, Dickens. 

 Keeper of a wine shop in the Faubourge St. Antoine, 

 in Paris. He is a bull-necked, implacable-looking man. 



Defarge, Mde, his wife, a dangerous woman, ever- 

 lastingly knitting. 



Del'phi. A famous oracle of Apollo in Phocis, at 

 the foot of Mount Parnassus. [Erroneously written 

 Delphos by early English writers.] 



Dolphin Classics. For the use of the dauphin, 

 son of Louis XIV. (1674-91), the writings of thirty- 

 nine Latin authors were collected and published in 

 sixty volumes. Notes and an index were added to 

 each work. An edition of the Delphin classics was 

 published in London in the year 1818. 



Delphine. The title of a novel by Mine, de Stael and 

 the name of its heroine. 



Delphine, .Madame. Old Creole Days, George 

 W. Cable. A free quadroon connected with the splendor 

 of La Fitts. the smuggler and patriot. Madame Delphine 

 disowned her beautiful daughter Olive in order to 

 assure to her the rights of a white woman. 



Demetrius. Midsummer Night's Dream, Shake- 

 spere. The young Athenian to whom Egeno promised 

 his daughter Hermia in marriage. 



De Profundis. "Out of the Depths." The 130th 

 Psalm is so called from the first two words in the Latin 

 version. In the Roman Catholic Liturgy it is sung 

 when the dead are committed to the grave. 



Deronda, Daniel. One of George Eliot's strongest 

 character sketches in her novel by the same name. 



Deserted Village. A poem by Goldsmith in which 

 he describes rural England. He calls the village Auburn, 

 but tells us it was the seat of his youth, every spot of 

 which was dear and familiar to him. He pictures 

 familiar persons, the preacher, the teacher, pastimes, 

 and favorite haunts. 



Desmas. The repentant thief is so called in "The 

 Story of Joseph of Arimathea." Longfellow, in "The 

 Golden Legend," calls him Dumachus. The impenitent 

 thief is called Gestas, but Longfellow calls him Titus. 



Dim. Roderick. A highland chieftain and outlaw 

 in Se.ut's poem "l^dy of the Lake," cousin of Ellen 

 Douglas, and also her suitor. He is slain by James- 

 Fitz-James. 



Di'do. The daughter of Belus, King of Tyre, and 

 the wife of Siclucus, whom her brother Pygmalion mur- 

 dered for his riches. Not far from the Phenician 

 colony of Utica she built the city of Carthage. Accord- 

 ing to Virgil, when /Eneas was shipwrecked upon her 

 co&st, in his voyage to Italy, she hospitably entertained 

 him, fell in love with him, and, because he did not 

 requite her passion, stabbed herself in despair. 



Dies Ira?, the name generally given (from the opening 

 words) to the famous media' v:il hymn on the Last Judg- 

 ment. On account of the solemn grandeur of the 

 ideas which it brings before the mind, as well as the 

 deep and trembling emotions it is fitted to excite, it 

 soon found its way into the liturgy of the Church. 

 The authorship of the hymn has been ascribed to 

 Gregory the Great, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Umbertus, 

 and Frangipani, the last two of whom were noted as 

 church-hymnists. 



Diggon, Davie. A shepherd in the " Shephearde's 

 Calendar," by Spenser, He tells Hobbinol that he 

 drove his sheep into foreign lands, hoping to find better 

 pasture; but he was amazed at the luxury and profligacy 

 of the shepherds whom he saw there, and the wretched 

 condition of the flocks. 



Dimmes'dale, Arthur. In Hawthorne's romance 

 "The Scarlet Letter," a Puritan minister of great elo- 

 quence and spirituality, in Colonial New England, who 

 secretly commits adultery and afterwards makes a public 

 confession. 



Di'nah, Aunt. In Sterne's "Tristram Shandy." 

 She leaves Mr. Walter Shandy 1,000, which he fancies 

 will enable him to carry out all the schemes that enter 

 into ftis head. 



Dinah, Friendly. The Bashful Man, Moncrieff. 

 Daughter of Sir Thomas Friendly. 



Dinah. St. Ronan's Well, Scott. Daughter of 

 Sandie Lawson, landlord of the Spa hotel. 



Dinah. A character in Mrs. Stowe's ". Uncle^Tom's 

 Cabin." 



Ding'ley Hall. Pickwick Papers, Dickens. The 

 home of Mr. Wardle and his family, and the scene of 

 Tupman's love adventure with Miss Rachel. 



Diqme'des or Diomed. Iliad, Homer. King of 

 ^to'lia, in Greece, brave and obedient to authority. 

 He survived the siege of Troy; but on his return home 

 found his wife untrue to him. He fled to Italy and 

 remained in exile. 



Dirlos, Count. One of Charlemagne's paladins, 

 an ideal of valor, generosity, and truth. 



Divine Comedy. Dante's immortal work, the 

 " Divina Commedia," was written during the period 

 1300-18, and has been translated into English by Gary, 

 Longfellow, and pthers. Dante called it a comedy only 

 because the ending was not tragical, and the epithet 

 divine was given to it in admiration. The name ' ' Com- 

 media" signifies lowly, written in the common tongue, or 

 as some explain, "comedy " also signifies ending happily. 

 The " Divine Comedy " is an epic poem, divided into three 

 parts; Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso. The poet depicts 

 a vision, in which he is conducted, first by Virgil (human 

 reason) through hell and purgatory; and then by 

 Beatrice (revelation), and finally by St. Bernard through 

 the several heavens, where he beholds the triune God. 

 In all parts of the regions thus traversed, there arise 

 conversations with noted personages. The deepest ques- 

 tions of philosophy and theology are discussed and 

 solved; and the social and moral condition of Italy, 

 with the corruptions 9f Church and State, are depicted 

 with indignation. Fifty-two years after the poet's 

 death, the Republic of Florence, set apart an annual 

 sum for public lectures to explain the "Divine Comedy" 

 to the people in one of the churches, and Boccaccio 

 himself was appointed first lecturer. 



Doctour of Phisikes, Tale. Is the Roman story 

 of Virginius, given by Livy. Told by Chaucer in ".Can- 

 terbury Tales." 



Doctor Syntax. The hero of a work entitled ".The 

 Tour of Dr. Syntax in Search of the Picturesque," 

 Doctor Syntax is a simple-minded, pious, henpecked 

 clergyman, but of excellent taste and scholarship who 

 left home in search of the picturesque. His adventures 

 are told in eight-syllable verse by William Combe. ".Dr. 

 Syntax's Horse." Grizzle, all skin and bone. 



Dods. The old landlady in Scott's novel called 

 " St. Ronan's Well." An excellent character, a mosaic 

 of oddities, all fitting together, and forming an admirable 

 whole. She was so good a housewife that a cookery 

 book of great repute bears her name. 



