Chapter XIII: Part 13

There is little to be said of Defoe's private life during this period. He must in some way or other have obtained a considerable income. In 1724 he had built himself a large house at Stoke Newington, which had stables and grounds of considerable size. From the negotiations for the marriage of his daughter Sophia it appears that he had landed property in more than one place, and he had obtained on lease in 1722 a considerable estate from the corporation of Colchester, which was settled on his unmarried daughter at his death. Other property was similarly allotted to his widow and remaining children, though some difficulty seems to have arisen from the misconduct of his son, to whom, for some purpose, the property was assigned during his father's lifetime, and who refused to pay what was due. There is a good deal of mystery about the end of Defoe's life; it used to be said that he died insolvent, and that he had been in jail shortly before his death. As a matter of fact, after great suffering from gout and stone, he died in Ropemaker's Alley, Moorfields, on Monday the 26th of April 1731, and was buried in Bunhill Fields. He left no will, all his property having been previously assigned, and letters of administration were taken out by a creditor. How his affairs fell into this condition, why he did not die in his own house, and why in the previous summer he had been in hiding, as we know he was from a letter still extant, are points not clearly explained. He was, however, attacked by Mist, whom he wounded, in prison in 1724. It is most likely that Mist had found out that Defoe was a government agent and quite probable that he communicated his knowledge to other editors, for Defoe's journalistic employment almost ceased about this time, and he began to write anonymously, or as "Andrew Moreton." It is possible that he had to go into hiding to avoid the danger of being accused as a real Jacobite, when those with whom he had contracted to assume the character were dead and could no longer justify his attitude.

Defoe married, on New Year's Day, 1684, Mary Tuffley, who survived until December 1732. They had seven children. His second son, Bernard or Benjamin Norton, has, like his father, a scandalous niche in the _Dunciad_. In April 1877 public attention was called to the distress of three maiden ladies, directly descended from Defoe, and bearing his name; and a crown pension of L75 a year was bestowed on each of them. His youngest daughter, Sophia, who married Henry Baker, left a considerable correspondence, now in the hands of her descendants. There are several portraits of Defoe, the principal one being engraved by Vandergucht.

In his lifetime, Defoe, as not belonging to either of the great parties at a time of the bitterest party strife, was subjected to obloquy on both sides. The great Whig writers leave him unnoticed. Swift and Gay speak slightingly of him,--the former, it is true, at a time when he was only known as a party pamphleteer. Pope, with less excuse, put him in the _Dunciad_ towards the end of his life, but he confessed to Spence in private that Defoe had written many things and none bad. At a later period he was unjustly described as "a scurrilous party writer," which he certainly was not; but, on the other hand, Johnson spoke of his writing "so variously and so well," and put _Robinson Crusoe_ among the only three books that readers wish longer. From Sir Walter Scott downwards the tendency to judge literary work on its own merits to a great extent restored Defoe to his proper place, or, to speak more correctly, set him there for the first time. Lord Macaulay's description of _Roxana_, _Moll Flanders_ and _Colonel Jack_ as "utterly nauseous and wretched" must be set aside as a freak of criticism.

Scott justly observed that Defoe's style "is the last which should be attempted by a writer of inferior genius; for though it be possible to disguise mediocrity by fine writing, it appears in all its naked inanity when it assumes the garb of simplicity." The methods by which Defoe attains his result are not difficult to disengage. They are the presentment of all his ideas and scenes in the plainest and most direct language, the frequent employment of colloquial forms of speech, the constant insertion of little material details and illustrations, often of a more or less digressive form, and, in his historico-fictitious works, as well as in his novels, the most rigid attention to vivacity and consistency of character. Plot he disregards, and he is fond of throwing his dialogues into regular dramatic form, with by-play prescribed and stage directions interspersed. A particular trick of his is also to divide his arguments after the manner of the preachers of his day into heads and subheads, with actual numerical signs affixed to them. These mannerisms undoubtedly help and emphasize the extraordinary faithfulness to nature of his fictions, but it would be a great mistake to suppose that they fully explain their charm. Defoe possessed genius, and his secret is at the last as impalpable as the secret of genius always is.

The character of Defoe, both mental and moral, is very clearly indicated in his works. He, the satirist of the true-born Englishman, was himself a model, with some notable variations and improvements, of the Englishman of his period. He saw a great many things, and what he did see he saw clearly. But there were also a great many things which he did not see, and there was often no logical connexion whatever between his vision and his blindness. The most curious example of this inconsistency, or rather of this indifference to general principle, occurs in his _Essay on Projects_. He there speaks very briefly and slightingly of life insurance, probably because it was then regarded as impious by religionists of his complexion. But on either side of this refusal are to be found elaborate projects of friendly societies and widows' funds, which practically cover, in a clumsy and roundabout manner, the whole ground of life insurance. In morals it is evident that he was, according to his lights, a strictly honest and honourable man. But sentiment of any "high-flying" description--to use the cant word of his time--was quite incomprehensible to him, or rather never presented itself as a thing to be comprehended. He tells us with honest and simple pride that when his patron Harley fell out, and Godolphin came in, he for three years held no communication with the former, and seems quite incapable of comprehending the delicacy which would have obliged him to follow Harley's fallen fortunes. His very anomalous position in regard to Mist is also indicative of a rather blunt moral perception. One of the most affecting things in his novels is the heroic constancy and fidelity of the maid Amy to her exemplary mistress Roxana. But Amy, scarcely by her own fault, is drawn into certain breaches of definite moral laws which Defoe did understand, and she is therefore condemned, with hardly a word of pity, to a miserable end. Nothing heroic or romantic was within Defoe's view; he could not understand passionate love, ideal loyalty, aesthetic admiration or anything of the kind; and it is probable that many of the little sordid touches which delight us by their apparent satire were, as designed, not satire at all, but merely a faithful representation of the feelings and ideas of the classes of which he himself was a unit.

His political and economical pamphlets are almost unmatched as clear presentations of the views of their writer. For driving the nail home no one but Swift excels him, and Swift perhaps only in _The Drapier's Letters_. There is often a great deal to be said against the view presented in those pamphlets, but Defoe sees nothing of it. He was perfectly fair but perfectly one-sided, being generally happily ignorant of everything which told against his own view.

The same characteristics are curiously illustrated in his moral works. The morality of these is almost amusing in its downright positive character. With all the Puritan eagerness to push a clear, uncompromising, Scripture-based distinction of right and wrong into the affairs of every-day life, he has a thoroughly English horror of casuistry, and his clumsy canons consequently make wild work with the infinite intricacies of human nature. He is, in fact, an instance of the tendency, which has so often been remarked by other nations in the English, to drag in moral distinctions at every turn, and to confound everything which is novel to the experience, unpleasant to the taste, and incomprehensible to the understanding, under the general epithets of wrong, wicked and shocking. His works of this class therefore are now the least valuable, though not the least curious, of his books.

The earliest regular life and estimate of Defoe is that of Dr Towers
in the _Biographia Britannica_. George Chalmers's _Life_, however
(1786), added very considerable information. In 1830 Walter Wilson
wrote the standard _Life_ (3 vols.); it is coloured by political
prejudice, but is a model of painstaking care, and by its abundant
citations from works both of Defoe and of others, which are
practically inaccessible to the general reader, is invaluable. In 1859
appeared a life of Defoe by William Chadwick, an extraordinary
rhapsody in a style which is half Cobbett and half Carlyle, but
amusing, and by no means devoid of acuteness. In 1864 the discovery of
the six letters stirred up William Lee to a new investigation, and the
results of this were published (London, 1869) in three large volumes.
The first of these (well illustrated) contains a new life and
particulars of the author's discoveries. The second and third contain
fugitive writings assigned by Lee to Defoe for the first time. For
most of these, however, we have no authority but Lee's own impressions
of style, &c.; and consequently, though the best qualified judges will
in most cases agree that Defoe may very likely have written them, it
cannot positively be stated that he did. There is also a _Life_ by
Thomas Wright (1894). The _Earlier Life and Chief Earlier Works_ of
Defoe (1890) was included by Henry Morley in the "Carisbrooke
Library." Charles Lamb's criticisms were made in three short pieces,
two of which were written for Wilson's book, and the third for _The
Reflector_. The volume on _Defoe_ (1879) in the "English Men of
Letters" series is by W. Minto.

There is considerable uncertainty about many of Defoe's writings; and
even if all contested works be excluded, the number is still enormous.
Besides the list in Bohn's _Lowndes_, which is somewhat of an _omnium
gatherum_, three lists drawn with more or less care were compiled in
the 19th century. Wilson's contains 210 distinct works, three or four
only of which are marked as doubtful; Hazlitt's enumerates 183
"genuine" and 52 "attributed" pieces, with notes on most of them;
Lee's extends to 254, of which 64 claim to be new additions. The
reprint (3 vols.) edited for the "Pulteney Library" by Hazlitt in
1840-1843 contains a good and full life mainly derived from Wilson,
the whole of the novels (including the _Serious Reflections_ now
hardly ever published with _Robinson Crusoe_), _Jure Divino_, _The Use
and Abuse of Marriage_, and many of the more important tracts and
smaller works. There is also an edition, often called Scott's, but
really edited by Sir G. C. Lewis, in twenty volumes (London,
1840-1841). This contains the _Complete Tradesman_, _Religious
Courtship_, _The Consolidator_ and other works not comprised in
Hazlitt's. Scott had previously in 1809 edited for Ballantyne some of
the novels, in twelve volumes. Bohn's "British Classics" includes the
novels (except the third part of _Robinson Crusoe_), _The History of
the Devil_, _The Storm_, and a few political pamphlets, also the
undoubtedly spurious _Mother Ross_. In 1870 Nimmo of Edinburgh
published in one volume an admirable selection from Defoe. It contains
Chalmers's _Life_, annotated and completed from Wilson and Lee,
_Robinson Crusoe_, pts. i. and ii., _Colonel Jack_, _The Cavalier_,
_Duncan Campbell_, _The Plague_, _Everybody's Business_, _Mrs Veal_,
_The Shortest Way with Dissenters_, _Giving Alms no Charity_, _The
True-Born Englishman_, _Hymn to the Pillory_, and very copious
extracts from _The Complete English Tradesman_. An edition of Defoe's
_Romances and Narratives_ in sixteen volumes by G. A. Aitken came out
in 1895.

If we turn to separate works, the bibliography of Defoe is practically
confined (except as far as original editions are concerned) to
_Robinson Crusoe_. _Mrs Veal_ has been to some extent popularized by
the work which it helped to sell; _Religious Courtship_ and _The
Family Instructor_ had a vogue among the middle class until well into
the 19th century, and _The History of the Union_ was republished in
1786. But the reprints and editions of _Crusoe_ have been innumerable;
it has been often translated; and the eulogy pronounced on it by
Rousseau gave it special currency in France, where imitations (or
rather adaptations) have also been common.

In addition to the principal authorities already mentioned see John
Forster, _Historical and Biographical Essays_ (1858); G. Saintsbury,
"Introduction" to Defoe's _Minor Novels_; and valuable notes by G. A.
Aitken in _The Contemporary Review_ (February 1890), and _The
Athenaeum_ (April 30, 1889; August 31, 1890). A facsimile reprint
(1883) of _Robinson Crusoe_ has an introduction by Mr Austin Dobson.
Dr Karl T. Bulbring edited two unpublished works of Defoe, _The
Compleat English Gentleman_ (London, 1890) and _Of Royall Educacion_
(London, 1905), from British Museum Add. MS. 32,555. Further light was
thrown on Defoe's work as a political agent by the discovery (1906) of
an unpublished paper of his in the British Museum by G. F. Warner.
This was printed in the _English Historical Review_, and afterwards
separately.

DEGAS, HILAIRE GERMAIN EDGARD (1834- ), French painter, was born in Paris on the 19th of July 1834. Entering in 1855 the Ecole des Beaux Arts, he early developed independence of artistic outlook, studying under Lamothe. He first exhibited in the Salon of 1865, contributing a "War in the middle ages," a work executed in pastel. To this medium he was ever faithful, using it for some of his best work. In 1866 his "Steeplechase" revealed him as a painter of the racecourse and of all the most modern aspects of life and of Parisian society, treated in an extremely original manner. He subsequently exhibited in 1867 "Family Portraits," and in 1868 a portrait of a dancer in the "Ballet of _La Source_." In 1869 and 1870 he restricted himself to portraits; but thenceforward he abandoned the Salons and attached himself to the Impressionists. With Manet and Monet he took the lead of the new school at its first exhibition in 1874, and repeatedly contributed to these exhibitions (in 1876, 1878, 1879 and 1880). In 1868 he had shown his first study of a dancer, and in numerous pastels he proclaimed himself the painter of the ballet, representing its figurantes in every attitude with more constant aim at truth than grace. Several of his works may be seen at the Luxembourg Gallery, to which they were bequeathed, among a collection of impressionist pictures, by M. Caillebotte. In 1880 Degas showed his powers of observation in a set of "Portraits of Criminals," and he attempted modelling in a "Dancer," in wax. He afterwards returned to his studies of the sporting world, exhibiting in December 1884 at the Petit Gallery two views of "Races" which had a great success, proving the increasing vogue of the artist among collectors. He is ranked with Manet as the leader of the "impressionist school." At the eighth Impressionist Exhibition, in 1886, Degas continued his realistic studies of modern life, showing drawings of the nude, of workwomen, and of jockeys. Besides his pastels and his paintings of genre and portraits--among these, several likenesses of Manet--Degas also handled his favourite subjects in etching and in aquatint; and executed several lithographs of "Singers at Cafes-concert," of "Ballet-girls," and indeed of every possible subject of night-life and incidents behind the scenes. His work is to be seen not only at the Luxembourg but in many of the great private collections in Paris, in England and America. In the Centenary Exhibition of 1900 he exhibited "The Interior of a Cotton-Broker's Office at New Orleans" (belonging to the Museum at Pau) and "The Rehearsal."

See also G. Moore, "Degas, the Painter of Modern Life," _Magazine of
Art_ (1890); J. K. Huysmans, _Certains_ (Paris, 1889); G. Geffroy, _La
Vie Artistique_ (3^e Serie, Paris, 1894).

DE GEER, LOUIS GERHARD, BARON (1818-1896), Swedish statesman and writer, was born on the 18th of July 1818 at Finspang castle. He adopted the legal profession, and in 1855 became president of the Gota Hofret, or lord justice of one of the Swedish supreme courts. From the 7th of April 1858 to the 3rd of June 1870 he was minister of justice. As a member of the Upper House he took part in all the Swedish _Riksdags_ from 1851 onwards, though he seldom spoke. From 1867 to 1878 he was the member for Stockholm in the first chamber, and introduced and passed many useful reformatory statutes; but his greatest achievement, as a statesman, was the reform of the Swedish representative system, whereby he substituted a bi-cameral elective parliament, on modern lines, for the existing cumbersome representation by estates, a survival from the later middle ages. This great measure was accepted by the Riksdag in December 1865, and received the royal sanction on the 22nd of June 1866. For some time after this De Geer was the most popular man in Sweden. He retired from the ministry in 1870, but took office again, as minister of justice, in 1875. In 1876 he became minister of state, which position he retained till April 1880, when the failure of his repeated efforts to settle the armaments' question again induced him to resign. From 1881 to 1888 he was chancellor of the universities of Upsala and Lund. Besides several novels and aesthetic essays, De Geer has written a few political memoirs of supreme merit both as to style and matter, the most notable of which are: _Minnesteckning ofver A. J. v. Hopken_ (Stockholm, 1881); _Minnesteckning ofver Hans Jarta_ (Stockholm, 1874); _Minnesteckning ofver B. B. von Platen_ (Stockholm, 1886); and his own _Minnen_ (Stockholm, 1892), an autobiography, invaluable as a historical document, in which the political experience and the matured judgments of a lifetime are recorded with singular clearness, sobriety and charm.

See _Sveriges historia_ (Stockholm, 1881, &c.), vi,; Carl Gustaf
Malmstrom, _Historiska Studier_ (Stockholm, 1897). (R. N. B.)

DEGGENDORF, or DECKENDORF, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Bavaria, 25 m. N.W. of Passau, on the left bank of the Danube, which is there crossed by two iron bridges. Pop. (1905) 7154. It is situated at the lower end of the beautiful valley of the Perlbach, and in itself it is a well-built and attractive town. It possesses an old town hall dating from 1566, a hospital, a lunatic asylum, an orphanage, and a large parish church rebuilt in 1756; but the chief interest centres in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, built in 1337, which attracts thousands of pilgrims to its _Porta Caeli_ or _Gnadenpforte_ (Gate of Mercy) opened annually on Michaelmas eve and closed again on the 4th of October. In 1837, on the celebration of the 500th anniversary of this solemnity, the number of pilgrims was reckoned at nearly 100,000. Such importance as the town possesses is now rather commercial than religious,--it being a depot for the timber trade of the Bavarian forest, a station for the Danube steamboat company, and the seat of several mills, breweries, potteries and other industrial establishments. On the bank of the Danube outside the town are the remains of the castle of Findelstein; and on the Geiersberg (1243 ft.), in the immediate vicinity, stands another old pilgrimage church. About 6 m. to the north is the village of Metten, with a Benedictine monastery founded by Charlemagne in 801, restored as an abbey in 1840 by Louis I. of Bavaria, and well known as an educational institution. The first mention of Deggendorf occurs in 868, and it appears as a town in 1212. Henry (d. 1290) of the Landshut branch of the ruling family of Bavaria made it the seat of a custom-house; and in 1331 it became the residence of Henry III. of Natternberg (d. 1333), so called from a castle in the neighbourhood. In 1337 a wholesale massacre of the Jews, who were accused of having thrown the sacred host of the church of the Holy Sepulchre into a well, took place in the town; and it is probably from about this date that the pilgrimage above mentioned came into vogue. The town was captured by the Swedish forces in 1633, and in the war of the Austrian Succession it was more than once laid in ashes.

See Gruber and Muller, _Der bayerische Wald_ (Regensburg, 1851);
Mittermuller, _Die heil. Hostien und die Juden in Deggendorf_
(Landshut, 1866); and _Das Kloster Metten_ (Straubing, 1857).

DE HAAS, MAURITZ FREDERICK HENDRICK (1832-1895), American marine painter, was born on the 12th of December 1832 in Rotterdam, Holland. He studied art in the Rotterdam Academy and at The Hague, under Bosboom and Louis Meyer, and in 1851-1852 in London, following the English water-colourists of the day. In 1857 he received an artist's commission in the Dutch navy, but in 1859, under the patronage of August Belmont, who had recently been minister of the United States at The Hague, he resigned and removed to New York city. He became an associate of the National Academy in 1863 and an academician in 1867, and exhibited annually in the academy, and in 1866 he was one of the founders of the American Society of Painters in Water Colors. He died on the 23rd of November 1895. His "Farragut Passing the Forts at the Battle of New Orleans" and "The Rapids above Niagara," which were exhibited at the Paris Exposition of 1878, were his best known but not his most typical works, for his favourite subjects were storm and wreck, wind and heavy surf, and less often moonlight on the coasts of Holland, of Jersey, of New England, and of Long Island, and on the English Channel.

His brother, WILLIAM FREDERICK DE HAAS (1830-1880), who emigrated to New York in 1854, was also a marine painter.

DEHRA, a town of British India, headquarters of the Dehra Dun district in the United Provinces. Pop. (1901) 28,095. It lies at an elevation of 2300 ft. Here the Hardwar-Dehra railway terminates. Dehra is the headquarters of the Trigonometrical Survey and of the Forest Department, besides being a cantonment for a Gurkha force. The Forest School, which trains subordinate forest officials for all parts of India, is a fine building. Attached to it is an institution for the scientific study of sylvi-culture and the exploitation and administration of forests. The town of Dehra grew up round the temple built in 1699 by the heretical Sikh Guru, Ram Rai, the founder of the Udasi sect of Ascetics. This temple is a remarkable building in Mahommedan style. The central block, in imitation of the emperor Jahangir's tomb, contains the bed on which the Guru, after dying at will and coming back to life several times, ultimately died outright; it is an object of great veneration. At the corners of the central block are smaller monuments commemorating the Guru's wives.

DEHRA DUN, a district of British India, in the Meerut division of the United Provinces. Its area is 1209 sq. m. The district is bounded on the N. by the native state of Tehri or Garhwal, on the E. by British Garhwal, on the S. by the Siwalik hills, which separate it from Saharanpur district, and on the W. by the hill states of Sirmur, Jubbal and Taroch. The valley (the Dun) has an area of about 673 sq. m., and forms a parallelogram 45 m. from N.W. to S.E. and 15 m. broad. It is well wooded, undulating and intersected by streams. On the N.E. the horizon is bounded by the Mussoorie or lower range of the Himalayas, and on the S. by the Siwalik hills. The Himalayas in the north of the district attain a height between 7000 and 8000 ft., one peak reaching an elevation of 8565 ft.; the highest point of the Siwalik range is 3041 ft. above sea-level. The principal passes through the Siwalik hills are the Timli pass, leading to the military station of Chakrata, and the Mohand pass leading to the sanatoriums of Mussoorie and Landaur. The Ganges bounds the Dehra valley on the E.; the Jumna bounds it on the W. From a point about midway between the two rivers, and near the town of Dehra, runs a ridge which forms the watershed of the valley. To the west of this ridge the water collects to form the Asan, a tributary of the Jumna; whilst to the east the Suswa receives the drainage and flows into the Ganges. To the east the valley is characterized by swamps and forests, but to the west the natural depressions freely carry off the surface drainage. Along the central ridge, the water-level lies at a great depth from the surface (228 ft.), but it rises gradually as the country declines towards the great rivers. In 1901 the population was 178,195, showing an increase of 6% in the decade. A railway to Dehra from Hardwar, on the Oudh and Rohilkhand line (32 m.), was completed in 1900. The district is served by the Dun canals. Tea gardens cover a considerable area, and the valley contains a colony of European tea planters.

_History._--Dehra Dun only emerges from the mists of legend into authentic history in the 17th century A.D., when it formed part of the Garhwal kingdom. Towards the end of the century the heretical Sikh Guru, Ram Rai, expelled from the Punjab, sought refuge in the Dun and gathered round him a crowd of devotees. Fateh Sah, raja of Garhwal, endowed the temple which he built, round which grew up the town of Gurudwara or Dehra (q.v.). In the 18th century the fertility of the valley attracted the attention of Najib-ud-daula, governor of Saharanpur, who invaded it with an army of Rohillas in 1757 and annexed it to his dominion. His rule, which lasted till 1770, brought great prosperity to the Dun; but on his death it became a prey to the surrounding tribes, its desolation being completed after its conquest by the Gurkhas in 1803. In 1814 it was taken possession of by the British, and in the following year was annexed to Saharanpur. Under British administration the Dun rapidly recovered its prosperity.

DEIOCES ([Greek: Deiokes]), according to Herodotus (i. 96 ff.) the first king of the Medes. He narrates that, when the Medes had rebelled against the Assyrians and gained their independence about 710 B.C., according to his chronology (cf. Diodor. ii. 32), they lived in villages without any political organization, and therefore the whole country was in a state of anarchy. Then Deioces, son of Phraortes, an illustrious man of upright character, was chosen judge in his village, and the justness of his decisions induced the inhabitants of the other villages to throng to him. At last the Medes resolved to make an end of the intolerable state of their country by erecting a kingdom, and chose Deioces king. He now caused them to build a great capital, Ecbatana, with a royal palace, and introduced the ceremonial of oriental courts; he surrounded himself with a guard and no longer showed himself to the people, but gave his judgments in writing and controlled the people by officials and spies. He united all the Median tribes, and ruled fifty-three years (c. 699-647 B.C.), though perhaps, as G. Rawlinson supposed, the fifty-three years of his reign are exchanged by mistake with the twenty-two years of his son Phraortes, under whom the Median conquests began.

The narration of Herodotus is only a popular tradition which derives the origin of kingship from its judicial functions, considered as its principal and most beneficent aspect. We know from the Assyrian inscriptions that just at the time which Herodotus assigns to Deioces the Medes were divided into numerous small principalities and subjected to the great Assyrian conquerors. Among these petty chieftains, Sargon in 715 mentions Dayukku, "lieutenant of Man" (he probably was, therefore, a vassal of the neighbouring king of Man in the mountains of south-eastern Armenia), who joined the Urartians and other enemies of Assyria, but was by Sargon transported to Hamath in Syria "with his clan." His district is called "bit-Dayaukki," "house of Deioces," also in 713, when Sargon invaded these regions again. So it seems that the dynasty, which more than half a century later succeeded in throwing off the Assyrian yoke and founded the Median empire, was derived from this Dayukku, and that his name was thus introduced into the Median traditions, which contrary to history considered him as founder of the kingdom. (Ed. M.)

DEIOTARUS, a tetrarch of Galatia (Gallo-Graecia) in Asia Minor, and a faithful ally of the Romans. He is first heard of at the beginning of the third Mithradatic war, when he drove out the troops of Mithradates under Eumachus from Phrygia. His most influential friend was Pompey, who, when settling the affairs of Asia (63 or 62 B.C.), rewarded him with the title of king and an increase of territory (Lesser Armenia). On the outbreak of the civil war, Deiotarus naturally sided with his old patron Pompey, and after the battle of Pharsalus escaped with him to Asia. In the meantime Pharnaces, the son of Mithradates, had seized Lesser Armenia, and defeated Deiotarus near Nicopolis. Fortunately for Deiotarus, Caesar at that time (47) arrived in Asia from Egypt, and was met by the tetrarch in the dress of a suppliant. Caesar pardoned him for having sided with Pompey, ordered him to resume his royal attire, and hastened against Pharnaces, whom he defeated at Zela. In consequence of the complaints of certain Galatian princes, Deiotarus was deprived of part of his dominions, but allowed to retain the title of king. On the death of Mithradates of Pergamum, tetrarch of the Trocmi, Deiotarus was a candidate for the vacancy. Other tetrarchs also pressed their claims; and, further, Deiotarus was accused by his grandson Castor of having attempted to assassinate Caesar when the latter was his guest in Galatia. Cicero, who entertained a high opinion of Deiotarus, whose acquaintance he had made when governor of Cilicia, undertook his defence, the case being heard in Caesar's own house at Rome. The matter was allowed to drop for a time, and the assassination of Caesar prevented any final decision being pronounced. In his speech Cicero briefly dismisses the charge of assassination, the main question being the distribution of the provinces, which was the real cause of the quarrels between Deiotarus and his relatives. After Caesar's death, Mark Antony, for a large monetary consideration, publicly announced that, in accordance with instructions left by Caesar, Deiotarus was to resume possession of all the territory of which he had been deprived. When civil war again broke out, Deiotarus was persuaded to support Brutus and Cassius, but after the battle of Philippi went over to the triumvirs. He remained in possession of his kingdom till his death at a very advanced age.

See Cicero, _Philippica_, ii. 37; _Ad fam._ viii. 10, ix. 12, xv. 1,
2, 4; _Ad Att._ xiv. 1; _De divin._ i. 15, ii. 36, 37; _De harusp.
resp._ 13, and above all _Pro rege Deiotaro_; Appian, _Bell. Mithrid._
75, 114; _Bellum Alexandrinum_, 34-41, 65-77; Dio Cassius xli. 63,
xlii. 45, xlvii. 24, 48, xlviii. 33.

DEIR, or DEIR EZ-ZOR, a town of Asiatic Turkey, on the right bank of the Euphrates, 27(1/2) m. above its junction with the Khabor, lat. 35 deg. 20' N., long. 40 deg. 12' E. Pop. 8000 and upward, about one-tenth Christians; except in the official classes, there are no Turks. It is the capital and the only considerable town of the Zor sanjak, formed in 1857, which includes Ras el-'Ain on the north and Palmyra on the south, with a total area of 32,820 sq. m., chiefly desert, and an estimated population of 100,000, mostly Arab nomads. Deir itself is a thrifty and rising town, having considerable traffic; it is singularly European in appearance, with macadamized streets and a public garden. The name Deir means monastery, but there is no other trace or tradition of the occupation of the site before the 14th century, and until it became the capital of the sanjak it was an insignificant village. It is an important centre for the control of the Bedouin Arabs, and has a garrison of about 1000 troops, including a special corps of mule-riders. It is also a road centre, the roads from the Mediterranean to Bagdad by way of Aleppo and Damascus respectively meeting here. A road also leads northward, by Sinjar, to Mosul, crossing the river on a stone bridge, built in 1897, the only permanent bridge over the Euphrates south of Asia Minor. (J. P. Pe.)

DEIRA, the southern of the two English kingdoms afterwards united as Northumbria. According to Simeon of Durham it extended from the Humber to the Tyne, but the land was waste north of the Tees. York was the capital of its kings. The date of its first settlement is quite unknown, but the first king of whom we have any record is Ella or Aelle, the father of Edwin, who is said to have been reigning about 585. After his death Deira was subject to Aethelfrith, king of Northumbria, until the accession of Edwin, in 616 or 617, who ruled both kingdoms (see Edwin) till 633. Osric the nephew of Edwin ruled Deira (633-634), but his son Oswine was put to death by Oswio in 651. For a few years subsequently Deira was governed by Aethelwald son of Oswald.

See Bede, _Historia ecclesiastica_, ii. 14, iii. 1, 6, 14 (ed. C.
Plummer, Oxford, 1896); Nennius, _Historia Brittonum_, S 64 (ed. Th.
Mommsen, Berlin, 1898); Simeon of Durham, _Opera_, i. 339 (ed. T.
Arnold, London, 1882-1885). (F. G. M. B.)

DEISM (Lat. _deus_, god), strictly the belief in one supreme God. It is however the received name for a current of rationalistic theological thought which, though not confined to one country, or to any well-defined period, was most conspicuous in England in the last years of the 17th and the first half of the 18th century. The deists, differing widely in important matters of belief, were yet agreed in seeking above all to establish the certainty and sufficiency of natural religion in opposition to the positive religions, and in tacitly or expressly denying the unique significance of the supernatural revelation in the Old and New Testaments. They either ignored the Scriptures, endeavoured to prove them in the main by a helpful republication of the _Evangelium aeternum_, or directly impugned their divine character, their infallibility, and the validity of their evidences as a complete manifestation of the will of God. The term "deism" not only is used to signify the main body of the deists' teaching, or the tendency they represent, but has come into use as a technical term for one specific metaphysical doctrine as to the relation of God to the universe, assumed to have been characteristic of the deists, and to have distinguished them from atheists, pantheists and theists,--the belief, namely, that the first cause of the universe is a personal God, who is, however, not only distinct from the world but apart from it and its concerns.

The words "deism" and "deist" appear first about the middle of the 16th century in France (cf. Bayle's _Dictionnaire, s.v._ "Viret," note D), though the deistic standpoint had already been foreshadowed to some extent by Averroists, by Italian authors like Boccaccio and Petrarch, in More's _Utopia_ (1515), and by French writers like Montaigne, Charron and Bodin. The first specific attack on deism in English was Bishop Stillingfleet's _Letter to a Deist_ (1677). By the majority of those historically known as the English deists, from Blount onwards, the name was owned and honoured. They were also occasionally called "rationalists." "Free-thinker" (in Germany, _Freidenker_) was generally taken to be synonymous with "deist," though obviously capable of a wider signification, and as coincident with _esprit fort_ and with _libertin_ in the original and theological sense of the word.[1] "Naturalists" was a name frequently used of such as recognized no god but nature, of so-called Spinozists, atheists; but both in England and Germany, in the 18th century, this word was more commonly and aptly in use for those who founded their religion on the _lumen naturae_ alone. It was evidently in common use in the latter half of the 16th century as it is used by De Mornay in _De la verite de la religion chretienne_ (1581) and by Montaigne. The same men were not seldom assaulted under the name of "theists"; the later distinction between "theist" and "deist," which stamped the latter word as excluding the belief in providence or in the immanence of God, was apparently formulated in the end of the 18th century by those rationalists who were aggrieved at being identified with the naturalists. (See also THEISM.)

The chief names amongst the deists are those of Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1583-1648), Charles Blount (1654-1693), Matthew Tindal (1657-1733), William Wollaston (1659-1724), Thomas Woolston (1669-1733), Junius Janus (commonly known as John) Toland (1670-1722), the 3rd earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713), Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751), Anthony Collins (1676-1729), Thomas Morgan (?-1743), and Thomas Chubb (1679-1747).[2] Peter Annet (1693-1769), and Henry Dodwell (the younger; d. 1784), who made his contribution to the controversy in 1742, are of less importance. Of the eleven first named, ten appear to have been born within twenty-five years of one another; and it is noteworthy that by far the greater part of the literary activity of the deists, as well as of their voluminous opponents, falls within the same half century.

The impulses that promoted a vein of thought cognate to deism were active both before and after the time of its greatest notoriety. But there are many reasons to show why, in the 17th century, men should have set themselves with a new zeal, in politics, law and theology, to follow the light of nature alone, and to cast aside the fetters of tradition and prescriptive right, of positive codes, and scholastic systems, and why in England especially there should, amongst numerous free-thinkers, have been not a few free writers. The significance of the Copernican system, as the total overthrow of the traditional conception of the universe, dawned on all educated men. In physics, Descartes had prepared the way for the final triumph of the mechanical explanation of the world in Newton's system. In England the new philosophy had broken with time-honoured beliefs more completely than it had done even in France; Hobbes was more startling than Bacon. Locke's philosophy, as well as his theology, served as a school for the deists. Men had become weary of Protestant scholasticism; religious wars had made peaceful thinkers seek to take the edge off dogmatical rancour; and the multiplicity of religious sects, coupled with the complete failure of various attempts at any substantial reconciliation, provoked distrust of the common basis on which all were founded. There was a school of distinctively latitudinarian thought in the Church of England; others not unnaturally thought it better to extend the realm of the _adiaphora_ beyond the sphere of Protestant ritual or the details of systematic divinity. Arminianism had revived the rational side of theological method. Semi-Arians and Unitarians, though sufficiently distinguished from the free-thinkers by reverence for the letter of Scripture, might be held to encourage departure from the ancient landmarks. The scholarly labours of P. D. Huet, R. Simon, L. E. Dupin, and Jean Le Clerc (Clericus), of the orientalists John Lightfoot, John Spencer and Humphrey Prideaux, of John Mill, the collator of New Testament readings, and John Fell, furnished new materials for controversy; and the scope of Spinoza's _Tractatus theologico-politicus_ had naturally been much more fully apprehended than ever his _Ethica_ could be. The success of the English revolution permitted men to turn from the active side of political and theological controversy to speculation and theory; and curiosity was more powerful than faith. Much new ferment was working. The toleration and the free press of England gave it scope. Deism was one of the results, and is an important link in the chain of thought from the Reformation to our own day.

Long before England was ripe to welcome deistic thought Lord Herbert of Cherbury earned the name "Father of Deism" by laying down the main line of that religious philosophy which in various forms continued ever after to be the backbone of deistic systems. He based his theology on a comprehensive, if insufficient, survey of the nature, foundation, limits and tests of human knowledge. And amongst the divinely implanted, original, indefeasible _notitiae communes_ of the human mind, he found as foremost his five articles:--that there is one supreme God, that he is to be worshipped, that worship consists chiefly of virtue and piety, that we must repent of our sins and cease from them, and that there are rewards and punishments here and hereafter. Thus Herbert sought to do for the religion of nature what his friend Grotius was doing for natural law,--making a new application of the standard of Vincent of Lerins, _Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus_. It is important to notice that Herbert, as English ambassador at Paris, united in himself the currents of French and English thought, and also that his De Veritate, published in Latin and translated into French, did not appear in an English version.

Herbert had hardly attempted a systematic criticism of the Christian revelation either as a whole or in its details. Blount, a man of a very different spirit, did both, and in so doing may be regarded as having inaugurated the second main line of deistic procedure, that of historico-critical examination of the Old and New Testaments. Blount adopted and expanded Hobbes's arguments against the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch; and, mainly in the words of Burnet's _Archeologiae philosophicae_, he asserts the total inconsistency of the Mosaic Hexaemeron with the Copernican theory of the heavens, dwelling with emphasis on the impossibility of admitting the view developed in Genesis, that the earth is the most important part of the universe. He assumes that the narrative was meant _ethically_, not _physically_, in order to eliminate false and polytheistic notions; and he draws attention to that double narrative in Genesis which was elsewhere to be so fruitfully handled. The examination of the miracles of Apollonius of Tyana, professedly founded on papers of Lord Herbert's, is meant to suggest similar considerations with regard to the miracles of Christ. Naturalistic explanations of some of these are proposed, and a mythical theory is distinctly foreshadowed when Blount dwells on the inevitable tendency of men, especially long after the event, to discover miracles attendant on the birth and death of their heroes. Blount assaults the doctrine of a mediator as irreligious. He dwells much more pronouncedly than Herbert on the view, afterwards regarded as a special characteristic of all deists, that much or most error in religion has been invented or knowingly maintained by sagacious men for the easier maintenance of good government, or in the interests of themselves and their class. And when he heaps suspicion, not on Christian dogmas, but on beliefs of which the resemblance to Christian tenets is sufficiently patent, the real aim is so transparent that his method seems to partake rather of the nature of literary eccentricity than of polemical artifice; yet by this disingenuous indirectness he gave his argument that savour of duplicity which ever after clung to the popular conception of deism.

Shaftesbury, dealing with matters for the most part different from those usually handled by the deists, stands almost wholly out of their ranks. But he showed how loosely he held the views he did not go out of his way to attack, and made it plain how little weight the letter of Scripture had for himself; and, writing with much greater power than any of the deists, he was held to have done more than any one of them to forward the cause for which they wrought. Founding ethics on the native and cultivable capacity in men to appreciate worth in men and actions, and, like the ancient Greek thinkers whom he followed, associating the apprehension of morality with the apprehension of beauty, he makes morality wholly independent of scriptural enactment, and still more, of theological forecasting of future bliss or agony. He yet insisted on religion as the crown of virtue; and, arguing that religion is inseparable from a high and holy enthusiasm for the divine plan of the universe, he sought the root of religion in feeling, not in accurate beliefs or meritorious good works. He set little store on the theology of those who in a system of dry and barren notions "pay handsome compliments to the Deity," "remove providence," "explode devotion," and leave but "little of zeal, affection, or warmth in what they call rational religion." In the protest against the scheme of "judging truth by counting noses," Shaftesbury recognized the danger of the standard which seemed to satisfy many deists; and in almost every respect he has more in common with those who afterwards, in Germany, annihilated the pretensions of complacent rationalism than with the rationalists themselves.

Toland, writing at first professedly without hostility to any of the received elements of the Christian faith, insisted that Christianity was not mysterious, and that the value of religion could not lie in any unintelligible or self-contradictory elements; though we cannot know the real essence of God or of any of his creatures, yet our beliefs about God must be thoroughly consistent with reason. Afterwards, Toland discussed, with considerable real learning and much show of candour, the comparative evidence for the canonical and apocryphal Scriptures, and demanded a careful and complete historical examination of the grounds on which our acceptance of the New Testament canon rests. He contributed little to the solution of the problem, but forced the investigation of the canon alike on theologians and the reading public. Again, he sketched a view of early church history, further worked out by Johann Salomo Semler (1725-1791), and surprisingly like that which was later elaborated by the Tubingen school. He tried to show, both from Scripture and extra-canonical literature, that the primitive church, so far from being an incorporate body of believers with the same creed and customs, really consisted of two schools, each possessing its "own gospel"--a school of Ebionites or Judaizing Christians, and the more liberal school of Paul. These parties, consciously but amicably differing in their whole relation to the Jewish law and the outside world, were subsequently forced into a non-natural uniformity. The cogency of Toland's arguments was weakened by his manifest love of paradox. Wollaston upheld the "intellectual" theory of morality, and all his reasoning is independent of any authority or evidence derived from revelation. His system was simplicity itself, all sin being reduced to the one form of lying. He favoured the idea of a future life as being necessary to set right the mistakes and inequalities of the present.

Collins, who had created much excitement by his _Discourse of Free-thinking_, insisting on the value and necessity of unprejudiced inquiry, published at a later stage of the deistic controversy the famous argument on the evidences of Christianity. Christianity is founded on Judaism; its main prop is the argument from the fulfilment of prophecy. Yet no interpretation or rearrangement of the text of Old Testament prophecies will secure a fair and non-allegorical correspondence between these and their alleged fulfilment in the New Testament. The inference is not expressly drawn, though it becomes perfectly clear from his refutation of William Whiston's curious counter theory that there were in the original Hebrew scriptures prophecies which were literally fulfilled in the New Testament, but had been expunged at an early date by Jewish scribes. Collins indicates the possible extent to which the Jews may have been indebted to Chaldeans and Egyptians for their theological views, especially as great part of the Old Testament would appear to have been remodelled by Ezra; and, after dwelling on the points in which the prophecies attributed to Daniel differ from all other Old Testament predictions, he states the greater number of the arguments still used to show that the book of Daniel deals with events past and contemporaneous, and is from the pen of a writer of the Maccabean period, a view now generally accepted. Collins resembles Blount in "attacking specific Christian positions rather than seeking for a foundation on which to build the edifice of Natural Religion." Amongst those who replied to him were Richard Bentley, Edward Chandler, bishop of Lichfield, and Thomas Sherlock, afterwards bishop of London, who also attacked Woolston. They refuted him easily on many specific points, but carefully abstained from discussing the real question at issue, namely the propriety of free inquiry.

Woolston, at first to all appearance working earnestly in behalf of an allegorical but believing interpretation of the New Testament miracles, ended by assaulting, with a yet unknown violence of speech, the absurdity of accepting them as actual historical events, and did his best to overthrow the credibility of Christ's principal miracles. The bitterness of his outspoken invective against the clergy, against all priestcraft and priesthood, was a new feature in deistic literature, and injured the author more than it furthered his cause.

Tindal's aim seems to have been a sober statement of the whole case in favour of natural religion, with copious but moderately worded criticism of such beliefs and usages in the Christian and other religions as he conceived to be either non-religious or directly immoral and unwholesome. The work in which he endeavoured to prove that true Christianity is as old as the creation, and is really but the republication of the gospel of nature, soon gained the name of the "Deist's Bible." It was against Tindal that the most important of the orthodox replies were directed, e.g. John Conybeare's _Defence of Revealed Religion_, William Law's _Case of Reason_ and, to a large extent, Butler's _Analogy_.

Morgan criticized with great freedom the moral character of the persons and events of Old Testament history, developing the theory of conscious "accommodation" on the part of the leaders of the Jewish church. This accommodation of truth, by altering the form and substance of it to meet the views and secure the favour of ignorant and bigoted contemporaries, Morgan attributes also to the apostles and to Jesus. He likewise expands at great length a theory of the origin of the Catholic Church much like that sketched by Toland, but assumes that Paul and his party, latterly at least, were distinctly hostile to the Judaical party of their fellow-believers in Jesus as the Messias, while the college of the original twelve apostles and their adherents viewed Paul and his followers with suspicion and disfavour. Persecution from without Morgan regards as the influence which mainly forced the antagonistic parties into the oneness of the catholic and orthodox church. Morgan "seems to have discerned the dawning of a truer and better method" than the others. "He saw dimly that things require to be accounted for as well as affirmed or denied," and he was "one of the pioneers of modern historical science as applied to biblical criticism."

Annet made it his special work to invalidate belief in the resurrection of Christ, and to discredit the work of Paul.

Chubb, the least learnedly educated of the deists, did more than any of them, save Herbert, to round his system into a logical whole. From the New Testament he sought to show that the teaching of Christ substantially coincides with natural religion as he understood it. But his main contention is that Christianity is not a doctrine but a life, not the reception of a system of truths or facts, but a pious effort to live in accordance with God's will here, in the hope of joining him hereafter. Chubb dwells with special emphasis on the fact that Christ preached the gospel to the poor, and argues, as Tindal had done, that the gospel must therefore be accessible to all men without any need for learned study of evidences for miracles, and intelligible to the meanest capacity. He sought to show that even in the New Testament there are essential contradictions, and instances the unconditional forgiveness preached by Christ in the gospels as compared with Paul's doctrine of forgiveness by the mediation of Christ. Externally Chubb is interesting as representing the deism of the people contrasted with that of Tindal the theologian.

Dodwell's ingenious thesis, that Christianity is not founded on argument, was certainly not meant as an aid to faith; and, though its starting-point is different from all other deistical works, it may safely be reckoned amongst their number.