Chapter XIV: Part 14

Though himself contemporary with the earlier deists, Bolingbroke's principal works were posthumously published after interest in the controversy had declined. His whole strain, in sharp contrast to that of most of his predecessors, is cynical and satirical, and suggests that most of the matters discussed were of small personal concern to himself. He gives fullest scope to the ungenerous view that a vast proportion of professedly revealed truth was ingeniously palmed off by the more cunning on the more ignorant for the convenience of keeping the latter under. But he writes with keenness and wit, and knows well how to use the materials already often taken advantage of by earlier deists.

Before passing on to a summary of the deistic position, it is necessary to say something of the views of Conyers Middleton (q.v.), who, though he never actually severed himself from orthodoxy, yet advanced theories closely analogous to those of the deists. His most important theological work was that devoted to an exposure of patristic miracles. His attack was based largely on arguments which could be turned with equal force against the miracles of the New Testament, and he even went further than previous rationalists in impugning the credibility of statements as to alleged miracles emanating from martyrs and the fathers of the early church. That Middleton was prepared to carry this type of argument into the apostolic period is shown by certain posthumous essays (_Miscellaneous Works_; ii. pp. 255 ff.), in which he charges the New Testament writers with inconsistency and the apostles with suppressing their cherished beliefs on occasions of difficulty.

In the substance of what they received as natural religion, the deists were for the most part agreed; Herbert's articles continued to contain the fundamentals of their theology. Religion, though not identified with morality, had its most important outcome in a faithful following of the eternal laws of morality, regarded as the will of God. With the virtuous life was further to be conjoined a humble disposition to adore the Creator, avoiding all factitious forms of worship as worse than useless. The small value they attributed to all outward and special forms of service, and the want of any sympathetic craving for the communion of saints, saved the deists from attempting to found a free-thinking church. They seem generally to have inclined to a quietistic accommodation to established forms of faith, till better times came. They steadfastly sought to eliminate the miraculous from theological belief, and to expel from the system of religious truth all debatable, difficult or mysterious articles. They aimed at a rational and intelligible faith, professedly in order to make religion, in all its width and depth, the heritage of every man. They regarded with as much suspicion the notion of a "peculiar people" of God, as of a unique revelation, and insisted on the possibility of salvation for the heathen. They rejected the doctrine of the Trinity, and protested against mediatorship, atonement and the imputed righteousness of Christ, always laying more stress on the teaching of Christ than on the teaching of the church about him; but they repeatedly laid claim to the name of Christians or of Christian deists. Against superstition, fanaticism and priestcraft they protested unceasingly. They all recognized the soul of man--not regarded as intellectual alone--as the ultimate court of appeal. But they varied much in their attitude towards the Bible. Some were content to argue their own ideas into Scripture, and those they disliked out of it; to one or two it seemed a satisfaction to discover difficulties in Scripture, to point to historical inaccuracies and moral defects. Probably Chubb's position on this head is most fairly characteristic of deism. He holds that the narrative, especially of the New Testament, is in the main accurate, but, as written after the events narrated, has left room for misunderstandings and mistakes. The apostles were good men, to whom, after Christ, we are most indebted; but they were fairly entitled to their own private opinions, and naturally introduced these into their writings. The epistles, according to Chubb, contain errors of fact, false interpretations of the Old Testament, and sometimes disfigurement of religious truth.

The general tendency of the deistical writings is sufficiently self-consistent to justify a common name. But deism is not a compact system nor is it the outcome of any one line of philosophical thought. Of matters generally regarded as pertaining to natural religion, that on which they were least agreed was the certainty, philosophical demonstrability and moral significance of the immortality of the soul, so that the deists have sometimes been grouped into "mortal" and "immortal" deists. For some the belief in future rewards and punishments was an essential of religion; some seem to have questioned the doctrine as a whole; and, while others made it a basis of morality, Shaftesbury protested against the ordinary theological form of the belief as immoral. No two thinkers could well be more opposed than Shaftesbury and Hobbes; yet sometimes ideas from both were combined by the same writer. Collins was a pronounced necessitarian; Morgan regarded the denial of free will as tantamount to atheism. And nothing can be more misleading than to assume that the belief in a Creator, existent wholly apart from the work of his hands, was characteristic of the deists as a body. In none of them is any theory on the subject specially prominent, except that in their denial of miracles, of supernatural revelation, and a special redemptive interposition of God in history, they seem to have thought of providence much as the mass of their opponents did. Herbert starts his chief theological work with the design of vindicating God's providence. Shaftesbury vigorously protests against the notion of a wholly transcendent God. Morgan more than once expresses a theory that would now be pronounced one of immanence. Toland, the inventor of the name of pantheism, was notoriously, for a great part of his life, in some sort a pantheist. And while as thinkers they diverged in their opinions, so too they differed radically in character, in reverence for their subject and in religious earnestness and moral worth.

The deists were not powerful writers; none of them was distinguished by wide and accurate scholarship; hardly any was either a deep or comprehensive thinker. But though they generally had the best scholarship of England against them, they were bold, acute, well-informed men; they appreciated more fully than their contemporaries not a few truths now all but universally accepted; and they seemed therefore entitled to leave their mark on subsequent theological thought. Yet while the seed they sowed was taking deep root in France and in Germany, the English deists, the most notable men of their time, were soon forgotten, or at least ceased to be a prominent factor in the intellectual life of the century. The controversies they had provoked collapsed, and deism became a by-word even amongst those who were in no degree anxious to appear as champions of orthodoxy.

The fault was not wholly in the subjectivism of the movement. But the subjectivism that founded its theology on the "common sense" of the individual was accompanied by a fatal pseudo-universalism which, cutting away all that was peculiar, individual and most intense in all religions, left in any one of them but a lifeless form. A theology consisting of a few vague generalities was sufficient to sustain the piety of the best of the deists; but it had not the concreteness or intensity necessary to take a firm hold on those whom it emancipated from the old beliefs. The negative side of deism came to the front, and, communicated with fatal facility, seems ultimately to have constituted the deism that was commonly professed at the clubs of the wits and the tea-tables of polite society. But the intenser religious life before which deism fell was also a revolt against the abstract and argumentative orthodoxy of the time.

That the deists appreciated fully the scope of difficulties in Christian theology and the sacred books is not their most noteworthy feature; but that they made a stand, sometimes cautiously, often with outspoken fearlessness, against the presupposition that the Bible is the religion of Protestants. They themselves gave way to another presupposition equally fatal to true historical research, though in great measure common to them and their opponents. It was assumed by deists in debating against the orthodox, that the flood of error in the hostile camp was due to the benevolent cunning or deliberate self-seeking of unscrupulous men, supported by the ignorant with the obstinacy of prejudice.

Yet deism deserves to be remembered as a strenuous protest against bibliolatry in every degree and against all traditionalism in theology. It sought to look not a few facts full in the face, from a new point of view and with a thoroughly modern though unhistorical spirit. It was not a religious movement; and though, as a defiance of the accepted theology, its character was mainly theological, the deistical crusade belongs, not to the history of the church, or of dogma, but to the history of general culture. It was an attitude of mind, not a body of doctrine; its nearest parallel is probably to be found in the eclectic strivings of the Renaissance philosophy and the modernizing tendencies of cisalpine humanism. The controversy was assumed to be against prejudice, ignorance, obscurantism; what monks were to Erasmus the clergy as such were to Woolston. Yet English deism was in many ways characteristically English. The deists were, as usually happens with the leaders of English thought, no class of professional men, but represented every rank in the community. They made their appeal in the mother tongue to all men who could read and think, and sought to reduce the controversy to its most direct practical issue. And, with but one or two exceptions, they avoided wildness in their language as much as in the general scheme of theology they proposed. If at times they had recourse to ambiguity of speech and veiled polemic, this might be partly excused when we remember the hanging of Thomas Aikenhead in 1697 for ridiculing the Bible, and Woolston's imprisonment in 1729.

French deism, the direct progeny of the English movement, was equally short-lived. Voltaire during his three years' residence in England (1726-1729) absorbed an enthusiasm for freedom of thought, and provided himself with the arguments necessary to support the deism which he had learned in his youth; he was to the end a deist of the school of Bolingbroke. Rousseau, though not an active assailant of Christianity, could have claimed kindred with the nobler deists. Diderot was for a time heartily in sympathy with deistic thought; and the _Encyclopedie_ was in its earlier portion an organ of deism. Even in the Roman Catholic Church a large number of the leading divines were frankly deistic, nor were they for that reason regarded as irreligious. But as Locke's philosophy became in France sensationalism, and as Locke's pregnant question, reiterated by Collins, how we know that the divine power might not confer thought on matter, led the way to dogmatic materialism, so deism soon gave way to forms of thought more directly and completely subversive of the traditional theology. None the less it is unquestionable that in the period preceding the Revolution the bulk of French thinkers were ultimately deists in various degrees, and that deism was a most potent factor not only in speculative but also in social and political development. Many of the leaders of the revolutionary movement were deists, though it is quite false to say that the extreme methods of the movement were the result of widespread rationalism.

In Germany there was a native free-thinking theology nearly contemporary with that of England, whence it was greatly developed and supplemented. Among the earliest names are those of Georg Schade (1712-1795), J. B. Basedow (1723-1790), the educationist, Johann August Eberhard (q.v.); and K. F. Bahrdt, who regarded Christ as merely a noble teacher like Moses, Confucius and Luther. The compact rational philosophy of Wolff nourished a theological rationalism which in H. S. Reimarus was wholly undistinguishable from dogmatic deism, and was undoubtedly to a great extent adopted by Lessing; while, in the case of the historico-critical school to which J. S. Sender belonged, the distinction is not always easily drawn--although these rationalists professedly recognized in Scripture a real divine revelation, mingled with local and temporary elements. It deserves to be noted here that the former, the theology of the _Aufklarung_, was, like that of the deists, destined to a short-lived notoriety; whereas the solid, accurate and scholarly researches of the rationalist critics of Germany, undertaken with no merely polemical spirit, not only form an epoch in the history of theology, but have taken a permanent place in the body of theological science. Ere _rationalismus vulgaris_ fell before the combined assault of Schleiermacher's subjective theology and the deeper historical insight of the Hegelians, it had found a refuge successively in the Kantian postulates of the practical reason, and in the vague but earnest faith-philosophy of Jacobi.

Outside France, Germany and England, there were no great schools of thought distinctively deistic, though in most countries there is to be found a rationalistic anti-clerical movement which partakes of the character of deism. It seems probable, for example, that in Portugal the marquis de Pombal was in reality a deist, and both in Italy and in Spain there were signs of the same rationalistic revolt. More certain, and also more striking, is the fact that the leading statesmen in the American War of Independence were emphatically deists; Benjamin Franklin (who attributes his position to the study of Shaftesbury and Collins), Thomas Paine, Washington and Jefferson, although they all had the greatest admiration for the New Testament story, denied that it was based on any supernatural revelation. For various reasons the movement in America did not appear on the surface to any great extent, and after the comparative failure of Elihu Palmer's _Principles of Nature_ it expressed itself chiefly in the spread of Unitarianism.

In England, though the deists were forgotten, their spirit was not wholly dead. For men like Hume and Gibbon the standpoint of deism was long left behind; yet Gibbon's famous two chapters might well have been written by a deist. Even now many undoubtedly cling to a theology nearly allied to deism. Rejecting miracles and denying the infallibility of Scripture, protesting against Calvinistic views of sovereign grace and having no interest in evangelical Arminianism, the faith of such inquirers seems fairly to coincide with that of the deists. Even some cultured theologians, the historical representatives of latitudinarianism, seem to accept the great body of what was contended for by the deists. Moreover, the influence of the deistic writers had an incalculable influence in the gradual progress towards tolerance, and in the spread of a broader attitude towards intellectual problems, and this too, though, as we have seen, the original deists devoted themselves mainly to a crusade against the doctrine of revelation.

The original deists displayed a singular incapacity to understand the true conditions of history; yet amongst them there were some who pointed the way to the truer, more generous interpretation of the past. When Shaftesbury wrote that "religion is still a discipline, and progress of the soul towards perfection," he gave birth to the same thought that was afterwards hailed in Lessing's _Erziehung des Menschengeschlechtes_ as the dawn of a fuller and a purer light on the history of religion and on the development of the spiritual life of mankind.

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. Punjer, _Geschichte der
christlichen Religionsphilosophie seit der Reformation_ (Brunswick,
1880); M. W. Wiseman, _Dynamics of Religion_ (London, 1897), pt. ii.;
article "Deismus" in Herzog-Hauck, _Realencyklopadie_ (vol. iv.,
1898).

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The right of the orthodox party to use this name was asserted by
the publication in 1715 of a journal called _The Freethinker_,
conducted by anti-deistic clergymen. The term _libertin_ appears 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.

[2] See 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 Hofeler to a height of 1250 ft. The chain is well-wooded and abounds in game. There are some coal mines and sandstone quarries.

DEJAZET, PAULINE VIRGINIE (1798-1875), French actress, born in Paris on the 30th of August 1798, 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 "_Dejazets_." From 1828 she played at the Nouveautes for three years, then at the Varietes, and finally became manager, with her son, of the Folies, which was renamed the Theatre Dejazet. 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's _Virginie Dejazet_ (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 as MULTATULI, 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 entitled _Max 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 publishing _Love 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 called _Ideas_, 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 of _Ideas_), 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 made himself heard 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 in _Max Havelaar_; his _Ideas_, 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 (_Klaagliederen van 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 and yet effective irony, it is usually ranked by critics along with Erasmus's _Praise 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 title _Exercices
poetiques_ (2 vols. 4to.). Selections from his poems are included in
Siegenbeck's _Proeven van nederduitsche Dichtkunde_ (1823), and from
his epigrams in Geijsbeek's _Epigrammatische Anthologie_ (1827).

DEKKER (or DECKER), THOMAS (c. 1570-1641), English dramatist, was born in London. His name occurs frequently in Henslowe's _Diary_ during 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 are _Troilus 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 Supplication_ and _The Gentle Craft_, Dekker is paid as the sole author. Only _The Gentle Craft_ has been preserved; it was published anonymously in 1600 under the title of _The 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 of _The 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's _Diary_ contains 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 in _Westward 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 in _The Honest Whore_, or _The 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. In _The 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 of _Canaans Calamitie_--if indeed it be his, which is hard to believe--is exceedingly poor stuff, and the verse portion of his _Dreame_, though containing some good lines, is, as a whole, not much better.

When Gerard Langbaine wrote his _Account of the English Dramatic Poets_ in 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 the _Poetaster_ that has any point as applied to Dekker's powers as a dramatist, while, on the contrary, _Satiromastix, or the Untrussing of the Humorous Poet_ is 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 the _Poetaster_, 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 of _Phaeton_. 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 of
_Les Quinze Joyes de mariage_; the _Seven Deadly Sinnes of London_
(1606); _Newes from Hell, Brought by the Divells Carrier_ (1606),
reprinted in the next year with some interesting additions as _A
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;
and _A 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's _Huth 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 the
_Dictionary of National Biography_. See also the elaborate discussion
of his plays in Mr Fleay's _Biographical Chronicle_ (1891), i. 115,
&c., and, for his quarrel with Ben Jonson, Prof. J. H. Penniman's _War
of the Theatres_ (Boston, 1897) and Mr R. A. Small's _Stage 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 in _The Nineteenth Century_ for 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 the _Transactions of the Geological Society of London_, as well as in the _Memoirs of the Geological Survey_, notably the _Report on the Geology of Cornwall, Devon and West Somerset_ (1839). He likewise wrote _A 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 of _The 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 transact his official business until a few days before his death, which took place on the 13th of April 1855.

See Sir A. Geikie's _Memoir 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); also _Summary of Progress of the
Geological Survey for 1897_ (1898).

DELABORDE, HENRI FRANCOIS, 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 Cote-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 the skillful brilliant 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 Compiegne. 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 EUGENE (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 another _bonne_, 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 celebre, mais sa vie sera des plus laborieuses, des plus tourmentees, et toujours livree a la contradiction."

Delacroix the elder (also known as Delacroix de Contaut) died at Bordeaux when Eugene was seven years of age, and his mother returned to Paris and placed him in the Lycee Napoleon. Afterwards, on his determining to be a painter, he entered the _atelier_ of Baron Guerin, who affected to treat him as an amateur. His fellow-pupil was Ary Scheffer, who was alike by temperament and antecedents the opposite of the _bizarre_ Delacroix, 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 Guerin 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 Gericault 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 naivete, "J'etais enchante de moi-meme!" The patrimony he inherited, or perhaps it should be said, what remained of it, was 10,000 _livres 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's _Don 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 hotel 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-meme_ (1885); G. Moreau, _Delacroix et son oeuvre_ (1893); Dorothy
Bussy, _Eugene Delacroix_ (1907).