Boeotians to take part against him; and, by the mere force of eloquence, he succeeded, notwithstanding the efforts of Python, an orator of great fame, who was Philip's advocate on the occasion. His triumph, however, met with a severe check from Philip's subsequent victory over the combined forces at Cheronea; and the orator, who was present in the engagement, betrayed a want of personal courage which stigmatised his character in that respect for life. He deserted his post, threw down his arms, and fled with such terror and precipitation, that entangling his robe on a stake, he thought an enemy had seized him, and cried "Spare my life!" In consequence of this defeat, the opposite party at Athens brought various accusations against him; but he was acquitted by the people, and so far recovered their esteem, as to be appointed to pronounce the funeral harangue of those who fell at Cheronæa. At the death of Philip he appeared in public with a garland on his head, though he had a few days before lost a daughter. For daughter. For this action he was censured as deficient in natural affection; but Plutarch well defends him for making private feelings yield to public, yet justly blames his indecent triumph over a fallen foe. Despising the young Alexander, Demosthenes now thought the opportunity favourable for crushing the Macedonian power; and chiefly through his influence a new league was formed among the states of Greece, and the Persians were solicited to commence hostilities against Macedon. But the vigorous proceedings of the young king, and the dreadful chastisement he inflicted upon Thebes, soon broke the spirits of this confederacy. The Athenians found it expedient to divert the anger of the victor by an embassy, of which Demosthenes himself was to make a part; but his apprehensions caused him to turn back upon the road. He was one of the orators whom Alexander required to be delivered up; but Demades (see his life) pacified the king without this sacrifice. Demosthenes had displayed his patriotism by rebuilding the walls of Athens at his own expence, and a crown of gold had been decreed him for this service. On the decline of his influence, Eschines the orator brought an accusation against him on this subject, which occasioned a solemn trial, and the delivery of the celebrated oration of Demosthenes" On the Crown." To his honour, and that of his judges, he was acquitted by a great majority, and his adversary was obliged for ever to quit Athens.

Not long after, a circumstance happened

which irretrievably injured our orator's reputation. Harpalus, one of Alexander's officers in Asia, conscious of having abused his trust, fled with all his ill-gotten spoils, and came for refuge to Athens. The venal orators of the city flocked round him offering their services; but Demosthenes, under the first impressions of honesty and prudence, advised the people against exposing themselves to danger in the protection of a notorious peculator. Being present, however, at the examination of Harpalus's treasures, he could not help casting an eye of cupidity upon one of the king's golden cups of rich workmanship. He poised it in his hand, and asked the weight of it. "To you," said Harpalus, "it shall weigh twenty talents;" accordingly at night he sent the orator the cup with that sum. On the next day, Demosthenes entered the assembly with his throat wrapt up in wool, as if he had a quinsey, and upon being called upon to speak, he made signs that he had lost his voice. Several jests were passed on the occasion, but more serious consequences ensued. In order to appear innocent, he provoked an enquiry into the affair, which ended in his conviction. He was condemned in a fine of fifty talents, and to be imprisoned till it was paid; but to avoid his disgrace and confinement, he made his escape, and fled to Ægina. It is said, that on quitting the city he was followed by some persons who had been his adversaries, but whose purpose was to press upon him some money for supply of his present necessities; and that when they exhorted him to take courage, and bear his fate with resignation, heplied; "How can I forbear sorrow on leaving a place, where my enemies are more generous than any friends I can meet with clsewhere?" He was much dispirited during his whole exile, and blamed himself for having engaged in those stormy scenes of politics which had so much injured his peace. On the death of Alexander, however, when a new confederacy was planned by the Greek states, Demosthenes assisted the Áthenian deputies in their efforts for the common cause, and rendered himself so popular that a decree passed for his recal. A public galley was sent to bring him from Ægina, and on the road from the Piræus to Athens he was met by the whole body of citizens who conducted him home in triumph. As his fine could not legally be remitted, he was relieved from the burden of it by the assignment of an equal sum under the pretext of paying his charges as conductor of the sacrifices to Jupiter the Preserver. But the victory of Antipater soon changed the for

tachment to his religion; and he assumed the title of baron of Muresk, as belonging to his family. His finances, however, obliged him to teach the classics in the college of Beauvais. Being of an athletic form, possessed of great personal courage, and violent in his temper, he got into quarrels, the event of which obliged him for a time to take refuge in England. He brought back with him a very handsome wife, with whom he proceeded to Italy. He obtained the chair of philology in the university of Pisa, but had the misfortune to lose his wife, who eloped from him with the assistance of some of the students. He then removed to Bologna, where he taught with great reputation, and was much respected by all the learned, both in, that city and in the rest of Italy. He was a member of the academy Della Notte in Bologna, in which place he died in 1625. Dempster wrote a variety of works in law, antiquities, philology, cosmography, poetry, &c. That by which he is most known is his ecclesiastical and literary history of Scotland. His "Menologium Sanctorum Scotorum' was printed in 1619, prohibited in 1626 for its gross falsehoods, and republished in 1627 with the title "Historia Ecclesiastica Scotorum, Lib. XIX." He likewise wrote "Apparatus ad Historiam Scotorum ;" "Martyrologium Scoticum;" and "Nomenclatura Scriptorum Scoticorum.' These works are learned, but of indifferent authority. He has been characterised as being "as well inclined to believe a lye as any man in his time;" and he has been severely chastised for "filching of saints, confessors, and authors, from England, Ireland, and other nations, and putting them all off as the proper manufacture of his own country." He is also charged with the serious literary crime of quoting a number of merely counterfeit authors and treatises, for the purpose of swelling his list (Nicholson's Hist. Libr.) Another considerable work of his, is "Etruria Regalis," two volumes folio, Florence, edited by Thomas Coke. This treats upon the history of the ancient Etruscans, their arts, inventions, &c. and appears to be a work of more labour in compilation than judgment, being filled with unimportant matter, and from dubious authorities. Bayle. Tiraboschi. Nicholson's Hist. Libr. Pinckerton's Hist. Scotl.-A.

DENHAM, sir JOHN, a person who has obtained a name among the English poets, was born at Dublin in 1615. His father, sir John Denham of Little-Horsely in Essex, was at that time chief baron of the exchequer in Ireland. He returned to England when his son

was two years of age, and had him educated at a grammar-school in London. At the age of sixteen he was entered a gentleman-commoner in Trinity college, Oxford. His character at the university was that of a slow youth, more addicted to gaming than to study; he, however, passed his examination for a bachelor's degree, with which he removed to Lincoln's-inn for the study of the law. But the passion for gaming still possessed him; he lost his money; and though he wrote a little "Essay against Gaming," to appease his father, yet after his father's death, in 1638, he squandered several thousand pounds of his fortune in the same manner. He appears to have been unknown. as a literary character, when in 1641 he brought out a tragedy called "The Sophy," which was acted with great applause, and was equally admired in the closet. The plot is taken from the life of Shah Abbas in Herbert's travels. On this occasion, Walier said that "Denham broke out like the Irish rebellion, threescore thousand strong, when nobody suspected it." The play, however, has now equally disappeared from the closet and the stage. At the commencement of the civil tumults he was made governor of Farnham castle for the king; but a military employment was not to his taste, wherefore he resigned his post, and went to his majesty's court at Oxford. There, in 1643, he published the first edition of his most celebrated poem, "Cooper's Hill,” which had several successive impressions with additions. He was entrusted in 1647 with a message from the queen to the king, and for some time afterwards managed a secret correspondence between him and his confidents. In 1648 he is said by Wood to have been appointed to convey the duke of York to his mother in France; though lord Clarendon asserts that another person was the duke's sole conductor on this occasion. He was afterwards sent with lord Crofts to Poland, for the purpose of decimating (as it was called) the Scottish residents in that country, and they brought back 10,000l. from their expedition. This commission he has made the topic of one of his ballads. He returned to England in 1652, and was for some time entertained by the carl of Pembroke; but how he employed or supported himself till the restoration, does not appear. After that event he obtained the office of surveyor of the king's buildings in the place of Inigo Jones, deceased, and was also created a knight of the sath, and a member of the newly formed Royal Society. Arcond marriage which he contracted was a source of disquiet

to him, which terminated in a temporary derangement of mind; but he recovered from it, and retained the esteem of the lettered and courtly till his death, in March, 1688. His remains were deposited among those of his brother poets in Westminster-abbey.

Denham owes his poetical fame almost solely to his " Cooper's Hill," which was one of the earliest examples of local description united with historical and sentimental matter. It is by no means a correct or finished performance; and a modern reader, not previously apprised of its author's reputation, would be apt to pass it over with little notice. The description of the river Thames is, perhaps, the only part in it which stands prominent upon the canvas; and of this, a single couplet only is quoted as peculiarly excellent:

Though deep, yet clear; tho' gentle, yet not dull; Strong, without rage; without o'erflowing, full.

Of these the great merit appears to be that compression and plenitude of sense which marks the happy lines of Denham, and gives him a title to be reckoned one of the improvers of English verse, though the examples of such excellence in his poems is of rare occurrence. A similar instance may be given from his piece to Fanshawe, on his translation of Pastor Fido; where, after contrasting his manner of

lowed no particular profession, but, subsisting upon some fortune which was left him by an uncle, he devoted himself to a literary life. He first made himself known as a poet and a dramatic writer, in both which capacities he exerted himself with considerable assiduity, though with very moderate success. His poetry is turgid, heavy, and obscure. His topics are chiefly the political events of the time; and the perseverance of his panegyric may be estimated, by a piece of five books, with a large apparatus of machinery, upon the battle of Ramilies. For the stage he wrote both comedy and tragedy. He appears to have had some knowledge of the mechanism of the drama, and his comedies are said not to be deficient in wit; but little of nature or interest could be expected from a writer of his cast, and his performances were in general valued by the public at a much lower rate than he himself put upon Several anecdotes are related which them.

curiously display the self-importance that made so conspicuous a part of his character. His tragedy entitled "Liberty Asserted," which abuse of the French nation with which it became popular on account of the virulent in his own eyes, that he imagined Lewis XIV. abounded, was of such political consequence would make a point, at the peace, of having him delivered up to his resentment. Under

writers of that class, he says,

They but preserve the ashes, thou the flame;
True to his sense, but truer to his fame.

Such lines gave him some rightful claim to Pope's epithet of "majestic Denham ;" and doubtless prepared the way for the similar but superior excellence of Pope himself. Most of the occasional serious poems of Denham possess the merit of some ingenious thoughts and emphatical expressions, but cannot be mentioned as first-rate compositions. Biog. Britan.-A.

DENNIS, JOHN, a writer deserving of record rather on account of his connection with the literary history of his period, than his own intrinsic merit, was the son of a sadler and citizen of London, where he was born in 1657. He received a literary education, first at Harrow school, and afterwards at Caius college, Cambridge. He remained seven years at the university, and, quitting it with the degree of M.A. made the tour of France and Italy. On his return, he was admitted to the acquaintance of the most distinguished poets and men of letters of the time, by whom he was regarded as a person of knowledge and talents. He fol

duke of Marlborough for his good offices when the treaty of Utrecht was in agitation. The duke gravely told Dennis, that he had little interest with the persons then in the ministry, but that he hoped the danger was not so great as he imagined; for that he himself had made no application for security in the articles of peace, and yet he could not but think he had done the French king almost as much harm as Mr. Dennis had done. As a farther instance of the poet's fears, it is said, that being upon a visit to a friend who lived on the coast of Sussex, he saw a ship making towards land; when, taking it into his head that this was a French vessel come to seize him, he exclaimed, that he was betrayed, and made the best of his way to London, without taking leave of his host. When his "Appius and Virginia" was performed, Dennis, to augment the terror of the scene, invented a new species of thunder, more sonorous and alarming than that before in use, and which, indeed, was so well approved, as to be employed to the present day. His tragedy soon disappeared from the stage; but Dennis some after heard his own thunder at the performance of Macbeth. "S'death,"

cried he, "how these rascals use me!-they will not let my play run, yet they steal my thunder." His last tragedy, entitled "Coriolanus, or the Fatal Resentment," altered from Shakespear, caused him entirely to break with the managers. After three representations to poor houses, another play was given out for the next night. Dennis was equally surprised and enraged. He published his tragedy with a dedication to the duke of Newcastle, in which he states his case, charging the "three insolent actors," who were managers, with a conspiracy against him and against genius in general, and assuming the most ludicrous self-consequence.

As a political writer there is little to distinguish Dennis from others of his party. He was a whig in principle, and supported that cause not only by his poetical panegyrics on its heroes, but by some pamphlets against Sacheverel, and the high-church faction. He also wrote a project for ruining the commerce of the French and Spaniards; and an essay upon public spirit, in which he satirised the manners of the age. In these pieces there is at least as much moderation as could be expected from one of his character.

But it was as a critic that he displayed the greatest violence and the greatest confidence; and so forward did he stand in this department, that he acquired the peculiar appellation of Dennis the critic. It is allowed that upon some points of general criticism he exhibited no mean degree of sagacity and judgment; but his irritable temper involved him in personal disputes with men greatly his superiors, among whom were Addison and Pope; and though his attacks upon them were not without some foundation of reason and plain sense, yet they shewed great insensibility to poetical beauty, and much coarseness of animosity. His jealousy of a successful rival provoked him, notwithstanding his whiggism, to publish some very severe strictures on Addison's Cato, to which Dr. Johnson seems to have done more honour than they deserved, by his long quotation from them in his life of Addison. They probably did not deprive Cato of a single admirer, notwithstanding they might prove that it was not a perfect piece. Still less could his home-spun criticism injure such an exquisite fancy-piece as the Rape of the Lock; yet Pope, as irritable as himself, thought proper to give him a niche in the Dunciad; and further persecuted him with a very laughable "Narrative of the deplorable Phrensy of Mr. John Dennis." It is probable that the acrimony of the

critic's temper was heightened by the narrowness of his circumstances. The private fortune he possessed seems soon to have been spent. Through the favour of the duke of Marlborough he obtained a place of a landwaiter at the custom-house, which his extravagance obliged him in a few years to sell, with the reservation of an annuity for a certain term. This he outlived, so that he was totally unprovided for the necessities of old age. He was obliged to secure his person by residence within the verge of the court, and his quiet was continually disturbed by the fear of bailiffs. When he was far advanced in years, and afflicted with loss of sight, a play was acted at the Hay-market for his benefit, to which his old antagonist Pope wrote a prologue. This act of generosity would have been more to the poet's credit, had he not written his prologue in a style of ironical ridicule upon the old critic. Thomson, who took the most active part in the charity, was complimented, in Dennis's name, with some elegant lines, said to be written by Savage. The veteran did not long survive this kindness, dying in his seventy-seventh year, 1734. Biog. Britan.-A.

DEPARCIEUX, ANTONY, a French mathematician of eminence, was born in 1703, of obscure parents, at Clotet de Cessoux, in the diocese of Usez. He learned the elements of mathematics under a Jesuit of Lyons, and then went to Paris, where he acquired the patronage of M. de Montcarville, professor in the Royal College. He partly supported himself by giving lectures, and constructing sun-dials upon an improved plan, and meridian lines. One of the latter, which he drew at the Louvre for the duke de Nevers, obtained considerable notice. His first publication was " A Treatise on Trigonometry, rectilinear and spherical," 1741, 4to. which was favourably received, and procured him a seat in the Royal Society of Montpellier. He next distinguished himself in the branch of political arithmetic by his "Essays on the Probabilities of the Duration of Human Life," 1746, 4to. This was regarded as a work of great utility, as well in foreign countries as in France. It procured him admission the same year into the Academy of Sciences, in which he had the place of adjunct to the gcometry class. He contributed various pieces to the memoirs of this society, all of which turn upon some useful object. As he was distinguished for his skill in mechanics, he was much consulted by those who had works of this kind to perform. to perform. He planned the water-works of Crecy for Mad. de Pompadour; a very inge