Part 172 (1/2)

DRUMMOND, WILLIAM, of Hawthornden, a Scottish poet, named the ”Petrarch of Scotland,” born in Hawthornden; studied civil law at Bourges, but poetry had more attractions for him than law, and on the death of his father he returned to his paternal estate, and devoted himself to the study of it and the indulgence of his poetic tastes. ”His work was done,” as Stopford Brooke remarks, ”in the reign of James I., but is the result of the Elizabethan influence extending to Scotland.

Drummond's sonnets and madrigals have some of the grace of Sidney, and he rose at intervals into grave and n.o.ble verse, as in his sonnet on John the Baptist.” He was a devoted Royalist; his first poem was ”Tears” on the death of James I.'s eldest son Henry, and the fate of Charles I. is said to have cut short his days; the visit of Ben Jonson to him at Hawthornden is well known (1585-1649).

DRUMMOND LIGHT, an intensely-brilliant and pure white light produced by the play of an oxyhydrogen flame upon a ball of lime, so called from the inventor, Captain Thomas Drummond.

DRURY, DRU, a naturalist, born in London; bred a silversmith; took to entomology; published ”Ill.u.s.trations of Natural History”; his princ.i.p.al work ”Ill.u.s.trations of Exotic Entomology” (1725-1803).

DRURY LANE, a celebrated London theatre founded in 1663, in what was a fas.h.i.+onable quarter of the city then; has since that time been thrice burnt down; was the scene of Garrick's triumphs, and of those of many of his ill.u.s.trious successors, though it is now given up chiefly to pantomimes and spectacular exhibitions.

DRUSES, a peculiar people, numbering some 80,000, inhabiting the S.

of Lebanon and Anti-lebanon, with the Maronites on the N., whose origin is very uncertain, only it is evident, though they speak the Arab language, they belong to the Aryan race; their religion, a mixture of Christian, Jewish, and Mohammedan beliefs, is grounded on faith in the unity and the incarnation of G.o.d; their form of government is half hierarchical and half feudalistic; in early times they were under emirs of their own, but in consequence of the sanguinary, deadly, and mutually exterminating strife between them and the Christian Maronites in 1860, they were put under a Christian governor appointed by the Porte.

DRUSUS, M. LIVIUS, a tribune of the people at Rome in 122 B.C., but a stanch supporter of the aristocracy; after pa.s.sing a veto on a popular measure proposed by Gracchus his democratic colleague, proposed the same measure himself in order to show and prove to the people that the patricians were their best friends; the success of this policy gained him the name of ”patron of the senate.”

DRUSUS, M. LIVIUS, tribune of the people, 91 B.C., son of the preceding, and an aristocrat; pursued the same course as his father, but was baffled in the execution of his purpose, which was to broaden the const.i.tution, in consequence of which he formed a conspiracy, and was a.s.sa.s.sinated, an event which led to the SOCIAL WAR (q. v.).

DRUSUS, NERO CLAUDIUS, surnamed ”Germanicus,” younger brother of Tiberius and son-in-law of Marc Antony; distinguished himself in four successive campaigns against the tribes of Germany, but stopped short at the Elbe, scared by the apparition of a woman of colossal stature who defied him to cross, so that he had to ”content himself with erecting some triumphal pillars on his own safe side of the river and say that the tribes across were conquered”; falling ill of a mortal malady, his brother the emperor hastened across the Alps to close his eyes, and brought home his body, which was burned and the ashes buried in the tomb of Augustus.

DRYADS, nymphs of forest trees, which were conceived of as born with the tree they were attached to and dying along with it; they had their abode in wooded mountains away from men; held their revels among themselves, but broke them off at the approach of a human footstep.

DRYAS, the father of Lycurgus, a Thracian king, and slain by him, who, in a fit of frenzy against the Bacchus wors.h.i.+ppers, mistook him for a vine and cut him down. See LYCURGUS.

DRYASDUST, a name of Sir Walter Scott's invention, and employed by him to denote an imaginary character who supplied him with dry preliminary historical details, and since used to denote a writer who treats a historical subject with all due diligence and research, but without any appreciation of the human interest in it, still less the soul of it.

DRYBURGH, an abbey, now a ruin, founded by David I., on the Tweed, in Berwicks.h.i.+re, 3 m. SE. of Melrose; the burial-place of Sir Walter Scott.

DRYDEN, JOHN, a celebrated English poet, ”glorious John,” born in Northamptons.h.i.+re, of a good family of Puritan principles; educated at Westminster School and Cambridge; his first poetic production of any merit was a set of ”heroic stanzas” on the death of Cromwell; at the Restoration he changed sides and wrote a poem which he called ”Astraea Redux” in praise of the event, which was ere long followed by his ”Annus Mirabilis,” in commemoration of the year 1666, which revealed at once the poet and the royalist, and gained him the appointment of poet-laureate, prior to which and afterwards he produced a succession of plays for the stage, which won him great popularity, after which he turned his mind to political affairs and a.s.sumed the role of political satirist by production of his ”Absalom and Achitophel,” intended to expose the schemes of Shaftesbury, represented as Achitophel and Monmouth as Absalom, to oust the Duke of York from the succession to the throne; on the accession of James II. he became a Roman Catholic, and wrote ”The Hind and the Panther,” characterised by Stopford Brooke as ”a model of melodious reasoning in behalf of the milk-white hind of the Church of Rome,” and really the most powerful thing of the kind in the language; at the Revolution he was deprived of his posts, but it was after that event he executed his translation of Virgil, and produced his celebrated odes and ”Fables” (1631-1700).

DUALISM, or MANICHaeISM, the doctrine that there are two opposite and independently existing principles which go to const.i.tute every concrete thing throughout the universe, such as a principle of good and a principle of evil, light and darkness, life and death, spirit and matter, ideal and real, yea and nay, G.o.d and Devil, Christ and Antichrist, Ormuzd and Ahriman.

DU BARRY, COUNTESS, mistress of Louis XV., born at Vaucouleurs, daughter of a dressmaker; came to Paris, professing millinery; had fascinating attractions, and was introduced to the king; governed France to its ruin and the dismissal of all Louis' able and honourable advisers; fled from Paris on the death of Louis, put on mourning for his death; was arrested, brought before the Revolutionary tribunal, condemned for wasting the finances of the State, and guillotined (1746-1793).

DU BELLAY, a French general, born at Montmirail; served under Francis I. (1541-1590).