The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 166

DIVAN, THE, a collection of poems by Hafiz, containing nearly 600 odes; also a collection of lyrics in imitation of Goethe, ent.i.tled "Westostlicher Divan."

DIVES, the name given, originally in the Vulgate, to the rich man in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus.

DIVIDING RANGE, a range of mountains running E. from Melbourne, and then N., dividing the basin of the Murray from the plain extending to the coast.

DIVINE COMEDY, THE, the great poem of Dante, consisting of three compartments, "Inferno," "Purgatorio," and "Paradiso"; "three kingdoms ... Dante's World of Souls...; all three making up the true Unseen World, as it figured in the Christianity of the Middle Ages; a thing for ever memorable, for ever true in the essence of it, to all men ... but delineated in no human soul with such depth of veracity as in this of Dante's ... to the earnest soul of Dante it is all one visible fact--h.e.l.l, Purgatory, Paradise, with him not mere emblems, but indubitable awful realities." See DANTE, and CARLYLE'S "HEROES AND HERO-WORs.h.i.+P."

DIVINE DOCTOR, Jean de Ruysbroek, the mystic (1294-1381).

DIVINE PAGAN, HYPATIA (q. v.).

DIVINE RIGHT, a claim on the part of kings, now all but extinct, though matter of keen debate at one time, that they derive their authority to rule direct from the Almighty, and are responsible to no inferior power, a right claimed especially on the part of and in behalf of the Bourbons in France and the Stuart dynasty in England, and the denial of which was regarded by them and their partisans as an outrage against the ordinance of very Heaven.

DIXIE LAND, n.i.g.g.e.r land in U.S.

DIXON, W. HEPWORTH, an English writer and journalist, born in Manchester; called to the bar, but devoted himself to literary work; wrote Lives of Howard, Penn, Robert Blake, and Lord Bacon, "New America,"

"Spiritual Wives," &c.; was editor of the _Athenoeum_ from 1853 to 1869; died suddenly (1821-1879).

DIZIER, ST. (13), a flouris.h.i.+ng French town, 30 m. from Chalons-sur-Marne.

DIZZY, a nickname given to Benjamin Disraeli.

DJEZZAR (i. e. Butcher), the surname of Achmed Pasha, pacha of Acre; was born at Bosnia; sold as a slave, and raised himself by his servility to his master to the length of executing his cruellest wishes; in 1799 withstood a long siege of Acre by Bonaparte, and obliged him to retire (1735-1804).

DJINNESTAN, the region of the Jinns.

DNIEPER, a river of Russia, anciently called the Borysthenes, the third largest for volume of water in Europe, surpa.s.sed only by the Danube and the Volga; rises in the province of Smolensk, and flowing in a generally southerly direction, falls into the Black Sea below Kherson after a course of 1330 m.; it traverses some of the finest provinces of the empire, and is navigable nearly its entire length.

DNIESTER, a river which takes its rise in Austria, in the Carpathians, enters Russia, flows generally in a SE. direction past Bender, and after a rapid course of 650 m. falls into the Black Sea at Akjerman.

DOAB, THE, a richly fertile, densely peopled territory in the Punjab, between the Jumna and Ganges, and extending 500 m. N., that is, as far as the Himalayas; it is the granary of Upper India.

DOBELL, SIDNEY, poet, born at Cranbrook, in Kent; wrote, under the pseudonym of Sidney Yendys, the "Roman," a drama, "Balder," and, along with Alexander Smith, sonnets on the war (the Crimean); suffered much from weak health (1824-1874).

DoBEREINER, a German chemist, professor at Jena; inventor of a lamp called after him; Goethe was much interested in his discoveries (1780-1849).

DoBEREINER'S LAMP, a light caused by a jet of hydrogen pa.s.sing over spongy platinum.

DOBROVSKI, JOSEPH, a philologist, born in Gyarmet, in Hungary; devoted his life to the study of the Bohemian language and literature; wrote a history of them, the fruit of immense labour, under which his brain gave way more than once; was trained among the Jesuits (1753-1829).

DOBRENTER, Hungarian archaeologist; devoted 30 years of his life to the study of the Magyar language; author of "Ancient Monuments of the Magyar Language" (1786-1851).

DOBRUDJA (196), the part of Roumania between the Danube and the Black Sea, a barren, unwholesome district; rears herds of cattle.

DOBSON, AUSTIN, poet and prose writer, born at Plymouth, is in a department of the Civil Service; wrote "Vignettes in Rhyme," "Proverbs in Porcelain," "Old World Idylls," in verse, and in prose Lives of Fielding, Hogarth, Steele, and Goldsmith; contributed extensively to the magazines; _b_. 1840.

DOBSON, WILLIAM, portrait-painter, born in London; succeeded Vandyck as king's serjeant-painter to Charles I.; painted the king and members of his family and court; supreme in his art prior to Sir Joshua Reynolds; died in poverty (1610-1646).

DOCETae, a sect of heretics in the early Church who held that the humanity of Christ was only seeming, not real, on the Gnostic or Manichaean theory of the essential impurity and defiling nature of matter or the flesh.

DOCTOR (lit. teacher), a t.i.tle implying that the possessor of it is such a master of his art that he can teach it as well as practise it.

DOCTOR MIRABILIS, Roger Bacon.

DOCTOR MY-BOOK, John Abernethy, from his saying to his patients, "Read my book."

DOCTOR OF THE INCARNATION, Cyril of Alexandria, from his controversy with the Nestorians.

DOCTOR SLOP, a doctor in "Tristram Shandy," fanatical about a forceps he invented.

DOCTOR SQUINTUM, George Whitfield.

DOCTOR SYNTAX. See COMBE, WILLIAM.

DOCTORS' COMMONS, a college of doctors of the civil law in London, where they used to eat in common, and where eventually a number of the courts of law were held.