Chapter Davenant to Dawson of D by Brewer's Readers Handbook

the young lady are fixed on Henry Woodville, the baron goes to the wall.—Cumberland: The Wheel of Fortune (1779).

Dawfyd, “the one-eyed” freebooter chief.—Sir W. Scott: The Betrothed (time, Henry II.).

Dawkins (Jack), known by the sobriquet of the “Artful Dodger.” He is one of Fagin’s tools. Jack Dawkins is a young scamp of unmitigated villainy, and full of artifices; but of a cheery, buoyant temper.—C. Dickens: Oliver Twist, viii. (1837).

Dawson (Bully), a London sharper, bully, and debauchee of the seventeenth century. (See Spectator, No. 2.)

Bully Dawson kicked by half the town, and half the town kicked by Bully Dawson.—C. Lamb.

Dawson (Jemmy). Captain James Dawson was one of the eight officers belonging to the Manchester volunteers in the service of Charles Edward, the young pretender. He was a very amiable young man, engaged to a young lady of family and fortune, who went in her carriage to witness his execution for treason. When the body was drawn, i.e. embowelled, and the heart thrown into the fire, she exclaimed, “James Dawson!” and expired. Shenstone has made this the subject of a tragic ballad.

Young Dawson was a gallant youth,
A brighter never trod the plain;
And well he loved one charming maid,
And dearly was he loved again.
   —Shenstone: Jemmy Dawson (1745).

Dawson (Phœbe), “the pride of Lammas Fair,” courted by all the smartest young men of the village, but caught “by the sparkling eyes” and ardent words of a tailor. Phœbe had by him a child before marriage, and after marriage he turned a “captious tyrant and a noisy sot.” Poor Phœbe drooped, “pinched were her looks, as one who pined for bread,” and in want and sickness she sank into an early tomb.

(This sketch is one of the best in Crabbe’s Parish Register, 1807.)