Chapter Divine to Dodgson of D by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Divine to Dodgson

Divine. Raphael, the painter, was called Il Divino (1483–1520).

Luis Moralês, a Spanish painter, was called El Divino (1509–1586).

Ferdinand de Herrera, a Spanish poet (1516–1595).

Divine (John the), supposed to be John the evangelist.

One great objection is this: In the Fourth Gospel the author does not name himself; in the Revelation he does so several times.

Another objection is that the vocabulary and swing of sentences in the Greek of the two books are very different. This would be felt especially if a person were to read them both in one and the same day.

Divine Doctor (The), Jean de Ruysbroek, the mystic (1294–1381).

Divine Emblems, the chief work of Francis Quarles, once immensely popular. He wrote several sacred poems.

Divine Legation (The), by bishop Warburton (1738). To prove that the Pentateuch must have been inspired and revealed, “because (unlike other religious systems) it is silent on the subject of a future state.”

Divine Right of Kings. The dogma that Kings can do no wrong is based on a dictim of Hincmar archbishop of Rheims, viz. that “kings are subject to no man so long as they rule by God’s law.”—Hincmar’s Works, i. 693.

Divine Speaker (The). Tyrtamos, usually known as Theophrastos (“divine speaker”), was so called by Aristotle (B.C. 370–287).

Divining Rod, a forked branch of hazel, suspended between the balls of the thumbs. The inclination of this rod indicates the presence of water-springs and precious metals.

Now to rivulets from the mountains
Point the rods of fortune-tellers.
   —Longfellow: Drinking Song.

Jacques Aymar of Crôle was the most famous of all diviners. He lived in the latter half of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth. His marvellous faculty attracted the attention of Europe. M. Chauvin, M.D., and M. Garnier, M.D., published carefully written accounts of his wonderful powers, and both were eye-witnesses thereof. (See S. Baring-Gould’s Myths of the Middle Ages.)

Divinity. There are four professors of divinity at Cambridge, and three at Oxford. Those at Cambridge are the Hulsean, the Margaret, the Norrisian, and the Regius. Those at Oxford are the Margaret, the Regius, and one for Ecclesiastical History.

Divino Lodovico, Ariosto, author of Orlando Furioso (1474–1533).

Dixie’s Land, the land of milk and honey to American niggers. Dixie was a slave-holder of Manhattan Island, who removed his slaves to the Southern States, where they had to work harder and fare worse; so that they were always sighing for their old home, which they called “Dixie’s Land.” Imagination and distance soon advanced this island into a sort of Delectable Country or Land of Beulah.

Dixon, servant to Mr. Richard Vere .—Sir W. Scott: The Black Dwarf (time, Anne).

Dizzy, a nickname of Benjamin Disraeli, earl of Beaconsfield (1805–1881).