Chapter Duff to Dyer of D by Biographical Dictionary of English Literature

Doctor Subtilis. Among his many works on logic and theology are a philosophic grammar, and a work on metaphysics, De Rerum Principio (of the beginning of things). His great opponent was Thomas Aquinas, and schoolmen of the day were divided into Scotists and Thomists, or realists and nominalists.

D’Urfey, Thomas (1653-1723).—Dramatist and song-writer, was a well-known man-about-town, a companion of Charles II., and lived on to the reign of George I. His plays are now forgotten, and he is best known in connection with a collection of songs entitled, Pills to Purge Melancholy. Addison describes him as a “diverting companion,” and “a cheerful, honest, good-natured man.” His writings are nevertheless extremely gross. His plays include Siege of Memphis (1676), Madame Fickle (1677), Virtuous Wife (1680), and The Campaigners (1698).

Dwight, Timothy (1752-1817).—Theologian and poet, born at Northampton, Mass., was a grandson of Jonathan Edwards, became a Congregationalist minister, Professor of Divinity, and latterly president of Yale. His works include, besides theological treatises and sermons, the following poems, America (1772), The Conquest of Canaan (1785), and The Triumph of Infidelity, a satire, admired in their day, but now unreadable.

Dyce, Alexander (1798-1869).—Scholar and critic, son of Lieut.-General Alexander Dyce, was born in Edinburgh, and educated there and at Oxford He took orders, and for a short time served in two country curacies. Then, leaving the Church and settling in London, he betook himself to his life-work of edition the English dramatists. His first work, Specimens of British Poetesses, appeared in 1825; and thereafter at various intervals edition of Collins’s Poems, and the dramatic works of Peele, Middleton, Beaumont and Fletcher, Marlowe, Greene, Webster, and others. His great edition of Shakespeare in 9 vols. appeared in 1857. He also edited various works for the Camden Society, and published Table Talk of Samuel Rogers. All Dyce’s work is marked by varied and accurate learning, minute research, and solid judgment.

Dyer, Sir Edward (1545?-1607).—Poet, born at Sharpham Park, Somerset, and educated at Oxford, was introduced to the Court by the Earl of Leicester, and sent on a mission to Denmark, 1589. He was in 1596 made Chancellor of the Order of the Garter, and knighted. In his own day he had a reputation for his elegies among such judges as Sidney and Puttenham. For a long time there was doubt as to what poems were to be attributed to him, but about a dozen pieces have now been apparently identified as his. The best known is that on contentment beginning, “My mind to me a kingdom is.”

Dyer, John (1700-1758).—Poet, was born in Caermarthenshire. In his early years he studied painting, but finding that he was not likely to attain a satisfactory measure of success, entered the Church. He has a definite, if a modest, place in literature as the author of three poems, Grongar Hill (1727), The Ruins of Rome (1740), and The Fleece (1757). The first of these is the best, and the best known, and contains much true natural description; but all have passages of considerable poetical merit, delicacy and precision of phrase being their most noticeable characteristic. Wordsworth had a high opinion of Dyer as a poet, and addressed a sonnet to him.