Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/145

 DINTEE

DOBEEEINEE

L.L.M., second baronet, statesman. B. Sep. 4, 1843. Ed. privately and at Cam bridge (Trinity Hall). He was called to the Bar (Middle Temple) in 1866, but never practised. In 1868 he opened his political career as Eadical Member for Chelsea, and in 1869 he succeeded his father as baronet and owner of the Athenceum and Notes and Queries. In 1874 he published an anti clerical novel, The Fall of Prince Florestan. Dilke was a warm friend of Gambetta and the French Eationalists, and shared their views ; though during the early years of his second marriage he had a phase of con formity. As leader of the Eadicals in the House of Commons he was distinguished for acute statesmanship and zeal for better ment. From 1882 to 1885 he was Presi dent of the Local Government Board. In 1886 he was compelled to retire from Parliament, but he returned in 1892 and represented the Forest of Dean until his death. D. Jan. 26, 1911.

DINTER, Gustav Friedrich, German educationist. B. Feb. 29, 1760. Ed. Grimma and Leipzig University. He was a Protestant pastor, and for some years (1787-97) head of a Protestant College at Dresden. In 1816 he was appointed Education Councillor for the province of East Prussia and professor of psedagogy at Konigsberg. In 1826, however, he began a series of works on the Bible and religious instruction which drew the wrath of the orthodox. His collected works were pub lished in forty-three volumes 1840-51. D. May 29, 1831.

DIPPEL, Johann Konrad, German chemist. B. Aug. 10, 1673. Ed. Giessen University. Expelled from Strassburg for heterodox lectures, he went to Darmstadt, where he joined the orthodox. He at length seceded entirely from Christianity and heavily satirized the clergy (especially in his Hirt und cine Heerde, 1705). At Berlin he took up chemistry and medicine, but his repeated attacks on religion com pelled him to migrate every few years. 217

Dippel wrote seventy books and was a man of prodigious learning. D. Apr. 25, 1734.

DIXIE, Lady Florence Caroline,

author. B. May 24, 1857, daughter of the seventh Marquis of Queensberry. Ed. privately. She was a remarkably pre cocious child, rejecting theology at an early age and writing poetry (Songs of a Child, 1901) at the age of ten. Bulwer Lytton wrote a graceful poem on meeting her. In her youth she had a passion for travel and sport, from which her Horrors of Sport (1891) expresses a humanitarian con version. She married Sir A. B. Dixie in 1875, and in 1879 was correspondent of the Morning Post in the Zulu War. Her later years and many publications were devoted to Eationalism and humane re forms, and her fine and generous career came to a tragic close on an errand of mercy. D. Nov. 7, 1905.

DOBELL, Bertram, poet and publisher. B. 1842. Dobell had little education, having to earn his living as a boy. In 1872 he opened a newsvendor s shop, and he went on to the sale, and later the pub lication, of books, educating himself mean time. He published much of James Thomson s prose and verse, and wrote his life. Several new authors were intro duced by him. His Eationalism finds expression in his Rosemary and Pansies (1904) and A Century of Sonnets (1910). D. Dec. 14, 1914.

DOBEREINER, Professor Johann Wolfgang, German chemist. B. Dec. 15, 1780. Ed. Miinchberg. He was a chemist at Carlsruhe, and later a chemical manu facturer, who studied his science and became a professor at Jena. His works record a number of original discoveries, and greatly advanced the science of his day. At Jena he taught Goethe (who often mentions him in his letters) chemistry and shared his philosophy. D. Mar. 27, 1849.

218