Page:Cousins's Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature.djvu/124

112 pleasant humour. Of his novels, Thomas of Reading is in honour of clothiers, Jack of Newbury celebrates weaving, and The Gentle Craft is dedicated to the praise of shoemakers. He "dy'd poorely," but was "honestly buried."

 Author:Augustus de Morgan (1806-1871).—Mathematician, b. in India, and ed. at Camb., was one of the most brilliant of English mathematicians. He is mentioned here in virtue of his Budget of Paradoxes, a series of papers originally pub. in The Athenæum, in which mathematical fallacies are discussed with sparkling wit, and the keenest logic.

 Author:John Denham (1615-1669).—Poet, s. of the Chief Baron of Exchequer in Ireland, was b. in Dublin, and ed. at Oxf. He began his literary career with a tragedy, The Sophy (1641), which seldom rises above mediocrity. His poem, Cooper's Hill (1642), is the work by which he is remembered. It is the first example in English of a poem devoted to local description. D. received extravagant praise from ; but the place now assigned him is a much more humble one. His verse is smooth, clear, and agreeable, and occasionally a thought is expressed with remarkable terseness and force. In his earlier years D. suffered for his Royalism; but after the Restoration enjoyed prosperity. He, however, made an unhappy marriage, and his last years were clouded by insanity. He was an architect by profession, coming between Inigo Jones and Wren as King's Surveyor.

 Author:John Dennis (1657-1734) (1657-1734).—Critic, etc., s. of a saddler, was b. in London, and ed. at Harrow and Caius Coll., Camb., from the latter of which he was expelled for stabbing a fellow-student, and transferred himself to Trinity Hall. He attached himself to the Whigs, in whose interest he wrote several bitter and vituperative pamphlets. His attempts at play-writing were failures; and he then devoted himself chiefly to criticising the works of his contemporaries. In this line, while showing some acuteness, he aroused much enmity by his ill-temper and jealousy. Unfortunately for him, some of those whom he attacked, such as and, had the power of conferring upon him an unenviable immortality. Embalmed in The Dunciad, his name has attained a fame which no work of his own could have given it. Of, however, he showed a true appreciation. Among his works are Rinaldo and Armida (1699), Appius and Virginia (1709), Reflections Critical and Satirical (1711), and Three Letters on Shakespeare. He d. in, straitened circumstances.

 Author:Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859).—Essayist and miscellaneous writer, s. of a merchant in Manchester, was b. there. The aristocratic "De" was assumed by himself, his f., whom he lost while he was still a child, having been known by the name of Quincey, and he claimed descent from a Norman family. His Autobiographic Sketches give a vivid picture of his early years at the family residence of Greenheys, and show him as a highly imaginative and, over-sensitive child, suffering hard things at the hands of a tyrannical elder brother. He was ed. first at home, then at Bath Grammar