Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 14.djvu/459

 out undertakings which would have required three such lives as his own, he yet died without having printed anything hut a few speeches of no great merit and a dull essay (published in 1645) entitled 'The Primitive Practice for Preserving Truth.' His great and very valuable work, 'Journals of all the Parliaments during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth,' was not published till 1682: the work was edited by his nephew, Paul Bowes of the Inner Temple, and dedicated to his son. Fifty-five years after D'Ewes's death all his collections were sold by his grandson to the Earl of Oxford, then Sir Robert Harley. There is a story that Harley advised Queen Anne to purchase them, and that on her refusal Harley secured them for himself at the cost of 6,000l. (Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. xi. 181). The sum named must be very much exaggerated. Certainly the library was offered to Wanley, Harley's agent in the matter, for 500l., but how much was included in this agreement does not appear. A list of D'Ewes's manuscripts, apparently drawn up by himself, has come down to us (Harl. MS. 775), and a brief but sufficient analysis of those now in the British Museum may be found in the Harleian catalogue. The collection is very miscellaneous, embracing even such trifles as his school exercises, a large number of letters to his sisters and family, and a great deal else that is really worthless. On the other hand, the voluminous transcripts from cartularies, monastic registers, early wills and records, and from public and private muniments which he ransacked with extraordinary diligence, constitute a very valuable apparatus for the history of English antiquities and law. Among other of his projects was the compilation of an Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. This work, which he undertook in conjunction with Francis Junius, has never been printed, though it is among the Harleian MSS. and seems to have been made ready for the press. D'Ewes's 'Diaries,' now in the British Museum, written some in Latin and some in cipher, extend from January 1621 to April 1624, and from January 1643 to March 1647. From an earlier diary, preserved at Colchester (, Hist. of St. John's, by Professor Mayor, p. 615, 1. 35), Mr. Marsden in 1811 compiled a work which he calls 'College Life at the Time of James I,' and from the original manuscript in the Harleian collection (No. 646) Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps published in 1845 'The Autobiography and Correspondence of Sir Simonds D'Ewes during the Reign of James I and Charles I.' There are some judicious omissions from the author's lengthy narrative, and the letters are few but interesting. From D'Ewes's own reminiscences almost exclusively are any sources for his biography to be drawn. He was on intimate terms with all the great antiquaries of that antiquarian age, but, unlike such men as Selden, Twysden, Dugdale, Holdsworth, and many others who were more or less associated with him, D'Ewes had very little constructive ability; he was a mere copyist and collector, though as a collector he has rarely been surpassed for conscientiousness, industry, and accuracy. With the captiousness which is the vice of narrow minds, he was not above disparaging the work of others; he sneered at Selden, and found much fault with Camden's work (see p. xlv of the Life of Camden, by Thos. Smith, prefixed to Camdeni Epistolae, 1691). Perhaps the most valuable of his transcripts which remain to us are those which he made from monastic cartularies and registers, the originals of which have fallen into other hands since his day, and some of them have perished, or at any rate disappeared.

[D'Ewes's Autobiography, ed. Halliwell, 1845.]  DE WILDE, SAMUEL (1748–1832), portrait-painter, the son of Dutch parents, was born in Holland, 1 July 1748, and was brought as an infant to England by his widowed mother. He was apprenticed to a carver in Denmark Street, Soho. His earliest essays in art seem to have been a series of etchings and mezzotint engravings, published under the pseudonym of ‘Paul’ from about 1770 to 1777. As the etchings are signed ‘P. Paul’ and the mezzotint engravings ‘S. Paul,’ it is difficult to believe that De Wilde was the engraver of both, though Mr. Sutherland (Catalogue of the Sutherland Collection of Portraits) states that he was. Among the former were portraits of John, lord Byron, Patrick Ruthven, earl of Brentford, and Sir Francis Windebank; and among the latter portraits of Sir William Parsons, the Misses Wright, after Wright, a few after Reynolds, and some subject pictures after Steen, Vanloo, Vernet, and others. He first appears as an exhibitor of paintings at the exhibition of the Society of Artists at Spring Gardens in 1776, to which he contributed some portraits. To the Royal Academy in 1782 he sent some sketches of ‘Banditti,’ in 1784 ‘A Sportsman with Spaniels,’ in 1786 a frame containing ten small portraits in oil and three fancy pictures, in 1788 another ‘Banditti.’ In 1795 he exhibited two theatrical scenes, and in 1797 some portraits of actors in character, a line of art to which from that time he almost wholly devoted himself, and throughout a long lifetime there was hardly an actor or actress whom