Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 16.djvu/179

 impugned by the brother of Cérisantis, Saint Helène, mainly on the ground of the somewhat disparaging tone in which Cérisantis is referred to in them. The genuineness of the work is, however, now beyond dispute, and it must be observed that the duke, while imputing to Cérisantis excessive vaingloriousness, gives him credit for skill and intrepidity in the field. Cérisantis was esteemed one of the most elegant Latinists of his age, and published several poems, of which ‘Carmen Gratulatorium in nuptias Car. R. Ang. cum Henrietta Maria filia Henrici IV R. F.’ is the most celebrated.

[Bayle's Dict. Hist. et Crit. (ed. 1820), art. ‘Cérisantis;’ Mémoires du Duc de Guise (Petitot), i. 62, 211–14, 225–6, 271, 364, ii. 48; Anderson's Scottish Nation; Brit. Mus. Cat.; Watt's Bibl. Brit.] 

DUNCAN, PHILIP BURY (1772–1863), keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, was born in 1772 at South Warnborough, Hampshire, where his father was rector. He was educated at Winchester College (where he afterwards founded the ‘Duncan Prizes’), and at New College, Oxford, of which he became a fellow in 1792. He graduated B.A. 1794, M.A. 1798. Among the school and college friends with whom he continued intimate were Archbishop Howley, Bishop Mant, and Sidney Smith. He was called to the bar in 1796, and for a few years attended the home and the western circuits. From 1801 till his death he lived much at Bath, and promoted many local scientific and philanthropic schemes. He was elected president of the Bath United Hospital in 1841. In 1826 he was made keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, in succession to his elder brother,, author of ‘Hints to the Bearers of Walking Sticks and Umbrella,’ anonymous, 3rd edit. 1809; ‘Botano Theology,’ 1825; and ‘Analogies of Organised Beings,’ 1831. Philip Duncan increased the Ashmolean zoological collections, and himself gave many donations. He also presented to the university casts of antique statues and various models. Duncan advocated the claims of physical science and mathematics to a prominent place in Oxford studies. He was instrumental in establishing at Oxford, as also at Bath, a savings bank and a society for the suppression of mendicity. He resigned his keepership in 1855, and was then given the honorary degree of D.C.L. He had published in 1836 ‘A Catalogue of the Ashmolean Museum,’ 8vo, and in 1845 had printed at considerable cost a ‘Catalogue of the MSS. bequeathed by Ashmole to the University of Oxford’ (edited by W. H. Black). Among Duncan's other publications were: 1. ‘An Essay on Sculpture’ [1830?], 8vo. 2. ‘Reliquiæ Romanæ’ (on Roman antiquities in England and Wales), Oxford, 1836, 8vo. 3. ‘Essays on Conversation and Quackery,’ 1836, 12mo. 4. ‘Literary Conglomerate,’ Oxford, 1839, 8vo. 5. ‘Essays and Miscellanea,’ Oxford, 1840, 8vo. 6. ‘Motives of Wars,’ London, 1844, 8vo. Duncan died on 12 Nov. 1863, at Westfield Lodge, his residence, near Bath, aged 91. He was unmarried. He was a man of simple habits and refined tastes. Archbishop Howley said of him and his brother: ‘I question whether any two men with the same means have ever done the same amount of good.’

[Gent. Mag. 1864, 3rd ser. xvi. 122–6; Cat. of Oxf. Grad.; Brit. Mus. Cat.] 

DUNCAN, THOMAS (1807–1845), painter, was born at Kinclaven, Perthshire, 24 May 1807. At an early age he drew likenesses of his young companions, and while still at school he painted the whole of the scenery for a dramatic representation of ‘Rob Roy,’ which he and his schoolfellows undertook to perform in a stable-loft. His father took alarm at what he considered unprofitable waste of time, and placed him in the office of a writer to the signet. As soon as he had served his time he obtained his father's leave to go to Edinburgh and enter the Trustees' Academy. There he made rapid progress under Sir William Allan [q. v.], whom he succeeded as head-master a few years later. He began to exhibit at the Scottish Academy in 1828, and first attracted notice by his pictures of ‘A Scotch Milk Girl’ and ‘The Death of Old Mortality,’ exhibited at the Royal Institution in 1829, which were followed in 1830 by that of ‘The Bra' Wooer.’ These and other early works won for him so much reputation that in 1830 he was elected an academician of the newly founded Scottish Academy, in which he held at first the professorship of colour, and subsequently that of drawing. He devoted himself chiefly to portraiture, but from time to time he produced genre and historical pictures. Among these were ‘Lucy Ashton at the Mermaid's Fountain’ and ‘Jeanie Deans on her Journey to London,’ exhibited in 1831; ‘Cuddie Headrigg visiting Jenny Dennison,’ in 1834; ‘Queen Mary signing her Abdication,’ in 1835; ‘Old Mortality’ and ‘A Covenanter,’ in 1836; ‘Anne Page inviting Master Slender to Dinner,’ in 1837; and ‘Isaac of York visiting his Treasure Chest’ and ‘The Lily of St. Leonards,’ in 1838.

In 1840 he sent to the exhibition of the Royal Academy in London his well-known