Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 16.djvu/291

 and there is a sonnet to him in the same volume. Thomas Powell has some dedicatory verses to him in ‘A Welch Bayte to Spare Prouender,’ 1603. Dyer died in 1607, and in the burial register of St. Saviour's, Southwark, is the entry: ‘1607, May 11. Sr Edward Dyer, knight, in the chancel.’ Ben Jonson told Drummond that ‘Dyer died unmarried.’ Letters of administration of his estate were granted 25 June 1607 from the prerogative court of Canterbury to his sister, Margaret Dyer. In Lansd. MS. 165, f. 320, is preserved an account of the value of his lands and the amount of his debts, with a statement of ‘Monies received by virtue of Sir Edward Stafford's warrant as for Sir Edward Dyer's warrant of concealment between 1585 and the 29th of April 1607.’ His lands are stated in the manuscript to have produced a yearly rent of 130l., or to be worth 13,000l. at one hundred years' purchase; and his debts are estimated at 11,200l. 13s. 8d. It is difficult to credit the statement of Aubrey, made on the authority of Captain Dyer, his great-grandson or brother's great-grandson, that ‘he had four thousand pounds per annum, and was left four-score thousand pounds in money. He wasted it almost all.’ According to another statement of Aubrey, Dyer ‘labour'd much in chymistry, was esteemed by some a Rosie-crucian, and a great devotee to Dr. Joh. Dee and Edw. Kelly.’

Dyer gained considerable fame as a poet in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. Puttenham in 1589 pronounced him to be ‘for elegy most sweet, solemn, and of high conceit;’ and Meres in ‘Wit's Treasury,’ 1598, mentions him as ‘famous for elegy.’ But his verse was never collected. During his lifetime, and early in the next century, critics were at a loss to know on what work his fame rested. Edmund Bolton in ‘Hypercritica’ says that he ‘had not seen much of Sir Edward Dyer's poetry;’ and William Drummond, coupling his name with Raleigh's, observes: ‘Their works are so few that have come to my hands, I cannot well say anything of them.’ Rawl. MS. Poet. 85 contains a few poems ascribed, with more or less authority, to Dyer. His most famous poem is his description of contentment, beginning ‘My mind to me a kingdom is’ (set to music in William Byrd's ‘Psalmes, Sonets, and Songs,’ 1588), of which several early manuscript copies are extant. Some poems in ‘England's Helicon,’ 1600, are subscribed ‘S[ir] E[dward] D[yer];’ but nearly all of them belong to Lodge. The sonnet entitled ‘The Shepherd's Conceit of Prometheus’ (which is undoubtedly Dyer's), with Sidney's ‘Reply’—printed in ‘England's Helicon’—had previously appeared among the poems appended to the 1598 ‘Arcadia.’ In Chetham MS. 8012, pp. 143–53, is a lengthy ‘Epitaph, composed by Sir Edward Dyer, of Sir Philip Sidney;’ but in Rawl. MS. Poet. 85 it is ascribed to Nicholas Breton. A whimsical prose-tract, ‘The Prayse of Nothing,’ 1585, 4to, of which a unique copy is preserved in the Tanner Collection, has been attributed to Dyer (privately reprinted by Mr. J. P. Collier). Collier claimed for him another unique book, ‘Sixe Idillia, that is, Sixe Small or Petty Poems, or Æglogues chosen out of the right famous Sicilian Poet, Theocritus, and translated into English verse,’ Oxford, 1588, 8vo. When Dr. Grosart collected Dyer's works in 1872, he could find no trace of this book; and Collier had forgotten where he had seen it. It is preserved in the Bodleian Library (, 841), and was reprinted at the private printing-press of the Rev. H. C. Daniel, Oxford, in 1883. ‘The authorship of Sir Edward Dyer,’ says Collier, ‘is ascertained by his initials and motto at the back of the title-page.’ But this is an error, for the inscription at the back of the title plainly shows that the book was dedicated to, not written by, ‘E. D.’ Some of Dyer's letters have been printed by Sir Harris Nicolas. George Whitney, in ‘A Choice of Emblems,’ 1586, has laudatory notices of Dyer. From a manuscript copy of Abraham Fraunce's ‘The Lawiers Logike,’ 1588, it appears that Fraunce had intended to dedicate his poem (under the title of ‘The Shepheardes Logike’) to the ‘ryght worshypful Mr. Edward Dyer.’

[Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas, prefixed to his edition of Davison's Poetical Rhapsody, 1826; Grosart's Introduction to the Writings of Sir Edward Dyer, in Miscellanies of the Fuller Worthies Library; Hannah's Notes appended to Poems of Sir Walter Raleigh, &c.; Wood's Athenæ, ed. Bliss, i. 740, &c.; England's Helicon, ed. Bullen; Gabriel Harvey's Works, ed. Grosart, i. 7, 8, 37, 75, 86, 111, 244, 266–7; Collier's Bibl. Cat. i. xii*.] 

DYER, GEORGE (1755–1841), author, was born in London on 15 March 1755. His father is said to have been a watchman at Wapping. Dyer was sent to school by some charitable dissenting ladies, who obtained for him, at the age of seven, a nomination to Christ's Hospital. He stayed there till he was nineteen, and was for a long time at the head of the school. He received much kindness and access to books from Anthony Askew [q. v.], then physician to Christ's Hospital. In 1774 he entered Emmanuel College, where he read hard and was in favour with Richard Farmer [q. v.], the master. He