Page:EB1911 - Volume 08.djvu/659

 developed in one of the lateral pockets. The inflorescence is a very simple one, consisting of one or two male flowers each comprising a single stamen, and a female flower comprising a flask-shaped pistil. The order Lemnaceae to which they belong is regarded as representing a very reduced type nearly allied to the Aroids. It is represented in Britain by four species of Lemna, and a still smaller and simpler plant, Wolffia, in which the fronds are only one-twentieth of an inch long and have no roots.

 DUCKWORTH, SIR JOHN THOMAS (1748–1817), British admiral, was born at Leatherhead, in Surrey, on the 28th of February 1748. He entered the navy in 1759, and obtained his commission as lieutenant in June 1770, when he was appointed to the “Princess Royal,” the flagship of Admiral Byron, in which he sailed to the West Indies. While serving on board this vessel he took part in the engagement with the French fleet under Count D’Estaing. In July 1779 he became commander, and was appointed to the “Rover” sloop; in June of the following year he attained the rank of post-captain. Soon afterwards he returned to England in charge of a convoy. The outbreak of the war with France gave him his first opportunity of obtaining marked distinction. Appointed first to the “Orion” and then to the “Queen” in the Channel Fleet, under the command of Lord Howe, he took part in the three days’ naval engagement with the Brest fleet, which terminated in a glorious victory on the 1st of June 1794. For his conduct on this occasion he received a gold medal and the thanks of parliament. He next proceeded to the West Indies, where he was stationed for some time at St Domingo. In 1798 he commanded the “Leviathan” in the Mediterranean, and had charge of the naval detachment which, in conjunction with a military force, captured Minorca. Early in 1799 he was raised to the rank of rear-admiral, and sent to the West Indies to succeed Lord Hugh Seymour. During the voyage out he captured a valuable Spanish convoy of eleven merchantmen. In March 1801 he was the naval commander of the combined force which reduced the islands of St Bartholomew and St Martin, a service for which he was rewarded with the order of the Bath and a pension of £1000 a year. Promoted to be vice-admiral of the blue, he was appointed in 1804 to the Jamaica station. Two years later, while cruising off Cadiz with Lord Collingwood, he was detached with his squadron to pursue a French fleet that had been sent to the relief of St Domingo. He came up with the enemy on the 6th February 1806, and, after two hours’ fighting, inflicted a signal defeat upon them, capturing three of their five vessels and stranding the other two. For this, the most distinguished service of his life, he received the thanks of the Jamaica assembly, with a sword of the value of a thousand guineas, the thanks of the English parliament, and the freedom of the city of London. In 1807 he was again sent to the Mediterranean to watch the movements of the Turks. In command of the “Royal George” he forced the passage of the Dardanelles, but sustained considerable loss in effecting his return, the Turks having strengthened their position while he was being kept in play by their diplomatists and Napoleon’s ambassador General Sebastiani. He held the command of the Newfoundland fleet for four years from 1810, and at the close of that period he was made a baronet. In 1815 he was appointed to the chief command at Plymouth, which he held until his death on the 14th of April 1817. Sir John Duckworth sat in parliament for some time as member for New Romney.

 DUCLAUX, AGNES MARY F. (1856–&emsp;&emsp;), English poet and critic, who first became known in England under her maiden name of Mary F. Robinson, was born at Leamington on the 27th of February 1856. She was educated at University College, London, devoting herself chiefly to the study of Greek literature. Her first volume of poetry, A Handful of Honeysuckle, was published in 1879. Her next work was a translation from Euripides, The Crowned Hippolytus (1881). Monographs on Emily Brontë (1883) and on Marguerite of Angoulême (1886) followed; and The New Arcadia and other Poems (1884) and An Italian Garden (1886) contain some of her best verses. Her poems attracted the attention of the orientalist, (q.v.), then in Peshawur, and he made an admirable translation of them in French. The acquaintance led to their marriage in 1888, and from that time a large part of her work was done in French. Madame Darmesteter translated her husband’s Études anglaises into English (1896). Her most considerable prose work is the Life of Ernest Renan (1897). She also wrote the End of the Middle Ages (1888); the volume on Froissart (1894) in the Grands écrivains français; essays on the Brontës, the Brownings and others, entitled Grands écrivains d’Outre-Manche (1901). After Darmesteter’s death, she married in 1901 Émile Duclaux, the associate of Pasteur, and director of the Pasteur institute. He died in 1904. She published Retrospect and other Poems in 1893, and in 1904 appeared The Return to Nature, Songs and Symbols. The qualities of Mary Robinson’s work, its conciseness and purity of expression, were only gradually recognized. Her Collected Poems, Lyrical and Narrative were published in 1902.

 DUCLOS, CHARLES PINOT (1704–1772), French author, was born at Dinan, in Brittany, in 1704. At an early age he was sent to study at Paris. After some time spent in dissipation he began to cultivate the society of the wits of the time, and became a member of the club or association of young men who published their joint efforts in light literature under the titles of Recueil de ces messieurs, Étrennes de la St-Jean, Œufs de Pâques, &c. His romance of Acajou and Zirphile, composed to suit a series of plates which had been engraved for another work, was one of the fruits of this association, and was produced in consequence of a sort of wager amongst its members. Duclos had previously written two other romances, which were more favourably received—The Baroness de Luz (1741), and the Confessions of the Count de*** (1747). His first serious publication was the History of Louis XI., which is dry and epigrammatical in style, but displays considerable powers of research and impartiality. The reputation of Duclos as an author was confirmed by the publication of his Considérations sur les mœurs de ce siècle (1751), a work justly praised by Laharpe, as containing a great deal of sound and ingenious reflection. It was translated into English and German. The Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire du dix-huitième siècle, intended by the author as a sort of sequel to the preceding work, are much inferior in style and matter, and are, in reality, little better than a kind of romance. In consequence of his History of Louis XI., he was appointed historiographer of France, when that place became vacant on Voltaire’s retirement to Prussia. His ''Secret Memoirs of the Reigns of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. (for which he was able to utilize the Mémoires'' of Saint Simon, suppressed in 1755), were not published until after the Revolution.

Duclos became a member of the Academy of Inscriptions in 1739, and of the French Academy in 1747, being appointed perpetual secretary in 1747. Both academies were indebted to him not only for many valuable contributions, but also for several useful regulations and improvements. As a member of the