Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/507

Rh church, he studied Greek and Latin at Ghent, and philosophy at Louvain; but his father having been outlawed for his religion, and deprived of his estate, retired to England, where the son followed him in 1567. He found an admirable teacher of Hebrew in Chevalier, the celebrated Orientalist, with whom he resided for some time at Cambridge. In 1572 he became professor of Oriental languages at Oxford. Upon the pacification of Ghent (1576) he returned with his father to their own country, and was appointed professor of Oriental languages at Leyden in the following year. In 1585 he removed to Friesland, and was admitted professor of Hebrew in the university of Franeker, an office which he discharged with great honour till his death, which happened in February 1616. He acquired so extended a reputation as a professor that his class was frequented by students from all the Protestant countries of Europe. His works prove him to have been well skilled in Hebrew and in Jewish antiquities; and in 1600 the States-general employed him, at a salary of 400 florins a year, to write notes on the most difficult passages in the Old Testament; but, as he was frequently interrupted in prosecuting this undertaking, it was not published until after his death. As the friend of Arminius, he was charged by the orthodox and dominant party with unfairness in the execution of this task, and the last sixteen years of his life were, therefore, somewhat embittered by controversy. He carried on an extensive correspondence with the learned in different countries: for, beside letters in Hebrew, Greek, and other languages, there were found amongst his papers upwards of 2000 written in Latin. He had a son, John, who died in England at the age of twenty-one, and was accounted a prodigy of learning. He had mastered Hebrew at the age of nine, and Scaliger said that he was a better Hebrew scholar than his father. He wrote a large number of letters in Hebrew, besides notes on the Proverbs of Solomon and other works.

Paquot states the number of the printed works and treatises of the elder Drusius at forty-eight, and of the unprinted at upwards of twenty. Of the former more than two-thirds were inserted in the collection entitled Critici Sacri, sive Annotata doctissimorum Virorum in Vetus ct Novum Testamentum (Amsterdam, 1698, in 9 vols. folio, or London, 1660, in 10 vols. folio.) Amongst the works of Drusius not to be found in this collection may be mentioned—1. Alphabetum Hebraicum vetus, (1584. 4to); 2. Tabulæ in Grammaticam Chaldaicam ad usum Juventutis, (1602, 8vo); 3. An edition of Sulpicius Severus (Franeker, 1807, 12mo); 4. Opuscula quæ ad Grammaticam spectant omnia, (1609, 4to); 5. Lacrymæ in obitum J. Scaligeri, (1609, 4to); and 6. Grammatica Linguæ Sanctæ nova (1612. 4to.)}}

 DRUSUS,, a patrician of the age of the Gracchi, and a colleague of Caius Gracchus in the tribuneship, He was a creature of the senatorial party, and was employed by them to outbid the measures of the popular tribune. Gracchus had proposed to found three colonies outside Italy; Drusus provided twelve in Italy. Gracchus had proposed to distribute allotments to the poorer citizens subject to a state rent-charge; Drusus promised them free of all charge. Gracchus had proposed to give the Latins the citizenship; Drusus added immunity from corporal punishment, even in the field. The bait thus offered was swallowed; the people forsook their champion, who fell an easy victim to the hired bravos of Opimius. Drusus was rewarded for his services by the consulship, which he held, He received Macedonia for his province, where he distinguished himself in a campaign against the Scordisci, whom he drove across the Danube into Dacia, being the first Roman general who reached that river. It is probable that he is the Drusus mentioned by Plutarch as having died in the year of his censorship,  DRUSUS,, son of the preceding, and, like his father, during the first part of his career a thorough supporter of the optimates. From his earliest youth he devoted himself to politics, was assiduous as a pleader in the law-courts, and lavished in gifts and shows the large fortune which he had inherited. By such popular acts he rose to be tribune of the people, which was then raging for the transfer of the judicial functions from the equites to the senate, he proposed as a compromise a measure which restored to the senate their office of judges, while the numbers were doubled by the admission of 300 equites. But the senate was lukewarm, and the knights whose occupation was threatened offered the most violent opposition. In order, therefore, to catch the popular votes, he coupled with this measure others for the establishment of colonies in Italy and Sicily, and the distribution of corn at a reduced rate. By help of these riders the bill was carried, but not till its most factious opponent, the consul Philippus, had been arrested by Drusus and carried off to prison. To strengthen his hands Drusus now sought a closer alliance with the Italians, promising them the long coveted boon of the Roman franchise. The senate, who had before suspected his aims, broke out into open opposition. His laws were abrogated as informal, and each party armed its adherents for the civil struggle which was now inevitable. It was only prevented, or rather postponed, by the assassination of Drusus. One evening as he was returning to his house he was struck by a dagger, and fell at the foot of his father's bust, exclaiming with his dying breath, "When will the republic find again a citizen like me?" His character is hard to decipher, and is one of the moot problems of Roman history. To some he has appeared an unscrupulous adventurer, who deserted his own order to gratify his selfish ambition; others have pronounced him the ablest and wisest of the Roman demagogues. That he was proud and ambitious there can be no question. When a quæstor in Asia he refuses to wear the robes of office, "ne quid ipso esset insignius." When summoned before the senate he bids them come to him—"they will find me in the Curia Hostilia"—and they came. No less certain is it that the reforms he advocated were, on the whole, salutary and needful. The corruption of the equites was flagrant; the claims of the Italians to the franchise were just and pressing. Drusus was the Mirabeau of the social revolution of Rome, and had his measures been carried Rome might have been spared the most terrible of her civil wars.  DRYADES, or, in Greek Mythology, were nymphs of trees and woods, each particular tree or wood being the habitation of its own special Dryad, just as each river was the abode of its own local god. From being so closely identified with trees, the Dryades came to be thought of as having been, like the trees, produced from the earth, as Hesiod says, Theog., 129.  DRYANDER, (1748-1810), a Swedish naturalist of eminence, and a pupil of Linnæus, was born in 1748. By his uncle, Dr Lars Montin, to whom his education was intrusted, he was sent to the university of Gottenburg, whence he removed to Lund. After taking his degree there in 1776, he studied at Upsala, and then became for a time tutor to a young Swedish nobleman. He next visited England, and, on the death of his friend Dr Solander in 1782, he succeeded him as librarian to Sir Joseph Banks. He was librarian to the Royal Society and also to the Linnean Society. Of the latter, in 1788, he was one of the first founders, and, when it was incorporated by royal charter in 1802, he was chiefly concerned in the drawing up of its laws and regulations. He was vice-president of the society till the time of his death, which took place in October 1810.

Besides papers in the Transactions of the Linnean and other societies, Dryander published Dissertatio gradualis Fungos Regno Vegetabili vindicans, Lond. 1776, and Catalogus Bibliothecæ Historico-Naturalis Josephi Banks, Bart., Lond. 1796-1800, 5 vols. He also edited the first and part of the second edition of Aiton's Hortus Kewensis, and Roxburgh's Plants of the Coast of Coromandel. 