Page:Imperialdictiona02eadi Brandeis.pdf/84

DEN after his marriage, he was soon provided with an additional stimulus to exertion, by finding a numerous family growing up around him. Liberal in his politics at a time when even moderate liberalism was in a general way a bar to professional advancement, he found himself eagerly sought for to advocate the claims of free thought and free expression in the many prosecutions of the press, fashionable in those days of arbitrary government. Without rivalling the practice of the Broughams and Scarletts, he acquired an eminent position at the bar; his eloquence, generally dignified, could be impassioned, and he owed to it and the command which it gave him over juries, a success which his purely legal acquirements might never have procured him. In 1818 he entered the house of commons as member for Wareham, a seat which he exchanged at the general election of 1820, for the representation of the more important constituency of Nottingham. By the side of Brougham and Lambton he advocated the cause of reform in general, of legal and criminal reform in particular, and vigorously aided their opposition, in those troubled years, to the repressive measures proposed under the Sidmouth-Castlereagh regime. In 1820 he was appointed solicitor-general to Queen Caroline, his friend Brougham being her attorney-general; and his fearless eloquence procured him the lasting hostility of George IV. and Lord Eldon. It was not until Lord Lyndhurst's chancellorship that, in 1828, consent was wrung from the offended monarch to allow Mr. Denman the ordinary patent of precedence, to which he had been long before entitled. In 1822, however, the city of London, to mark its sense of his merit, had appointed him common Serjeant. Absent from the house of commons from 1826 to 1830, he was sent to it in the latter year by his old constituents of Nottingham; and on the formation of Lord Grey's ministry he was made solicitor-general and knighted. In November, 1832, on the death of Lord Tenterden, he was appointed lord-chief-justice of the king's bench, his elevation to the peerage following in 1834; and he retained this eminent judicial position until 1850, when ill health induced him to resign it. As a judge, he was not distinguished by profound legal learning or acumen; but he displayed in his new situation the magnanimous qualities which had marked his early career. In the celebrated case of Stockdale v. Hansard in 1834, he vindicated the rights of the subject against the alleged privileges of the house of commons, and that proud assembly, confronted by such a judge, withdrew from the contest. In 1844 he contributed to the reversal of the judgment on O'Connell. As a peer, he was distinguished by his steady opposition to the slave-trade, and one of the last employments of his pen was in the cause which he had advocated throughout life—one, moreover, of which his second son. Captain Denman, was a practical asserter as a naval officer on the African coast. Unblemished in character, private as well as public; consistent in his career; dignified in presence; commanding in speech; fearless in all emergencies, and acting on his convictions at all risks—Lord Denman, without any profound legal accomplishments, grew to be considered the very ideal of an English judge. As such, he is still held in respectful remembrance by his contemporaries and coevals. He died at Stoke Albany, Northamptonshire, on the 22nd of September, 1854.—F. E.  DENNER,, a German painter, native of Hamburg, born in 1685; died in 1747. His patience and diligence at work were much greater than his knowledge or taste. Made a cripple by a fall in early youth, he turned his forced sedentary habits to account by the study of art, in which he was assisted by Amama, an indifferent artist from Dantzic. Recommended by the duke of Holstein-Gottorf to Frederick IV., king of Denmark, and by the latter to the English court, and to the emperor of Germany, he was soon in receipt of sums which even now-a-days would be considered enormous. By far the best examples of his productions—we dread to call them art—are the head of an old woman and its companion, the head of an old man; the first of which was purchased for the Emperor Charles VI., at the price of four thousand seven hundred imperial florins. Both are now in the Belvedere gallery of Vienna, where they attract more attention than all the Rubens and Raphaels of that collection! Denner was possessed of a secret in the way of preparing and using lake, which died with him. His finish of the heads was extreme, his colour and expression nature-like to an extraordinary degree. But his drawing was often incorrect or weak; his draperies badly cast; and when attempting subjects with figures, his grouping was generally tasteless and ignoble.—R. M.  DENNER,, the inventor of the clarionet, was born at Leipzig, 13th August, 1655, and died at Nürnberg, 20th June, 1707. In 1663 his family removed to Munich, and shortly afterwards to Nürnberg, where his father finally established himself as a manufacturer of horns. Young Denner had a musical education, which developed his naturally good organization; and he was not content to adhere to the uniform routine of his father's factory, but diversified this by making flutes. His delicate sense of intonation, and his nice feeling for quality of tone, enabled him to effect such improvements in the instrument, that his flutes were in demand throughout Germany above those of any other maker. He revived and greatly improved two species of bassoon—the stock-fagott and the rakett-fagott—the former being a straight tube, and the latter, one turned in rings like the horn; but these, on account of the difficulty of playing on them, have become obsolete. His great service to music was the invention of the clarionet, which, according to some authorities, he first made in 1700, according to others, ten years earlier. His instrument is a modification of the ancient shawm; it differs from other wood wind-instruments by sounding any note and its twelfth, with the same fingering. It has been immensely improved since the time of Denner, but this acoustical peculiarity, as well as that of its three distinct registers of tone, has always characterized it; and the original principles of its construction have not been changed. It was not for sixty years after its invention that the clarionet was adopted in the orchestra, to which it has now become indispensable. It is now the chief instrument in a military band; the great extent of its compass, and the vocal sweetness of its tone, being both duly prized by composers. Denner was succeeded in his manufactory by his two sons, who for more than fifty years applied themselves with assiduity and ingenuity to the improvement of wind instruments.—G. A. M.  DENNIE,, an eminent American writer, and one of the first in the United States to make a profession of literature, was born at Boston, August 10, 1768, and graduated at Harvard college in 1790. He studied law, and ostensibly began the practice of it at Walpole, New Hampshire, but soon abandoned the fruitless attempt and became, in 1796 the editor of the Farmers' Museum. He wrote for it "The Farrago," and "The Lay Preacher," two series of essays which justly gained for him the appellation of "the American Addison." The style of "The Lay Preacher" which is a succession of short moral and poetic disquisitions based upon texts of scripture, is evidently formed upon that of the great English essayist, and of Goldsmith; and its humour and pathos, together with the exquisite rhythm of its carefully modulated sentences, show that Washington Irving had at least one American predecessor in the field which he has since so successfully cultivated. Dennie's success was not equal to his genius; there was not much encouragement for literature then in America, and his easy temper and convivial habits brought temptations in his way, to which he too often yielded. Yet the circulation of the Farmers' Museum, amounting to two thousand copies, an unprecedented number for that period, and for a periodical published in an obscure country town, shows that his merits were not entirely overlooked. He was encouraged to seek a wider field of action, and emigrated to Philadelphia where, in 1800, he began the publication of the Portfolio at first a weekly miscellany in quarto, then a monthly in octavo, which he continued to edit till his death, January 7, 1812. Under his management, the Portfolio became the principal literary periodical of the country, and numbered among its contributors John Quincy Adams, Gouv. Morris, Royal Tyler, Horace Binney, Judge Hopkinson, Charles Brockden Brown, Nicholas Biddle, and many others. The sermons of the "Lay Preacher" were collected and published in a separate volume, which passed through two editions, 1796 and 1817. Dennie died, January 7, 1812.—F. B.  DENNIE,, a distinguished British officer, was the son of a barrister, and entered the army in 1800. He obtained by purchase the rank of lieutenant-colonel in 1832. He served in India under Lord Lake in 1805; was present at the capture of the Isle of France in 1810, and distinguished himself so highly during the Burmese war in 1826 that the companionship of the bath was conferred upon him. He held 