knowledge of it. Dennis was fiercely attacked in the ‘Dunciad’ (1728). He replied in ‘A Letter against Mr. Pope at large,’ which appeared anonymously in the ‘Daily Journal,’ 11 May 1728. At about the same time he joined with Duckett in ‘Pope Alexander's Supremacy and Infallibility examined,’ &c. In 1729 Dennis published a more elaborate attack, ‘Remarks upon several Passages in the Preliminaries to the Dunciad.’ In an ‘Essay on the Poet Laureate,’ presumably published 19 Nov. 1729, attributed to Pope, it is stated that Dennis was aiming at the laureateship, in succession to Eusden, who, however, did not die until September 1730. The absurdity of Dennis's candidature is urged with grim humour in the ‘Grub Street Journal,’ 19 Nov. 1730.
Dennis's last years were wretched. From the Harleian MS. printed in ‘Gent. Mag.’ 1795, p. 105, it seems that the Earl of Pembroke continually befriended the critic for nine or ten years; on one occasion he sent thirty guineas by Sir Andrew Fountaine, and several times in a year separate presents of five and ten guineas each. Atterbury, about 1730, sent from France, by the hands of his son-in-law Morice, the sum of 100l. Dennis was not informed of the name of the donor, whom, however, he guessed to be Atterbury. Walpole allowed him 20l. for several years before his death. A benefit performance on behalf of the aged critic, then blind, was organised by Thomson, Mallet, Martin, and Pope at the little theatre in the Haymarket on 18 Dec. 1733, when the ‘Provoked Husband,’ was acted under the direction of Mills and Theophilus Cibber. Pope wrote a prologue, recited by Cibber, in which the author could not even now refrain from insulting his enemy. Savage returned thanks, in the name of Dennis, in some verses which when Dennis heard, he is said to have exclaimed that ‘they could be no one's but that fool Savage's.’ The foul epigram upon Dennis, attributed to Savage, was probably written by Pope himself (Grub Street Memoirs, ii. 91; Johnson, Life of Savage; Notes and Queries, 1st ser. ix. 223, 7th ser. i. 385, 473). Dennis only survived his benefit a few days, dying on 6 Jan. 1734 (Gent. Mag. iv. 42, 50). A portrait of Dennis is given in vol. ii. of Ireland's ‘Hogarth’ (1799).
The following collective editions may be mentioned: 1. ‘Miscellanies in Prose and Verse,’ 1693. 2. ‘Letters on Milton and Congreve,’ 1696. 3. ‘Works,’ 1702. 4. ‘Select Works, consisting of Plays, Poems, &c.,’ 2 vols., 1718. 5. ‘Original Letters, familiar and critical,’ 2 vols., 1721. 6. ‘Miscellaneous Tracts’ (only 1 vol. published), 1727.
[Lowndes's Bibl. Man. ed. 1834, pp. 571–2; Genest's Hist. of the Stage; Cibber's Lives of the Poets, iv. 215–38; Johnson's Lives of Pope and Addison; Disraeli's Calamities (Influence of a Bad Temper in Criticism); Quarrels (Pope, Pope and Addison, and Lintot's Account Book); Retrospective Review, i. 305–22 (by Talfourd); Courthope and Elwin's Works of Pope; Malone's edit. of Dryden, vol. i. pt. i.; New Theatrical Dictionary, 1792; a few references to Dennis are in Nichols's Literary Anecdotes.]
DENNIS or DENYS, Sir THOMAS (1480?–1561), sheriff of Devonshire, was born at Holcombe Burnell, near Exeter, about 1480. He is said to have been a ‘domestic servant’ of Henry VII, privy councillor of Henry VIII, chancellor of Anne of Cleves, custos rotulorum of Devon, seven (or nine) times sheriff of the county between 1508 and 1556, and recorder of Exeter from 1514 to 1544. He was M.P. for Devonshire in 1529 and 1533. While sheriff in 1531 he received a writ for the burning of Thomas Bennet, a friend of Bilney, who had posted placards in Exeter declaring the pope to be Antichrist. He ordered a stake to be set up in Southernhay, within the jurisdiction of the city, but the Exeter ‘chamber’ resisted this as an infringement of their privileges, and he had to burn his heretic outside their boundary in Livery-dole. There in after days he founded an almshouse for twelve aged men, which, Hoker suggests, may have been intended as an atonement for the part he took in carrying out the sentence of the law. In 1541 he received a grant of St. Nicolas's priory, Exeter (Monasticon, iii. 376). He endeavoured to pacify the Devonshire insurgents in 1549, and was active in suppressing the rising. When in 1554 Sir Peter Carew [q. v.] called on the citizens of Exeter to petition against the marriage of Mary and Philip of Spain, ‘as a first step towards a rising,’ Dennis took command of the city, and put it in a state of defence. He arrested some of the party of the Carews, but connived at the escape of Sir Peter. He is said to have been about eighty at his death, 18 Feb. 1560–1, and accordingly to have lived in the reigns of eight English sovereigns. By his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Angel Dun of London, he had a son, Sir Robert Dennis, whose eldest son, Sir Thomas, was knighted by the Earl of Leicester in the Low Countries in 1586, married Anne, daughter of William Paulet, marquis of Winchester, and died in 1602. The grandson and grandfather are sometimes confused together (Maclean, Sir Peter Carew, p. 49 n.).
[Prince's Worthies of Devon, p. 235; Hoker's and Izacke's Ancient Hist. of the City of Exeter, ed. 1765; Vowell's (Hoker's) Life of Sir P. Carew,
