than for any great reputation he had gained by his own writings.” This is an opinion that could not be professed now, when Dekker’s work is read. In the contention with Ben Jonson, one of the most celebrated quarrels of authors, the origin of which is matter of dispute, Dekker seems to have had very much the best of it. We can imagine that Jonson’s attack was stinging at the time, because it seems to be full of sarcastic personalities, but it is dull enough now when nobody knows what Dekker was like, nor what was the character of his mother. There is nothing in the Poetaster that has any point as applied to Dekker’s powers as a dramatist, while, on the contrary, Satiromastix, or the Untrussing of the Humorous Poet is full of pungent ridicule of Jonson’s style, and of retorts and insults conceived in the happiest spirit of good-natured mockery. Dekker has been accused of poverty of invention in adopting the character of the Poetaster, but it is of the very pith of the jest that Dekker should have set on Jonson’s own foul-mouthed Captain Tucca to abuse Horace himself.
Works.—The Pleasant Comedie of Old Fortunatus (1600); The Shomakers Holiday. Or The gentle Craft. With the humorous life of Simon Eyre, shoomaker, and Lord Maior of London (1600); Satiromastix. Or The untrussing of the Humorous Poet (1602); The Pleasant Comodie of Patient Grissill (1603), with Chettle and Haughton; The Honest Whore. With The Humours of the Patient Man, and the Longing Wife (1604); North-Ward Hoe (1607), with John Webster; West-Ward Hoe (1607), with John Webster; The Whore of Babylon (1607); The Famous History of Sir Thomas Wyat. With the Coronation of Queen Mary, and the coming in of King Philip (1607), with John Webster; The Roaring Girle. Or Moll Cut-Purse (1611), with Thomas Middleton; The Virgin Martir (1622), with Massinger; If It Be Not Good, the Divel is in it (1612); The Second Part of the Honest Whore. With the Humors of the Patient Man, the Impatient Wife; the Honest Whore, perswaded by strong Arguments to turne Curtizan againe; her brave refuting those Arguments. And lastly, the Comicall Passages of an Italian Bridewell, where the Scaene ends (1630); A Tragi-Comedy: Called, Match mee in London (1631); The Wonder of a Kingdome (1636); The Witch of Edmonton. A known true Story. Composed into a Tragi-Comedy (1658), with William Rowley and John Ford. The Sun’s Darling (1656) was possibly written by Ford and Dekker, or may be perhaps more correctly regarded as a recast by Ford of a masque by Dekker, perhaps his lost play of Phaëton. The pageants for the Lord Mayor’s shows of 1612 and 1629 were written by Dekker, and both are preserved. His tracts are invaluable for the light which they throw on the London of his time, especially in their descriptions of the circumstances of the theatre. Their titles, many of which are necessarily abbreviated, are: Canaans Calamitie, Jerusalems Miserie, and Englands Mirror (1598), in verse; The Wonderfull Yeare 1603. Wherein is shewed the picture of London lying sicke of the Plague (1603); The Batchelars Banquet (1603); a brilliant adaptation of Les Quinze Joyes de mariage; the Seven Deadly Sinnes of London (1606); Newes from Hell, Brought by the Divells Carrier (1606), reprinted in the next year with some interesting additions as A Knights Conjuring; Jests to make you Merie (1607), with George Wilkins; The Belman of London: Bringing to Light the most notorious villanies that are now practised in the Kingdome (1608); followed by a second part and enlarged editions under other titles; The Dead Tearme (1608); The Ravens Almanacke, foretelling of a Plague, Famine and Civill Warre (1609), ridiculing the almanac makers; The Guls Horne-booke (1609), the most famous of all his tracts, providing a code of manners for the Elizabethan gallant, in the aisle of St Paul’s, at the ordinary, at the playhouse, and other resorts; Worke for Armorours, or the Peace is Broken (1609); Foure Birds of Noahs Ark (1609); A Strange Horse-Race (1613); Dekker his Dreame ... (1620), in verse and prose, illustrated with a woodcut of the dreamer; and A Rod for Run-awayes (1625). This long list does not exhaust Dekker’s work, much of which is lost.
Authorities.—An edition of the collected dramatic works of Dekker by R. H. Shepherd appeared in 1873; his prose tracts and poems were included in Dr A. B. Grosart’s Huth Library (1884–1886): both these contain memoirs of him, but by far the most complete account of his life and writings is to be found in the article by A. H. Bullen in the Dictionary of National Biography. See also the elaborate discussion of his plays in Mr Fleay’s Biographical Chronicle (1891), i. 115, &c., and, for his quarrel with Ben Jonson, Prof. J. H. Penniman’s War of the Theatres (Boston, 1897) and Mr R. A. Small’s Stage Quarrel between Ben Jonson and the so-called Poetasters (Breslau, 1899). A selection from his plays was edited for the Mermaid Series (1887; new series, 1904) by Ernest Rhys. An essay on Dekker by A. C. Swinburne appeared in The Nineteenth Century for January 1887. (W. M.; R. B. McK.)
DE LA BECHE, SIR HENRY THOMAS (1796–1855), English
geologist, was born in the year 1796. His father, an officer in the
army, possessed landed property in Jamaica, but died while his
son was still young. The boy accordingly spent his youth with
his mother at Lyme Regis among the interesting and picturesque
coast cliffs of the south-west of England, where he imbibed a love
for geological pursuits and cultivated a marked artistic faculty.
When fourteen years of age, being destined, like his friend
Murchison, for the military profession, he entered the college at
Great Marlow, where he distinguished himself by the rapidity and
skill with which he executed sketches showing the salient features
of a district. The peace of 1815, however, changed his career and
he devoted himself with ever-increasing assiduity to the pursuit
of geology. When only twenty-one years of age he joined the
Geological Society of London, continuing throughout life to be
one of its most active, useful and honoured members. He was
president in 1848–1849. Possessing a fortune sufficient for the
gratification of his tastes, he visited many localities of geological
interest, not only in Britain, but also on the continent, in France
and Switzerland. His journeys seldom failed to bear fruit in
suggestive papers accompanied by sketches. Early attachment
to the south-west of England led him back to that region, where,
with enlarged experience, he began the detailed investigation of
the rocks of Cornwall and Devon. Thrown much into contact with
the mining community of that part of the country, he conceived
the idea that the nation ought to compile a geological map of the
United Kingdom, and collect and preserve specimens to illustrate,
and aid in further developing, its mineral industries. He showed
his skilful management of affairs by inducing the government of
the day to recognize his work and give him an appointment in
connexion with the Ordnance Survey. This formed the starting
point of the present Geological Survey of Great Britain, which
was officially recognized in 1835, when De la Beche was appointed
director. Year by year increasing stores of valuable specimens
were transmitted to London; and the building at Craig’s Court,
where the young Museum of Economic Geology was placed,
became too small. But De la Beche, having seen how fruitful his
first idea had become, appealed to the authorities not merely to
provide a larger structure, but to widen the whole scope of the
scientific establishment of which he was the head, so as to impart
to it the character of a great educational institution where
practical as well as theoretical instruction should be given in
every branch of science necessary for the conduct of mining work.
In this endeavour he was again successful. Parliament sanctioned
the erection of a museum in Jermyn Street, London, and the
organization of a staff of professors with laboratories and other
appliances. The establishment, in which were combined the
offices of the Geological Survey, the Museum of Practical Geology,
The Royal School of Mines and the Mining Record Office, was
opened in 1851. Many foreign countries have since formed
geological surveys avowedly based upon the organization and
experience of that of the United Kingdom. The British colonies,
also, have in many instances established similar surveys for the
development of their mineral resources, and have had recourse
to the parent survey for advice and for officers to conduct the
operations.
De la Beche published numerous memoirs on English geology in the Transactions of the Geological Society of London, as well as in the Memoirs of the Geological Survey, notably the Report on the Geology of Cornwall, Devon and West Somerset (1839). He likewise wrote A Geological Manual (1831; 3rd ed., 1833); and a work of singular breadth and clearness—Researches in Theoretical Geology (1834)—in which he enunciated a philosophical treatment of geological questions much in advance of his time. An early volume, How to Observe Geology (1835 and 1836), was rewritten and enlarged by him late in life, and published under the title of The Geological Observer (1851; 2nd ed., 1853). It was marked by wide practical experience, multifarious knowledge, philosophical insight and a genius for artistic delineation of geological phenomena. He was elected F.R.S. in 1819. He received the honour of knighthood in 1848, and near the close of his life was awarded the Wollaston medal—the highest honour in the gift of the Geological Society of London. After a life of constant activity he began to suffer from partial paralysis, but, though becoming gradually worse, continued able to transact
