Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/866

The first consul made him secretary to the ministry at war; and, the day after the battle of Marengo, nominated him one of the commissioners for the execution of the convention concluded between General Berthier and General Melas. In 1805 he was made a counsellor of state and intendant-general of the emperor's military household. In the following year he received the appointment of intendant-general of the Brunswick territory, and subsequently of commissioner for the execution of the treaties of Tilsit and Vienna, as well as minister plenipotentiary at Berlin. In 1806 he was elected a member of the Institute, and in 1808 an honorary member of the Berlin Academy. In 1811 he was appointed minister secretary of state; and shortly afterwards he received the portfolio of the war department. He accompanied Napoleon in his Russian campaign. When the retreat from Moscow had commenced, he had to assume the functions of intendant-general of the army; and his iron constitution, and capacity for labour, enabled him to fulfil, with apparent ease, duties which might have killed several men of ordinary strength. C'est un lion pour le travail, said Napoleon himself. After the restoration of the Bourbons he was made intendant-general to the king, an appointment which he received in December 1814. But on the return of Napoleon from Elba he joined the standard of his old master, subscribed a considerable sum for the purpose of arming the Parisian fédérés, and in his capacity of counsellor of state attached his signature to the celebrated declaration of the 25th March. His conduct towards the emperor displays a frank and simple independence of character combined with a genuine devotion to Napoleon's cause. “They don't speak well of my arc de triomphe,” said Napoleon one day. “There are two persons whom I have heard praise it,” replied Daru,—“your majesty and his architect.” The second restoration found him compromised by his connection with the Government of the Hundred Days; and he retired for a time into private life, and devoted himself to literary pursuits. But in 1819 he was summoned by royal ordinance to the Chamber of Peers, where his rectitude of judgment and administrative knowledge signalized him as one of the most powerful defenders of the national liberties. In 1821 he published his Histoire de Venise, which is by far the most important of his works, and is regarded as the most complete and impartial history of that singular republic equally remarkable for its strength and duration. His subsequent work, the Histoire de Bretagne (3 vols. 1826), displays great labour and accuracy, but is devoid of interest, except to historical antiquaries. His other productions consist of a poetical translation of Horace, which, in spite of the malicious epigram of Le Brun, Je ne lis point Daru, j'aime trop mon Horace, has enjoyed in France a well-merited reputation; a variety of occasional poems, discourses, and éloges pronounced in the Academy; and speeches delivered in the Chamber of Peers. He died at his residence near Meulan, September 5, 1829, aged sixty-two. His remains were deposited in the Cimitière Montmartre, and five discourses were pronounced over his tomb by MM. Mirbel, Cuvier, Silvestre de Sacy, Ternaux, and Leroy.

See the “Notice” by M. Viennet prefixed to the fourth edition of the Histoire de Venise, 9 vols. 1853, and three articles by Sainte-Beuve in Causeries du Lundi, vol. ix.

DARWIN, Erasmus (1731-1802), man of science and poet, was born at Elton, in Nottinghamshire, on the 12th December 1731. Having studied at St John s College, Cambridge, and at Edinburgh, and taken the degree of M.D. at the latter university, he settled as a physician at Lichfield, and gained a large practice. While here he is said to have done much, both by his own example and by more direct effort, to diminish drunkenness among the lower classes. In 1781 lie removed to Derby, where he remained till his death, which took place on the 18th April 1802. The fame of Erasmus Darwin as a poet rests upon his Botanic Garden, though he also wrote The Temple of Nature, or the Origin of Society, a Poem, with Philo sophical Notes (1803), and The Shrine of Nature (posthumously published). The Botanic Garden (the second part of which The Loves of the Plants was published anonymously in 1789, and the whole of which appeared in 1791) is a long poem in the decasyllabic rhymed couplet. Its merit lies in the genuine scientific enthusiasm and interest in nature which pervade it; and of any other poetic quality except a certain, sometimes feli citous but oftener ill-placed, elaborated pomp of words it may without injustice be said to be almost destitute. It was for the most part written laboriously, and polished with unsparing care, line by line, often as be rode from one patient to another, and it occupied the leisure hours of many years. The diction is artificial to a degree which renders it in emotional passages stilted and even absurd, and which makes Canning s clever caricature The Loves of the Triangles often remarkably like the poem, it satirizes ; in some passages, however, it is not without a stately appropriateness. Gnomes, sylphs, and nereids are introduced on almost every page, and personification is carried to an extraordinary excess. Thus he describes the Loves of the Plants according to the Linnsean system by means of a most ingenious but misplaced and amusing personification of each plant, and often even of the parts of the plant. It is significant that botanical notes are added to the poem, and that its eulogies of scientific men are frequent. Darwin s mind was in fact rather that of a man of science than that of a poet. His most important scientific work is his Zoonomia (1794-6), which contains a system of pathology, and a treatise on generation, in which Darwin, in the words of his famous grandson, " anticipated the views and erroneous grounds of opinions of Lamarck." The essence of Darwin s views is contained in the follow ing passage, which he follows up with the conclusion " that one and the same kind of living filaments is and has been the cause of all organic life :"—

""Would it be too bold to imagine that, in the great length of time since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind, would it be too bold to imagine that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which the great First Cause endued, with animality, with the power of acquiring new parts, attended with new propensities, directed by irritations, sensations, volitions, and associations, and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down these improvements by generation to its posterity, world without end !"

Observations on the Zoonomia were published by Thomas Brown, the psychologist (Edinburgh, 1798). In 1799 Darwin published his Phytologia, or the Philosophy of Agriculture and Gardening (1799), in which he states his opinion that plants have sensation and voli tion. A paper on Female Education in Boarding Schools (1797) completes the list of his works. A slight account of Darwin s life was published by Anna Seward in 1804.

DASHKOFF, Catherina Romanofna Woronzoff, Princess (1744-1810),

was the third daughter of Count Roman Woronzoff, a member of the Russian senate, distinguished for his intellectual gifts. She received an exceptionally good education, having displayed from a very early age the masculine ability and masculine tastes which made her whole career so singular. She was well versed in mathematics which she studied at the university of Moscow and in general literature her favourite authors were Bayle, Montesquieu, Boileau, Voltaire, and Helvetitis. While still a girl she was connected with the Russian court, and became one of the leaders of the party that attached itself to the Grand Duchess (afterwards Empress) Catherine. Before she was sixteen she married Prince Dashkoff, a

prominent Russian nobleman, and went to reside with him