1806, in the forty-ninth year of her age. She possessed a highly cultivated taste for poetry and the fine arts, and was liberal in her encouragements of talents and genius. She wrote many poems, but only a few pieces have been published. These are spirited and elegant, and show a mind filled with enthusiasm for the true and the good.
DEYSTER, ANNA,
The daughter of Louis Deyster, a Flemish painter, was born at Bruges in 1696. She excelled in landscapes, and imitated her father's works so well, that few of the best judges could distinguish the copies from the originals. She died in poverty, because, abandoning painting, she devoted her time to constructing organs and harpsichords, and was not successful. The date of her death is 1746.
DIDO, or ELISSA,
A daughter of Belus, King of Tyre, who married Sichaeus of Sicharbas, her uncle, priest of Hercules. Her brother, Pygmalion, who succeeded Belus, murdered Sichaeus, to get possession of his immense riches; and Dido, disconsolate for the loss of her husband, whom she tenderly loved, and dreading lest she should also fall a victim to her brother's avarice, set sail, with a number of Tyrians, to whom Pygmalion had become odious from his tyranny, for a new settlement According to some historians, she threw into the sea the riches of her husband, and by that artifice compelled the ships to fly with her, that had come by the order of the tyrant to obtain possession of her wealth. But it is more probable that she carried her riches with her, and by this influence prevailed on the Tyrian sailors to accompany her. During her voyage Dido stopped at Cyprus, from which she carried away fifty young women, and gave them as wives to her followers. A storm drove her fleet on the African coast, where she bought of the inhabitants as much land as could be surrounded by a bull's hide cut into thongs. Upon this land she built a citadel, called Byrsa; and the increase of population soon obliged her to enlarge her city and dominions.
Her beauty, as well as the fame of her enterprise, gained her many admirers; and her subjects wished to compel her to marry Jarbas, King of Mauritania, who threatened them with a dreadful war. Dido asked for three months before she gave a decisive answer; and during that time she erected a funeral pile, as if wishing by a solemn sacrifice to appease the manes of Sichaeus, to whom she had vowed eternal fidelity. When all was prepared, she stabbed herself on the pile in presence of her people; and by this uncommon action obtained the name of Dido, or "the valiant woman," instead of Elissa. Virgil and others represent her as visited by Æneas, after whose departure she destroyed herself from disappointed love; but this is a poetical fiction, as Æneas and Dido did not live in the same age. After her death. Dido was honoured as a deity by her subjects. She flourished about B.C. 980.
DIGBY, LETTICE,
Was descended from the ancient family of the Fitzgeralds of Kildare. She was created baroness of Offale for life, and on her marriage with Lord Digby, of Coleshill in the county of Longford,
