DIX, JOHN, alias John Ross (1800?–1865?), the biographer of Chatterton, was born in Bristol, and for some years practised as a surgeon in that city. He early showed talent in writing prose and verse, and published in 1837 a ‘Life of Chatterton,’ 8vo, which gave rise to great and bitter controversy. Prefixed to the volume was a so-called portrait of the ‘marvellous boy,’ engraved from a portrait found in the shop of a Bristol broker. On the back of the original engraving was found written the word ‘Chatterton.’ It was, says one of the opponents of Dix, ‘really taken from the hydrocephalous son of a poor Bristol printer named Morris’ (Notes and Queries, 4th ser. ix. 294). Why the printer's boy should have his portrait engraved is not stated. Mr. Skeat, in the memoir of Chatterton prefixed to his edition of the poet's works, speaks highly of the appendix to Dix's ‘Life’ and its various contents. An account of the inquest held on the body of Chatterton, discovered by Dix, but which his assailants declare to be absolutely fictitious, appeared in ‘Notes and Queries’ (1853, p. 138). Leigh Hunt characterised Dix's biography as ‘heart-touching,’ adding that in addition to what was before known the author had gathered up all the fragements. Still, it is a fact that the disputed portrait was omitted from the second edition of Dix's biography, 1851. The report of the inquest was subjected to the criticism of Professor Masson and Dr. Maitland.
Dix went about 1846 to America, where he is supposed to have died, at a time not precisely ascertained. He published ‘Local Loiterings and Visits in Boston, by a Looker-on,’ 1846. Other works attributed to him are: ‘Lays of Home;’ ‘Local Legends of Bristol;’ ‘The Progress of Intemperance,’ 1839, obl. folio; ‘The Church Wreck,’ a poem on St. Mary's, Cardiff, 1842; ‘The Poor Orphan;’ ‘Jack Ariel, or Life on Board an Indiaman,’ 2nd edit. 1852, 3rd edit. 1859. In 1850 he sent forth ‘Pen-and-Ink Sketches of Eminent English Literary Personages, by a Cosmopolitan;’ in 1852 ‘Handbook to Newport and Rhode Island,’ as well as ‘Lions Living and Dead;’ and in 1853 ‘Passages from the Diary of a Wasted Life’ (an account of Gough, the temperance orator). The list of his known publications closes with ‘Pen Pictures of Distinguished American Divines,’ Boston, 1854. He is treated very severely as a literary forger by Mr. Moy Thomas in the ‘Athenæum’ (5 Dec. 1857 and 23 Jan. 1858), and by W. Thornbury and Mr. Buxton Forman in ‘Notes and Queries.’
[Notes and Queries, 4th ser. ix. 294, 365, x. 55.]
DIXEY, JOHN (d. 1820), sculptor and modeller, was born in Dublin, but came when young to London and studied at the Royal Academy. Here, from the industry and talent he showed, he was one of those selected from the students to be sent to finish their education in Italy. He is stated to have exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1788, but his name cannot be traced, unless he is identical with John Dixon of Red Lion Street, Clerkenwell, who exhibited a design for a ceiling. In 1789, when on the point of leaving for Italy, he was offered advantages in America, which were sufficient to induce him to emigrate thither at once. Here he devoted himself with assiduity to the promotion and resuscitation of the arts in the United States, and after residing some years at New York was elected in 1810 or 1812 vice-president of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He died in 1820. Dixey's labours were principally employed in the ornamental and decorative embellishment of public and private buildings, such as the City Hall at New York, the State House at Albany, &c.; but he executed some groups in sculpture as well. He married in America, and left two sons, George and John V. Dixey, who both adopted their father's profession as modellers, but the latter subsequently turned his attention to landscape-painting.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Dunlap's History of the Arts of Design in the United States, i. 329, ii. 299.]
DIXIE, Sir WOLSTAN (1525–1594), lord mayor of London, son of Thomas Dixie and Anne Jephson, who lived at Catworth in Huntingdonshire, was born in 1525. His ancestors had been seated at Catworth for several generations, and had considerable estates. Wolstan, however, was the fourth son of his father, and was destined to a life of business. He appears to have been apprenticed to Sir Christopher Draper of the Ironmongers' Company, who was lord mayor in 1566, and whose daughter and coheiress, Agnes, he married. Sir Christopher was of Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire, and hence no doubt Dixie's acquirement of property in that county. He was a freeman of the Skinners' Company, was elected alderman of Broad Street ward 4 Feb. 1573–4, and became one of the sheriffs of London in 1575, when his colleague was Edward Osborne, ancestor of the dukes of Leeds. Agnes Draper is said to have been his second wife; his first was named Walkedon, but he left no family by either. In 1585 he became lord mayor, and his installation was greeted by one of the earliest city pageants now extant, the words being composed by George Peele [q. v.] On 8 Feb.
