appeared the "Bibliographical Decameron," splendid in its paper, typography, and illustrations, perhaps the most generally appreciated of its author's works. The following year he made a tour on the continent, partly to purchase book-rarities for his patron, Lord Spencer; and the result was his "Bibliographical, Antiquarian, and Picturesque Tour," published in 1821, and got up "regardless of expense," the engravers alone receiving £5000 for their labour on it. He now projected a history of Oxford, but pecuniary cares were beginning to embarrass him; and in spite of Exning and the metropolitan rectory, they tormented him more or less severely until the close of his life. To make money, he published sermons, he contributed to periodicals, he founded and conducted libraries of religious reading, and in an evil hour he hastily put together a "Library Companion"—a work on the selection of books in all departments of reading. It was a subject which he was scarcely fitted to handle, and the treatment which the book received from the reviewers damaged his reputation. As time wore on, the members of his old circle of bibliographical friends dropped off; bibliography was neglected among more exciting interests, and at the era of the reform agitation, the veteran, unable to keep silence, emitted (anonymously) his protest, in the shape of a disquisition, entitled "Bibliophobia, or Remarks on the present depression in the state of literature and the book trade," 1831. Yet even in those evil days he contrived to publish at least two new works (not to dwell on his new edition of the "Bibliomania," already referred to), worthy, in their appearance, of the old times of bibliography triumphant. One was a discursive autobiography—"Reminiscences of a Literary Life," London, 1836—of which we have availed ourselves in the preparation of this sketch; the other a "Bibliographical, Antiquarian, and Picturesque Tour in the northern counties of England and Scotland," London, 1838,—the result of a series of visits in 1836 among the hospitable book-collectors of the north, but inferior in raciness and spirit to his similar record of continental travel. During his later years, paralysis of the brain aggravated the pressure of pecuniary distress, but almost to the last he plied his pen; and when he died, on the 18th of November, 1847, he left behind him the first proof-sheet of a new history of Dover which he had commenced. Dr. Dibdin married early in life, and was appointed by William IV. one of his chaplains-in-ordinary.—F. E.
DIBUTADES of Sycion, living in the tenth century b.c., by degrees raised the humble, but wide-spread industry of a potter to the importance of high-plastic. This craft, which was already flourishing in Corinth, Ægina, Samos, and Athens, was greatly benefited by the introduction, attributed to Dibutades, of ruddle in different parts of the clay, with the view of producing varied colours in the ornaments; or, if mixed together, giving to clay when baked a more lively appearance. Architecture is said to owe to Dibutades the invention of decorated cave-tiles; and sculpture, the first attempt made in Greece to produce a bas-relief. The circumstances of this last invention are thus detailed by Pliny. Dibutades' daughter, on the eve of her lover's departure for distant countries, wishing to retain a record of his features, succeeded in doing so by tracing lines round his shadow thrown on a wall by means of a lamp held up behind the young man. This naïve contrivance, to which other writers attribute the origin of drawing and painting, Pliny goes on to say, suggested to Dibutades the idea of filling in with clay the space thus circumscribed, and led to his making a portrait in bas-relief of the departing youth, which, dried and baked as other objects of pottery commonly are, was afterwards placed in the Nymphæum of Corinth, where it remained until the destruction of that city by Mummius. Now, that an early work of the kind, either by Dibutades or some other modeller, may have been thus preserved as a wonder is quite probable; but the mode of producing it must have been insufficiently described by Pliny, the production of such a bas-relief as he mentions being impossible except upon a back-ground of clay. To Dibutades is generally attributed the first introduction of reliefs in clay for the decoration of the tympanum of temples (for which groups of statues were afterwards substituted), as well as the ornamental form of their cassoons or lacunaria.—R. M.
DICÆARCHUS, a Greek philosopher, flourished in the beginning of the third century before the christian era. His father's name was Pheidias of Mersance in Sicily. He is said to have enjoyed the personal instructions of Aristotle; at all events, he was an earnest follower of the famous Stagyrite, and added to the lustre of the peripatetic school by his numerous writings in geographical, historical, and political science, as well as in the province of metaphysical philosophy Suidas speaks of him as also an eloquent orator, and accomplished geometrician. He has won the praise of brilliant talents and marvellous learning from so high an authority as Cicero; and his treatise on the republic of Sparta was held in such esteem there, that the ephori ordered it to be read yearly in a public assembly to the young men of the city. His principal metaphysical works were the "Lesbiaca" and the "Corinthiaca," in which he maintained a kind of materialism, ascribing the phenomena of thought to the more refined condition of the bodily organism. Yet he speaks of the mind as acting altogether independently of the body in dreams and prophetic visions. His "Tripoliticus" seems to have been a comparative estimate of the three forms of government—democracy, oligarchy, and monarchy; but his greatest work probably was that which he entitled "The Life of Greece." It was divided into three books, commencing with a geographical description of the country, and a sketch of its previous history, which was followed by a detailed view of its social condition, comprising its philosophy, its religions, its advancement in the arts, its manners, and customs. He composed also a separate treatise on the heights of the Peloponnesian mountains; but it is difficult at this day to enumerate the minor productions of his active and versatile mind, as only a few fragments of his writings remain.—W. B.
DICK, Sir Alexander, a Scottish physician, born in 1703, was third son of Sir W. Cunningham of Caprington, and subsequently took the name of his mother on succeeding to the baronetcy, which she brought into the family as heiress of Sir James Dick of Prestonfield. His studies were commenced at Edinburgh, and completed at Leyden, where he received his medical degree. When he returned home in 1723, the university of St. Andrews conferred upon him a similar honour, and he was admitted to the fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians at Edinburgh. After residing for a time in Italy, he practised his profession in Pembrokeshire, and thence, on succeeding to the baronetcy, he removed to Prestonfield, in the immediate neighbourhood of the Scottish capital, where he won the high esteem of his fellow-citizens by his public spirit as well as by his personal character. He was for seven years president of the Royal College of Physicians, and in 1774 he received a gold medal for his services in connection with the first culture of the rhubarb plant in this country. He died in 1785, at the age of eighty-three.—W. B.
DICK, Rev. John, D.D., was born at Aberdeen in 1764, and educated there at the grammar school and afterwards at King's college, where he took his degree of A.M. in 1781. Having determined to continue in connection with the Secession Church, of which his father was a minister, he studied theology under the well-known John Brown of Haddington, and was licensed as a preacher in 1785. In the following year he was ordained minister of a congregation in Slateford, near Edinburgh, where he continued till 1801, when he became minister of Greyfriars congregation, Glasgow. In 1815 he received the degree of doctor of divinity from the college of Princeton, New Jersey, and in 1820 he was appointed professor of theology in the ecclesiastical denomination to which he belonged. He died at Glasgow, after a short illness, on the 25th of January, 1833. Dr. Dick was much esteemed during his lifetime as an able and judicious divine; and his "Lectures on Theology," which have been published since his death, have extended his reputation, and taken a high place as a systematic exposition of scripture doctrine. These, as well as his other writings, namely, an "Essay on Inspiration," a volume of "Sermons," and "Lectures on the Acts of the Apostles," have had a deservedly wide circulation. The work on inspiration is clear and vigorous; and though not fitted to cast much light on the problems connected with the subject which have been enunciated in recent years, it contains an able refutation of that phase of infidelity which prevailed at the period of its publication (1800); and the "Lectures on the Acts" present an excellent specimen of lucid, effective, and popular exposition of the scriptures.—J. B. J.
DICK, Thomas, LL.D, a writer on popular astronomy, was born in 1772. He started in life as a preacher in the Scotch secession church, but circumstances led him to abandon the clerical profession. He afterwards betook himself to teaching and lecturing; but he ultimately devoted his attention
