in ‘Carthage and her Remains,’ London, 1861, 8vo. He also published ‘Israel's true Emancipator’ (two letters to Dr. Adler), London, 1852, 8vo, and (in conjunction with Benjamin Davidson) ‘Arabic Reading Lessons,’ London [1854], 8vo. Shortly before his death Davis revisited Tunis, but the journey tried his strength, and he died at Florence on 6 Jan. 1882 of congestion of the lungs.
[Brit. Mus. Cat.; Martin's Handbook of Contemporary Biog. 1870; Times, 14 Jan. 1882, p. 6, col. 5; Athenæum, 1882 (i.) 65; Men of the Time, 9th ed.; Meyer's Conversations-Lexikon, v.; (Parliamentary) Accounts, Estimates, &c., of the Brit. Mus., 16 May 1860, pp. 13, 14, and 6 May 1861, p. 14; Edwards's Lives of the Founders of the Brit. Mus. pp. 666–8.]
DAVIS, RICHARD BARRETT (1782–1854), animal painter, was born at Watford, Hertfordshire, in 1782. His father was huntsman to the royal harriers. George III took notice of some of his drawings, and placed him under Sir William Beechey, R.A. [q. v.] At nineteen he became a student of the Royal Academy. He first exhibited in 1802, sending a landscape to the academy. For fifty years from that time he was a very constant exhibitor. To the academy he sent 70 pictures, to the British Institute 57, and to the Suffolk Street Exhibition 141. He last exhibited in 1853. He took early to animal painting. In 1806 he sent to the academy ‘Mares and Foals from the Royal Stud at Windsor,’ and ‘The Portrait of an Old Hunter;’ in 1814, ‘Going to Market;’ in 1821, a ‘Horse Fair;’ in 1831, ‘Travellers attacked by Wolves.’ In that year he was appointed animal painter to William IV, and painted the cavalcade which formed the coronation procession of that monarch. In 1829 he joined the Suffolk Street Society, and was one of its most constant exhibitors. He died on 13 March 1854.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Graves's Dict. of Artists.]
DAVIS, THOMAS OSBORNE (1814–1845), poet and politician, was born at Mallow on 14 October 1814. His father, James Thomas Davis, who was a surgeon in the royal artillery, and had been acting deputy-inspector of ordnance hospitals in the Peninsula, died at Exeter, on his way to the continent, in October 1814. His mother, whose maiden name was Atkins, was an Irishwoman, and came of a branch of the Atkins of Firville, co. Cork. As a child, Davis was shy, unready, and self-absorbed. With much difficulty he learnt to read, and he took but little interest in boyish games. After receiving an education at a mixed preparatory school, he was admitted to Trinity College, Dublin, where he was chiefly known as a steady, plodding reader. He took his degree in the spring of 1836, and in the following year published an anonymous pamphlet on the ‘Reform of the Lords. By a Graduate of Dublin University.’ Between 1836 and 1838 he spent much of his time in London and on the continent, studying modern languages and collecting a library of books. He was called to the bar in Michaelmas term, 1838. Though he sometimes joined in the debates of the College Historical Society (of which he was elected auditor in 1840), his speeches were distinguished more by their learning than for their eloquence. He contributed several papers to the ‘Citizen,’ a monthly magazine established in Dublin by some of the leading members of the Historical Society. Up to this period Davis had not yet avowed the nationalist principles of which he afterwards became one of the chief exponents. In 1839 he joined the Repeal Association and entered the field of practical politics. In 1840 he wrote a number of articles on the state of Europe for the ‘Dublin Morning Register,’ and early in 1841 became joint editor of that paper with his friend John Dillon. Their connection with the ‘Register’ did not continue long, and in July 1842 Davis, Duffy, and Dillon founded the ‘Nation’ newspaper, the first number of which appeared on 15 Oct. 1842. Written with much vigour and great singleness of purpose, the ‘Nation’ immediately sprang into popularity, and obtained a circulation more than three times as great as the chief conservative paper in the country. Its principal object was, as stated in the prospectus (which, with the exception of a single sentence, was written by Davis), ‘to direct the popular mind and the sympathies of educated men of all parties to the great end of nationality.’ Much of its success was due to the stirring national poems which appeared from time to time in its pages. A great number of these were contributed by Davis, who, until the starting of the ‘Nation,’ had never written a line of verse in his life. It seems almost incredible that such a ballad as the ‘Sack of Baltimore’ (the last poem which Davis wrote) should have been the work of an almost unpractised hand. ‘Máire Bhán a Stoír,’ ‘The Flower of Finae,’ and ‘My Grave’ are excellent examples of his tenderness and pathos, while the ‘Geraldines’ and ‘Fontenoy’ are full of genuine fervour and patriotic sentiment. In 1843 Davis projected a series of carefully edited volumes containing the speeches of the orators of Ireland with historical introductions, and started the series by an edition of the ‘Speeches of the Right
