and added that ‘Thrale and I must do something for Tom Davies.’ In 1778 Davies became a bankrupt, when Johnson exerted his influence on Davies's behalf, collected money to buy back his furniture, and induced Sheridan to give him a benefit at Drury Lane. Davies then appeared for the last time as Fainall in Congreve's ‘Way of the World.’ In the next year Davies dedicated his ‘Massinger’ to Johnson. Johnson afterwards encouraged Davies to write the life of Garrick, supplied the first sentence, and gave help for Garrick's early years. The book appeared in 1780, passed through four editions, and brought money and reputation to the author. Encouraged by this success, he published in 1785 ‘Dramatic Miscellanies, consisting of critical observations on several plays of Shakespeare, with a review of his principal characters and those of various eminent writers, as represented by Mr. Garrick and other celebrated comedians. With anecdotes of Dramatic Poets, Actors, &c.,’ 3 vols., 1785. A second edition appeared the same year. Davies is a pleasant and vivacious writer and preserves many interesting anecdotes.
He was socially agreeable and a popular member of a booksellers' club which met at the Devil Tavern, Temple Bar, and afterwards at the Grecian Coffee-house (Nichols, Anecd. v. 325), where he used to read specimens of his ‘Life of Garrick’ and where Johnson's ‘Lives of the Poets’ was suggested. Davies died on 5 May 1785, and was buried in St. Paul's, Covent Garden. His widow died on 9 Feb. 1801. Davies is frequently mentioned in Boswell. He seems to have been rather tolerated than petted by some of Johnson's friends, Beauclerk remarking on one occasion that he could not conceive a more humiliating position than to be patted on the back by Tom Davies (Boswell, v. 287). Johnson punished him for an indiscretion by observing, as a superlative expression of contempt, that Swift's ‘Conduct of the Allies’ might have been written by Tom Davies. But Johnson was uniformly kind in serious matters, and two letters written in his last illness show his gratitude for attentions received from Davies and his wife. Some letters to Granger, published by Malcolm, show that in his time the publisher of a biographical dictionary sometimes disagreed with the author, but they are in the main friendly.
[Nichols's Anecdotes, vi. 421–43, ix. 665, and elsewhere; Garrick's Correspondence, i. 162–5; Boswell's Johnson; Piozzi's Anecdotes, pp. 55–6; J. P. Malcolm's Letters between Granger and … Literary Men, pp. 47–69.]
DAVIES, THOMAS, M.D. (1792–1839), physician, was born in 1792 in Carmarthenshire, and, after some schooling in London, was apprenticed to his maternal uncle, then apothecary to the London Hospital. He became an apothecary, and practised at the east end of London, but after two years had symptoms of phthisis. He went to Montpellier for his health, and afterwards to Paris, where he learned the then new art of auscultation, under Laennec, its inventor. He graduated M.D. at Paris 8 Dec. 1821, came back to London, was admitted a licentiate of the College of Physicians 30 Sept. 1824, and began practice at 30 New Broad Street, London, as a physician. He lectured at his house on diseases of the lungs and heart, and explained all he had learned from Laennec. The lectures brought him professional repute, and he was elected the first assistant physician to the London Hospital 5 Dec. 1827, and became a fellow of the College of Physicians 4 July 1838. He was made lecturer on the practice of physic at the London Hospital, and printed in the ‘London Medical Gazette’ a course of lectures on diseases of the chest, which he published in an octavo volume of more than five hundred pages in 1835, entitled ‘Lectures on the Diseases of the Lungs and Heart.’ The book shows that its author had mastered and tested for himself all the observations of Laennec and of Hope, but he added nothing to what they had taught, and though he writes at length on pericarditis, and had examined many examples post mortem, he was ignorant of the existence of a pericardial friction-sound in such cases. He was married and had several children, but his chest disease returned, and he died of it 30 May 1839. He used habitually to say to his patients ‘Keep up your spirits,’ and had sad experience of the need for such advice in his own last illness, when he suffered much from mental depression. He was buried in the churchyard of St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate.
[Munk's Coll. of Phys. 1878, iii. 289; Physic and Physicians, London, 1839, ii. 266.]
DAVIES, THOMAS STEPHENS (1795–1851), mathematician and writer on science, made his earliest communications to the ‘Leeds Correspondent’ in July 1817, and the ‘Gentleman's Diary’ for 1819, and he subsequently contributed largely to the ‘Gentleman's and Lady's Diary, to Clay's ‘Scientific Receptacle,’ to the ‘Monthly Magazine,’ the ‘Philosophical Magazine,’ the ‘Bath and Bristol Magazine,’ and the ‘Mechanics' Magazine.’ His early acquaintance with Dr. William Trail, the author of the ‘Life of Dr. Robert
