unsparing care, line by line, often as he rode from one patient to another, and it occupied the leisure hours of many years. The artificial character of the diction renders it in emotional passages stilted and even absurd, and makes Canning’s clever caricature—The Loves of the Triangles—often remarkably like the poem it satirizes: in some passages, however, it is not without a stately appropriateness. Gnomes, sylphs and nereids are introduced on almost every page, and personification is carried to an extraordinary excess. Thus he describes the Loves of the Plants according to the Linnaean system by means of a most ingenious but misplaced and amusing personification of each plant, and often even of the parts of the plant. It is significant that botanical notes are added to the poem, and that its eulogies of scientific men are frequent. Erasmus Darwin’s mind was in fact rather that of a man of science than that of a poet. His most important scientific work is his Zoonomia (1794–1796), which contains a system of pathology, and a treatise on generation, in which he, in the words of his famous grandson, Charles Robert Darwin, “anticipated the views and erroneous grounds of opinions of Lamarck.” The essence of his views is contained in the following passage, which he follows up with the conclusion “that one and the same kind of living filaments is and has been the cause of all organic life”:—
“Would it be too bold to imagine that, in the great length of time since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind,—would it be too bold to imagine that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which the great First Cause endued with animality, with the power of acquiring new parts, attended with new propensities, directed by irritations, sensations, volitions and associations, and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down these improvements by generation to its posterity, world without end!”
In 1799 Darwin published his Phytologia, or the Philosophy of Agriculture and Gardening (1799), in which he states his opinion that plants have sensation and volition. A paper on Female Education in Boarding Schools (1797) completes the list of his works.
Robert Waring Darwin (1766–1848), his third son by his first marriage, a doctor at Shrewsbury, was the father of the famous Charles Darwin; and Violetta, his eldest daughter by his second marriage, was the mother of Francis Galton.
See Anna Seward, Memoirs of the Life of Dr Darwin (1804); and Charles Darwin, Life of Erasmus Darwin, an introduction to an essay on his works by Ernst Krause (1879).
DASENT, SIR GEORGE WEBBE (1817–1896), English writer,
was born in St Vincent, West Indies, on the 22nd of May 1817,
the son of the attorney-general of that island. He was educated
at Westminster school, King’s College, and Oxford, where he
was a contemporary of J. T. Delane (q.v.), whose friend he had
become at King’s College. On leaving the university in 1840 he
was appointed to a diplomatic post in Stockholm. Here he met
Jacob Grimm, and at his suggestion first interested himself in
Scandinavian literature and mythology. In 1842 he published
the results of his studies, a version of The Prose or Younger
Edda, and in the following year he issued a Grammar of the
Icelandic or Old-Norse Tongue, taken from the Swedish. Returning
to England in 1845, he became assistant editor of The Times
under Delane, whose sister he married; but he still continued his
Scandinavian studies, publishing translations of various Norse
stories. In 1853 he was appointed professor of English literature
and modern history at King’s College, London. In 1861–1862 he
visited Iceland, and subsequently published Gisli the Outlaw and
other translations from the Icelandic. In 1870 he was appointed
a civil service commissioner and consequently resigned his post
on The Times. In 1876 he was knighted. He retired from the
public service in 1892, and died at Ascot on the 11th of June 1896.
In addition to the works mentioned above, he published The
Story of Burnt Njal, from the Icelandic of the Njals Saga (1861).
See the Life of Delane (1908), by Arthur Irwin Dasent.
DASHKOV, CATHERINA ROMANOVNA VORONTSOV,
Princess (1744–1810), Russian littérateur, was the third daughter
of Count Roman Vorontsov, a member of the Russian senate,
distinguished for his intellectual gifts. (For the family see
Vorontsov.) She received an exceptionally good education,
having displayed from a very early age the masculine ability
and masculine tastes which made her whole career so singular.
She was well versed in mathematics, which she studied at the
university of Moscow, and in general literature her favourite
authors were Bayle, Montesquieu, Boileau, Voltaire and
Helvetius. While still a girl she was connected with the Russian
court, and became one of the leaders of the party that attached
itself to the grand duchess (afterwards empress) Catherine.
Before she was sixteen she married Prince Mikhail Dashkov, a
prominent Russian nobleman, and went to reside with him at
Moscow. In 1762 she was at St Petersburg and took a leading part,
according to her own account the leading part, in the coup d’état
by which Catherine was raised to the throne. (See Catherine II.) Another course of events would probably have resulted in
the elevation of the Princess Dashkov’s elder sister, Elizabeth,
who was the emperor’s mistress, and in whose favour he made no
secret of his intention to depose Catherine. Her relations with the
new empress were not of a cordial nature, though she continued
devotedly loyal. Her blunt manners, her unconcealed scorn of
the male favourites that disgraced the court, and perhaps also her
sense of unrequited merit, produced an estrangement between
her and the empress, which ended in her asking permission to
travel abroad. The cause of the final breach was said to have
been the refusal of her request to be appointed colonel of the
imperial guards. Her husband having meanwhile died, she
set out in 1768 on an extended tour through Europe. She
was received with great consideration at foreign courts, and her
literary and scientific reputation procured her the entrée to the
society of the learned in most of the capitals of Europe. In
Paris she secured the warm friendship and admiration of Diderot
and Voltaire. She showed in various ways a strong liking for
England and the English. She corresponded with Garrick, Dr
Blair and Principal Robertson; and when in Edinburgh, where
she was very well received, she arranged to entrust the education
of her son to Principal Robertson. In 1782 she returned to the
Russian capital, and was at once taken into favour by the empress,
who strongly sympathized with her in her literary tastes, and
specially in her desire to elevate Russ to a place among the
literary languages of Europe. Immediately after her return the
princess was appointed “directeur” of the St Petersburg
Academy of Arts and Sciences; and in 1784 she was named the
first president of the Russian Academy, which had been founded
at her suggestion. In both positions she acquitted herself with
marked ability. She projected the Russian dictionary of the
Academy, arranged its plan, and executed a part of the work
herself. She edited a monthly magazine; and wrote at least
two dramatic works, The Marriage of Fabian, and a comedy
entitled Toissiokoff. Shortly before Catherine’s death the friends
quarrelled over a tragedy which the princess had allowed to find
a place in the publications of the Academy, though it contained
revolutionary principles, according to the empress. A partial
reconciliation was effected, but the princess soon afterwards
retired from court. On the accession of the emperor Paul in 1796
she was deprived of all her offices, and ordered to retire to a
miserable village in the government of Novgorod, “to meditate
on the events of 1762.” After a time the sentence was partially
recalled on the petition of her friends, and she was permitted to
pass the closing years of her life on her own estate near Moscow,
where she died on the 4th of January 1810.
Her son, the last of the Dashkov family, died in 1807 and bequeathed his fortune to his cousin Illarion Vorontsov, who thereupon by imperial licence assumed the name Vorontsov-Dashkov; and Illarion’s son, Illarion Ivanovich Vorontsov-Dashkov (b. 1837), held an appointment in the tsar’s household from 1881 to 1897.
The Memoirs of the Princess Dashkoff written by herself were published in 1840 in London in two volumes. They were edited by Mrs W. Bradford, who, as Miss Wilmot, had resided with the princess between 1803 and 1808, and had suggested their preparation.
DASS, PETTER (1647–1708), the “father” of modern
Norwegian poetry, was the son of Peter Dundas, a Scottish
merchant of Dundee, who, leaving his country about 1630 to
