never completed. In 1818 Dibdin was commissioned by Earl Spencer to purchase books for him on the continent, an expedition described in his sumptuous Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany (1821). In 1824 he made an ambitious venture in his Library Companion, or the Young Man’s Guide and Old Man’s Comfort in the Choice of a Library, intended to point out the best works in all departments of literature. His culture was not broad enough, however, to render him competent for the task, and the work was severely criticized. For some years Dibdin gave himself up chiefly to religious literature. He returned to bibliography in his Bibliophobia, or Remarks on the Present Depression in the State of Literature and the Book Trade (1832), and the same subject furnishes the main interest of his Reminiscences of a Literary Life (1836), and his Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in the Northern Counties of England and Scotland (1838). Dibdin was the originator and vice-president, Lord Spencer being the president, of the Roxburghe Club, founded in 1812,—the first of the numerous book clubs which have done such service to literature.
DIBDIN, THOMAS JOHN (1771–1841), English dramatist and song-writer, son of Charles Dibdin, the song-writer, and of Mrs Davenet, an actress whose real name was Harriet Pitt, was born on the 21st of March 1771. He was apprenticed to his maternal uncle, a London upholsterer, and later to William Rawlins, afterwards sheriff of London. He summoned his second master unsuccessfully for rough treatment; and after a few years of service he ran away to join a company of country players. From 1789 to 1795 he played in all sorts of parts; he acted as scene painter at Liverpool in 1791; and during this period he composed more than 1000 songs. He made his first attempt as a dramatic writer in Something New, followed by The Mad Guardian in 1795. He returned to London in 1795, having married two years before; and in the winter of 1798–1799 his Jew and the Doctor was produced at Covent Garden. From this time he contributed a very large number of comedies, operas, farces, &c., to the public entertainment. Some of these brought immense popularity to the writer and immense profits to the theatres. It is stated that the pantomime of Mother Goose (1807) produced more than £20,000 for the management at Covent Garden theatre, and the High-mettled Racer, adapted as a pantomime from his father’s play, £18,000 at Astley’s. Dibdin was prompter and pantomime writer at Drury Lane until 1816, when he took the Surrey theatre. This venture proved disastrous and he became bankrupt. After this he was manager of the Haymarket, but without his old success, and his last years were passed in comparative poverty. In 1827 he published two volumes of Reminiscences; and at the time of his death he was preparing an edition of his father’s sea songs, for which a small sum was allowed him weekly by the lords of the admiralty. Of his own songs “The Oak Table” and “The Snug Little Island” are well-known examples. He died in London on the 16th of September 1841.
DIBRA (Slav. Debra), the capital of a sanjak bearing the same name, in the vilayet of Monastir, eastern Albania, Turkey. Pop. (1900) about 15,000. Dibra occupies a valley enclosed by mountains, and watered by the Tsrni Drin and Radika rivers, which meet 3 m. S. It is a fortified city, and the only episcopal see of the Bulgarian exarchate in Albania; most of the inhabitants are Albanians, but there is a strong Bulgarian colony. The local trade is almost entirely agricultural.
DIBRUGARH, a town of British India, in the Lakhimpur district of eastern Bengal and Assam, of which it is the headquarters, situated on the Dibru river about 4 m. above its confluence with the Brahmaputra. Pop. (1901) 11,227. It is the terminus of steamer navigation on the Brahmaputra, and also of a railway running to important coal-mines and petroleum wells, which connects with the Assam-Bengal system. Large quantities of coal and tea are exported. There are a military cantonment, the headquarters of the volunteer corps known as the Assam Valley Light Horse; a government high school, a training school for masters; and an aided school for girls. In 1900 a medical school for the province was established, out of a bequest left by Brigade-Surgeon J. Berry-White, which is maintained by the government, to train hospital assistants for the tea gardens. The Williamson artisan school is entirely supported by an endowment.
DICAEARCHUS, of Messene in Sicily, Peripatetic philosopher and pupil of Aristotle, historian, and geographer, flourished about 320 B.C. He was a friend of Theophrastus, to whom he dedicated the majority of his works. Of his writings, which comprised treatises on a great variety of subjects, only the titles and a few fragments survive. The most important of them was his βίος τῆς Έλλάδος (Life in Greece), in which the moral, political and social condition of the people was very fully discussed. In his Tripoliticos he described the best form of government as a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, and illustrated it by the example of Sparta. Among the philosophical works of Dicaearchus may be mentioned the Lesbiaci, a dialogue in three books, in which the author endeavours to prove that the soul is mortal, to which he added a supplement called Corinthiaci. He also wrote a Description of the World illustrated by maps, in which was probably included his Measurements of Mountains. A description of Greece (150 iambics, in C. Müller, Frag. hist. Graec. i. 238-243) was formerly attributed to him, but, as the initial letters of the first twenty-three lines show, was really the work of Dionysius, son of Calliphon. Three considerable fragments of a prose description of Greece (Müller, i. 97-110) are now assigned to an unknown author named Heracleides. The De re publica of Cicero is supposed to be founded on one of Dicaearchus’s works.
The best edition of the fragments is by M. Fuhr (1841), a work of great learning; see also a dissertation by F. G. Osann, Beiträge zur röm. und griech. Litteratur, ii. pp. 1-117 (1839); Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie der klass. Altertumswiss. v. pt. 1 (1905).
DICE (plural of die, O. Fr. de, derived from Lat. dare, to give), small cubes of ivory, bone, wood or metal, used in gaming. The six sides of a die are each marked with a different number of incised dots in such a manner that the sum of the dots on any two opposite sides shall be 7. Dice seem always to have been employed, as is the case to-day, for gambling purposes, and they are also used in such games as backgammon. There are many methods of playing, from one to five dice being used, although two or three are the ordinary numbers employed in Great Britain and America. The dice are thrown upon a table or other smooth surface either from the hand or from a receptacle called a dice-box, the latter method having been in common use in Greece, Rome and the Orient in ancient times. Dice-boxes have been made in many shapes and of various materials, such as wood, leather, agate, crystal, metal or paper. Many contain bars within to ensure a proper agitation of the dice, and thus defeat trickery. Some, formerly used in England, were employed with unmarked dice, and allowed the cubes to fall through a kind of funnel upon a board marked off into six equal parts numbered from 1 to 6. It is a remarkable fact, that, wherever dice have been found, whether in the tombs of ancient Egypt, of classic Greece, or of the far East, they differ in no material respect from those in use to-day, the elongated ones with rounded ends found in Roman graves having been, not dice but tali, or knucklebones. Eight-sided dice have comparatively lately been introduced in France as aids to children in learning the multiplication table. The teetotum, or spinning die, used in many modern games, was known in ancient times in China and Japan. The increased popularity of the more elaborate forms of gaming has resulted in the decline of dicing. The usual method is to throw three times with three dice. If one or more sixes or fives are thrown the first time they may be reserved, the other throws being made with the dice that are left. The object is to throw three sixes = 18 or as near that number as possible, the highest throw winning, or, when drinks are to be paid for, the lowest throw losing. (For other methods of throwing consult the Encyclopaedia of Indoor Games, by R. F. Foster, 1903.) The most popular form of pure gambling with dice at the present day, particularly with the lower classes in America, is Craps, or Crap-Shooting, a simple form of Hazard, of French origin. Two dice are used. Each player puts up a stake
