duty which he discharged successfully with Abraham Cowley, but in 1648 he was suspected by the Parliamentary authorities, and thought it wiser to cross the Channel. He helped in the removal of the young duke of York to Holland, and for some time he served Queen Henrietta Maria in Paris, being entrusted by her with despatches for Holland. In 1650 he was sent to Poland in company with Lord Crofts to obtain money for Charles II. They succeeded in raising £10,000. After two years spent at the exiled court in Holland, Denham returned to London and being quite without resources, he was for some time the guest of the earl of Pembroke at Wilton. In 1655 an order was given that Denham should restrict himself to some place of residence to be selected by himself at a distance of not less than 20 m. from London; subsequently he obtained from the Protector a licence to live at Bury St Edmunds, and in 1658 a passport to travel abroad with the earl of Pembroke. At the Restoration Denham’s services were rewarded by the office of surveyor-general of works. His qualifications as an architect were probably slight, but it is safe to regard as grossly exaggerated the accusations of incompetence and peculation made by Samuel Butler in his brutal “Panegyric upon Sir John Denham’s Recovery from his Madness.” He eventually secured the services of Christopher Wren as deputy-surveyor. In 1660 he was also made a knight of the Bath.
In 1665 he married for the second time. His wife, Margaret, daughter of Sir William Brooke, was, according to the comte de Gramont, a beautiful girl of eighteen. She soon became known as the mistress of the duke of York, and the scandal, according to common report, shattered the poet’s reason. While Denham was recovering, his wife died, poisoned, it was said, by a cup of chocolate. Some suspected the duchess of York of the crime, but the Comte de Gramont says that the general opinion was that Denham himself was guilty. No sign of poison, however, was found in the examination after Lady Denham’s death. Denham survived her for two years, dying at his house near Whitehall in March 1669. He was buried on the 23rd in Westminster Abbey. In the last years of his life he wrote the bitter political satires on the shameful conduct of the Dutch War entitled “Directions to a Painter,” and “Fresh Directions,” continuing Edmund Waller’s “Instructions to a Painter.” The printer of these poems, with which were printed one by Andrew Marvell, was sentenced to stand in the pillory. In 1667 Denham wrote his beautiful elegy on Abraham Cowley.
Denham’s poems include, beside those already given, a verse paraphrase of Cicero’s Cato major, and a metrical version of the Psalms. As a writer of didactic verse, he was perhaps too highly praised by his immediate successors. Dryden called Cooper’s Hill “the exact standard of good writing,” and Pope in his Windsor Forest called him “majestic Denham.” His collected poems with a dedicatory epistle to Charles II. appeared in 1668. Other editions followed, and they are reprinted in Chalmers’ (1810) and other collections of the English poets. His political satires were printed with some of Rochester’s and Marvell’s in Bibliotheca curiosa, vol. i. (Edinburgh, 1885).
DÉNIA, a seaport of eastern Spain, in the province of Alicante; on the Mediterranean Sea, at the head of a railway from Carcagente. Pop. (1900) 12,431. Dénia occupies the seaward slopes of a hill surmounted by a ruined castle, and divided by a narrow valley on the south from the limestone ridge of Mongó (2500 ft.), which commands a magnificent view of the Balearic Islands and the Valencian coast. The older houses of Dénia are characterized by their flat Moorish roofs (azoteas) and view-turrets (miradores), while fragments of the Moorish ramparts are also visible near the harbour; owing, however, to the rapid extension of local commerce, many of the older quarters were modernized at the beginning of the 20th century. Nails, and woollen, linen and esparto grass fabrics are manufactured here; and there is a brisk export trade in grapes, raisins and onions, mostly consigned to Great Britain or the United States. Baltic timber and British coal are largely imported. The harbour bay, which is well lighted and sheltered by a breakwater, contains only a small space of deep water, shut in by deposits of sand on three sides. In 1904 it accommodated 402 vessels of 175,000 tons; about half of which were small fishing craft, and coasters carrying agricultural produce to Spanish and African ports.
Dénia was colonized by Greek merchants from Emporiae (Ampurias in Catalonia), or Massilia (Marseilles), at a very early date; but its Greek name of Hemeroskopeion was soon superseded by the Roman Dianium. In the 1st century B.C., Sertorius made it the naval headquarters of his resistance to Rome; and, as its name implies, it was already famous for its temple of Diana, built in imitation of that at Ephesus. The site of this temple can be traced at the foot of the castle hill. Dénia was captured by the Moors in 713, and from 1031 to 1253 belonged successively to the Moorish kingdoms of Murcia and Valencia. According to an ancient but questionable tradition, its population rose at this period to 50,000, and its commerce proportionately increased. After the city was retaken by the Christians in 1253, its prosperity dwindled away, and only began to revive in the 19th century. During the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14), Dénia was thrice besieged; and in 1813 the citadel was held for five months by the French against the allied British and Spanish forces, until the garrison was reduced to 100 men, and compelled to surrender, on honourable terms.
DENIKER, JOSEPH (1852–) French naturalist and anthropologist, was born of French parents at Astrakhan, Russia, on the 6th of March 1852. After receiving his education at the university and technical institute of St Petersburg, he adopted engineering as a profession, and in this capacity travelled extensively in the petroleum districts of the Caucasus, in Central Europe, Italy and Dalmatia. Settling at Paris in 1876, he studied at the Sorbonne, where he took his degree in natural science. In 1888 he was appointed chief librarian of the Natural History Museum, Paris. Among his many valuable ethnological works mention may be made of Recherches anatomiques et embryologiques sur les singes anthropoides (1886); Étude sur les Kalmouks (1883); Les Ghiliaks (1883); and Races et peuples de la terre (1900). He became one of the chief editors of the Dictionnaire de géographie universelle, and published many papers in the anthropological and zoological journals of France.
DENILIQUIN, a municipal town of Townsend county, New South Wales, Australia, 534 m. direct S.W. of Sydney, and 195 m. by rail N. of Melbourne. Pop. (1901) 2644. The business of the town is chiefly connected with the interests of the sheep and cattle farmers of the Riverina district, a plain country, in the main pastoral, but suited in some parts for cultivation. Deniliquin has a well-known public school.
DENIM (an abbreviation of serge de Nîmes), the name originally given to a kind of serge. It is now applied to a stout twilled cloth made in various colours, usually of cotton, and used for overalls, &c.
DENINA, CARLO GIOVANNI MARIA (1731–1813), Italian historian, was born at Revello, Piedmont, in 1731, and was educated at Saluzzo and Turin. In 1753 he was appointed to the chair of humanity at Pignerol, but he was soon compelled by the influence of the Jesuits to retire from it. In 1756 he graduated as doctor in theology, and began authorship with a theological treatise. Promoted to the professorship of humanity and rhetoric in the college of Turin, he published (1769–1772) his Delle revoluzioni d’Italia, the work on which his reputation is mainly founded. Collegiate honours accompanied the issue of its successive volumes, which, however, at the same time multiplied his foes and stimulated their hatred. In 1782, at Frederick the Great’s invitation, he went to Berlin, where he remained for many years, in the course of which he published his Vie et règne de Frédéric II (Berlin, 1788) and La Prusse littéraire sous Frédéric II (3 vols., Berlin, 1790–1791). His Delle revoluzioni della Germania was published at Florence in 1804, in which year he went to Paris as the imperial librarian, on the invitation of Napoleon. At Paris he published in 1805 his Tableau de la Haute Italie, et des Alpes qui l’entourent. He died there on the 5th of December 1813.
DENIS (Dionysius), SAINT, first bishop of Paris, patron saint of France. According to Gregory of Tours (Hist. Franc. i. 30), he was sent into Gaul at the time of the emperor Decius. He suffered martyrdom at the village of Catulliacus, the modern St Denis. His tomb was situated by the side of the Roman road,
