Thames, 14th March, 1823, at the age of eighty-four. His memoirs, written by himself, were published at Hamburg in 1794. He also wrote a number of pamphlets and political treatises.—J. T.
DUN, Sir Patrick, M.D., M.P., was born in Aberdeen in 1642, and early settled as a physician in Dublin, where he filled the office of president of the College of Physicians in 1681, 1690, and 1693. He was one of the founders of the Dublin Philosophical Society of 1683. He filled the office of state physician for many years, and, on the 29th January, 1696, he received the honour of knighthood. He sat in the Irish parliament as member for Killyleagh in the county of Down; having been returned, at the same election, both for that borough and for Mullingar in the. county of Westmeath. Sir Patrick died without issue in 1714, and was interred in St. Michan's church in Dublin. By his will he devised the residue of his estates for the establishment of one or two professorships of physic in the college of physicians in Dublin, and to this bequest are due, the estates having increased in value, the foundation of the school of physic in Ireland, and the erection and endowment of the hospital of Sir Patrick Dun in Dublin.—W. D. M.
DUN. See Erskine.
DUNBAR, George, Professor of Greek literature in the university of Edinburgh, was born of humble parentage in 1773, and died in 1857. He was designed by his parents for the lowly occupation of a gardener, but early in life received a serious injury from a fall from a tree, which incapacitated him for bodily labour. He was fortunate, however, in attracting the notice of a neighbouring gentleman, by whose generous aid he succeeded in obtaining a liberal education. Dunbar was elected professor of Greek in the university of Edinburgh when only thirty years of age. He continued through life a diligent student, and produced a great number of books bearing on the study of the Greek language. Of these we may mention—"Prosodia Græca;" "An Inquiry into the Structure and Affinity of the Greek and Latin Languages." But his greatest work was his "Greek Lexicon;" on which he was engaged eight years.—R. M., A.
DUNBAR, William, the greatest of the old Scottish poets, was a native of Lothian, and was born about the middle of the fifteenth century. He was related to the earl of March, and was in all probability either the son or nephew of William, son of Sir Patrick Dunbar of Beill. In the year 1475 the poet was sent to the university of St. Andrews, and in 1479 took the degree of M.A. There is reason to suppose that he studied also in the university of Oxford. At an early period of his life he was a novitiate of the order of St. Francis, and in that character travelled over England and a part of the continent. It is probable that he frequently accompanied as "ane clerk" the embassies which James IV. was in the habit of sending to the continental courts. In the register of the privy seal, 15th August, 1500, mention is made of a grant by that monarch to Dunbar of an annual pension of ten pounds, "for all the days of his life," or until he should be presented by the king to a benefice of the yearly value of forty pounds or upwards. From this period the poet became an attendant upon the royal court. He visited England in 1501 when the marriage of James IV. and the Princess Margaret was negotiated, and received as "the rhymer of Scotland" two payments of money from Henry VII., father of the bride. Dunbar celebrated the auspicious alliance between the royal families, in his fine poem "The Thistle and the Rose," which has been pronounced "one of the most beautiful and certainly the noblest of all prothalamia." Professor Wilson says "it is as perfect as anything in Spenser." Dunbar evidently lived on terms of great familiarity with the Scottish king, who was a liberal patron of literature, and shared in the royal bounty and in the sports and amusements of the court. The accounts of the king's treasurer show that, besides his pension, the poet received occasional donations of money from the royal purse. In 1507 his pension was raised to £20, and three years after to £80 a year. But, poet-like, his income appears always to have been insufficient to supply his wants, for the emptiness of his purse is the frequent subject of complaint in his poems. In one of his "addresses to the king" he says pathetically—
" My purse is made of sic ane skin,
There will na crosses (money) bide it within,
Strait as fra the fiend they flee,
Wha ever tyne (lose) wha ever win;
My painful purse so prickells me."
The great object of Dunbar's ambition, however, was preferment in the church. The constant burden of his song was a benefice, and he addresses continual and importunate petitions to his royal patron on this subject, varied with most amusing ingenuity. Some men, he says have seven benefices while he has not one, though he will be contented with "a kirk scant covered with heather." Ignorant and unprincipled parasites monopolized the church livings, while he, the scholar and the poet, "ane simple vicar can nocht be." James, however, evidently loved and admired the poet, and therefore turned a deaf ear to his importunities for preferment, which must have deprived him of the society of a delightful associate. After the disastrous battle of Flodden, in which the Scottish monarch perished with nearly all his chivalry, the name of Dunbar disappears from the royal accounts. He appears to have lived to an advanced age, and to have survived all his tuneful brethren. It is probable that he died about the year 1520, but the circumstances of his death and the place of his burial are entirely unknown. Dunbar excelled both in serious and comic poetry. With a vivid imagination and high descriptive powers, he combined great strength of satire and richness of humour, which, however, not unfrequently degenerates into coarseness both of language and of sentiment—one of the most glaring faults of his age. He excelled also in allegorical imagery and expressive personation. His allegorical poem entitled "The Golden Targe" displays high creative power and is wonderfully vivid in conception; but the execution is imperfect and wearisome. Some of his minor poems contain a fine mixture of satire, sadness, and pathos, while his "Meditation in Winter," and "No treasure avails without gladness," display a beautiful combination of christian philosophy, with touching melancholy under the pressure of age and disappointment. Some of his short moral pieces have been reckoned only inferior to those of Horace, in terseness, elegance, and force. Warton indeed is of opinion, that the natural complexion of Dunbar's genius is of the moral and didactic cast. Dunbar's most ingenious and original poem is the "Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins," in which each sin is personified, and figured before the eye by a few fearless strokes which at once invest him with his most hateful attributes. The "Justis between the Tailyzour and Soutar," "The Flyting" of Dunbar and Kennedy, and several other poems, are written in a style of the broadest farce, and are filled with coarse and indecorous images which completely destroy their force of humour. The "Friars of Berwick," however, which is ascribed to Dunbar on highly probable grounds, is entirely free from this defect, while it abounds in playful satire, quiet comic humour, and great skill in the delineation of human character. Dunbar has frequently been compared with Chaucer, and Sir Walter Scott declares it as his opinion that "in brilliancy of fancy, in force of description, in the power of conveying moral precepts with terseness, and marking lessons of life with conciseness and energy, in quickness of satire and poignancy of humour, the northern makar may boldly aspire to rival the bard of Woodstock."—J. T.
DUNCAN, King of Scotland, the "gracious Duncan" of Shakspeare, ascended the throne in 1033. He was the grandson of Malcolm II., whom he succeeded, by Beatrice or Bethoc, one of his daughters. Every reader must be familiar with the story of his death as told by our great dramatist, in what has been justly termed "the most striking tale of ambition and remorse that ever struck into a human bosom." The legend of Macbeth was found by Shakspeare in the Scottish Chronicles of Hollinshed, but it differs in almost every particular from the records of history. Macbeth was the maormor of the district of Ross, and it is alleged that his title to the throne, according to the old rule of Scottish succession, was better than that of Duncan. Lady Macbeth, whose real name was Gruoch, was the granddaughter of Kenneth IV. who was dethroned and killed by King Malcolm. Her brother was assassinated, and her first husband, Gilcomgain, the maormor of Moray, burned in his castle with fifty of his friends, while she herself had to fly for her life along with her infant son. Macbeth's father also had been slain by Malcolm, so that both he and his wife had deadly injuries to avenge; and, instigated both by ambition and revenge, he attacked and slew Duncan in battle, at a place called Bothgowan, or the Smith's House, near Elgin, in 1039.—J. T.
DUNCAN, Adam, Viscount, a naval officer of distinction, born in 1731, was the second son of Alexander Duncan, Esq., of Lundie, Forfarshire. He appears to have been destined from his youth for the naval service; and after receiving a prelimi-
