stationed at Rhegium in 281 b.c. During the celebration of a festival, Decius and his troops made an attack on the city which it was their duty to protect, massacred the men, and distributed the women amongst themselves. He then put himself at the head of the city, and acted for some years as an independent chief, the war with Pyrrhus preventing the Romans from exterminating the treacherous miscreants. Suffering from some disease of the eyes, Decius sent to Messana for a physician, who happening to be a native of Rhegium, and desirous of avenging the wrongs of his city, gave him something that greatly aggravated the disease. Meanwhile the fate of the usurpers drew near; the city was taken by Fabricius, shortly after the death of Pyrrhus, and the survivors of the legion being sent to Rome, were scourged and beheaded in the forum. Decius died in prison by his own hand.—R. M., A.
DECIUS, Mus, a Roman consul, celebrated for his devotion to the good of the republic; to advance which it is said that he sacrificed himself to the gods, in a battle fought about 340 years before the empire.—R. M., A.
DECKER or DEKKER, Jeremias, was born at Dordrecht in 1610. His father, Abraham, was a man of good family in Belgium, which he left upon embracing the reformed religion. Despite his narrow circumstances, he gave his son an excellent education, intending him for mercantile life. The genius of the son was decidedly literary, and he devoted himself to languages, in which he made great proficiency, being his own master in many of them. Notwithstanding the ill-health of his father, which cast upon him the care of the family, Decker produced many poems of great merit, and was esteemed as one of the best poets of his day in Holland. His first production was a metrical paraphrase of the Lamentations of Jeremiah; his last and best, "The Praise of Avarice," which is justly commended for its playful irony and learning.. He died at Amsterdam, November, 1666.—J. F. W
DECKER, Karl von, a German military writer and novelist, was born at Berlin in 1784, and died as major-general, June 29, 1844. Amongst his numerous military writings we mention—"Die Artillerie für alle Waffen," 3 vols., Berlin, 1816; "Bonaparte's Feldzug in Italien," 1825; "Der Kleine Krieg im Geiste der neuern Kriegführung," 4th edition, 1844; "Algerien und die dortige Kriegführung," Berlin, 1844, 2 vols., &c. He also originated the "Militär-wochenblatt," together with Rühle von Lilienstern; and in 1824 the "Zeitschrift für Kunst, Wissenschaft und Geschichte des Krieges," together with Cyriaci and Blesson. His novels and comedies appeared under the nom de plume Adalbert vom Thale.—K. E.
DECKER, Sir Matthew, an Anglo-Dutch commercial notability of the first half of the eighteenth century, was born at Amsterdam in 1679. His branch of the family, which had enriched itself by commerce, were protestants, and took refuge in Holland from the Flemish persecutions of the duke of Alva. Sir Matthew came to England in 1702, amassed great wealth as a merchant in London, and having been naturalized the year after his arrival in this country, was created a baronet by George I. in 1717. He sat in the house of commons in one of that monarch's parliaments, as a silent member for Bishop's Castle, Shropshire. George II., on the day of his proclamation as king, is said to have dined at Sir Matthew's house at Richmond Green. He died in 1779, leaving three daughters, but no son, and the baronetcy was extinguished with him. To Sir Matthew has been ascribed the authorship of two rather curious pamphlets on trade and finance, the one, first published in 1753, entitled "Serious Considerations on the several high duties which the nation in general labours under," &c.; the other, first published in 1744, entitled "Essay on the Causes and Decline of the Foreign Trade," &c. Referring to the latter, Adam Smith, in his Wealth of Nations, speaks of a plan broached in it as "the well-known proposal of Sir Matthew Decker;" but there is reason to believe that it was the production of a Mr. Richardson. It is certain that both pamphlets could not have emanated from the same pen, since, though published within a year of each other, they make proposals very different in scope for the raising of the whole revenue of the country by a single tax. In the "Serious Considerations" the single tax advocated is of the nature of a property and income tax based upon a house duty; in the "Essay" it is a duty to be levied on the consumer of luxuries for privileges very wide in their range—from that of driving a coach and six to that of drinking wine and spirits. Both treatises, however, have a common free trade tendency, and the authors of both avow their wish to see England one great "free-port." The claim of Sir Matthew Decker even to the authorship of the "Serious Considerations" is merely traditionary. It does not clearly appear that it was ascribed to him until some years after his death. For any distinct evidence to the contrary, he may have been as little the author of it as of St. Matthew's Gospel, which (his daughter Lady Fitzwilliam told Horace Walpole) had been ascribed to him by an ignorant fellow-countryman. Sir John Germaine, who, she added, had actually in consequence bequeathed him £200 for distribution among poor Dutchmen! Walpole, by the way, has disproved the assertion (made by Collins in his Baronetage, among others) that the first pine-apple brought to maturity in England was raised in Sir Matthew Decker's garden at Richmond. An account of the two pamphlets will be found in Mr. M'Culloch's Literature of Political Economy; but that eminent authority, it may be remarked, rather overstates the prominence given in the "Serious Considerations" to a house duty, pure and simple. The proposal of its author is "that every house in England which is either let for, or inhabited by its owner, worth £200 a year, or upwards, or where the inhabitant is in possession of a real estate of £1000 a year, or more, let the house he liveth in be great or small, should pay £100," &c.—language which clearly shows that the suggested house duty was to partake largely of the nature of a property tax.—(Lyson's Environs of London, &c.)—F. E.
DECKER or DEKKER, Thomas, a dramatic writer, flourished in the reign of James I. The exact dates of his birth and death have not been ascertained; but it is probable that he died in 1638 or 1639. He certainly lived to a considerable age, as his first play was published in 1600, and his last, if we except a posthumous one, in 1636. Decker belongs to that period during which what is called the old English drama was produced; and the fact that he takes considerable rank among the great writers who were his contemporaries, is sufficient proof of there being some genuine excellence in his works. It was long the fashion, indeed, to represent him as but a middling poet; the author of the Biographia Dramatica seems to wonder at such men as Webster, Rowley, and Ford not having thought themselves disgraced by writing in conjunction with him; and we believe that till about the commencement of the present century his writings were very generally neglected. Since then, however, they have been much more popular. They have been—some of them at least—carefully edited, and have called forth the admiration of such excellent critics as Hazlitt and Charles Lamb, the latter of whom says that he "had poetry enough for anything," and suggests the probability of his having written the finest passages in the "Virgin Martyr." Hazlitt has pronounced the character of Friscobaldo in the "Honest Whore" to be perfect in its way, as a picture of a broken-hearted father with a sneer on his lips and a tear-drop in his eye. But it must be confessed that there is great inequality in his productions. His best plays are "Old Fortunatus" and the "Honest Whore." These, however, are so very excellent as to character, plot, and language, that if the rest had been of the same description, their author would have perhaps stood nearer to Shakspeare than any of his contemporaries. Of Decker's life very little is known; but from the particulars which have come down to us, we can gather that it was not happy, and that in spite of his great industry he was constantly harassed with pecuniary difficulties; the latter circumstance attributable probably to those irregularities that characterized many of the dramatic writers of that age. According to Oldys, he passed three years in the king's bench prison. He was at one time connected with Jonson in writing for the Lord Admiral's theatre; but a quarrel, the origin of which does not appear, latterly sprang up between them. Rare Ben, who of all men could never "bear a rival near the throne," satirized him under the name of Crispinus in his Poetaster, the Dunciad of that author. Decker amply returned the compliment in his "Satiro-Mastix, or Untrussing a Humorous Poet." Mr. Gilchrist has attempted to prove that Marston was intended by the character of Crispinus. Decker wrote in conjunction with Middleton and Day, besides those already mentioned. He produced, according to Coller, either wholly or in part, above twenty plays. He was also the author of many pamphlets. The most popular of his prose writings was "Gul's Horne Book, or Fashions to please all
