Delphin Classics.—For the use of the dauphin, son of Louis XIV. the writings of thirty-nine Latin authors were collected and published in sixty volumes. Notes and an index were added to each work. An edition of the Delphin Classics was published in London in the year 1818.
Delphine, Madame.—Old Creole Days, George W. Cable. A free quadroon connected with the splendor of Lafitte, the smuggler and patriot. Madame Delphine disowned her beautiful daughter Olive in order to assure to her the rights of a white woman.
Demetrius (de-mē´tri-us).—Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare. The young Athenian to whom Egeno promised his daughter Hermia in marriage.
Dempster, Janet.—A character from George Eliot’s Scenes From Clerical Life. She was a woman of generous impulse, succumbed to drink through the brutality of her husband, but was restored by a clergyman to a life of nobility.
De Profundus.—Out of the Depths. The one hundred and thirtieth Psalm is so called from the first two words in the Latin version. In the Catholic liturgy it is sung when the dead are committed to the grave.
Deronda, Daniel.—One of George Eliot’s strongest character sketches in her novel of the same name.
Deserted Village, The.—A poem by Oliver Goldsmith. It was “instantaneously popular. Two new editions of it were called for in the following month, and a fourth in August, and passages from the poem were in every mouth, and the topics which it suggested, of depopulation, luxury, and landlordism, were discussed in connection with it.”
The Deserted Village has been identified with Lissoy, a quaint Irish village in the parish of Kilkenny West, of which Goldsmith’s father was the pastor, and whose natural features are accurately described in the poem.
Desmas.—The repentant thief is so called in The Story of Joseph of Arimathea. Longfellow, in The Golden Legend, calls him Dumachus. The impenitent thief is called Gestas, but Longfellow calls him Titus.
Dhu, Roderick.—A highland chieftain and outlaw in Scott’s poem Lady of the Lake, cousin of Ellen Douglas, and also her suitor. He is slain by James Fitz-James.