See G. T. Morgan, B.A. Rep., 1902; J. Cain, Diazo Compounds, 1908.
DIAZOMATA (Gr. διάζωμα, a girdle), in architecture, the landing places and passages which were carried round the semicircle and separated the upper and lower tiers in a Greek theatre.
DIBDIN, CHARLES (1745-1814), British musician, dramatist, novelist, actor and song-writer, the son of a parish clerk, was born at Southampton on or before the 4th of March 1745, and was the youngest of a family of eighteen. His parents designing him for the church, he was sent to Winchester; but his love of music early diverted his thoughts from the clerical profession. After receiving some instruction from the organist of Winchester cathedral, where he was a chorister from 1756 to 1759, he went to London at the age of fifteen. Here he was placed in a music warehouse in Cheapside, but he soon abandoned this employment to become a singing actor at Covent Garden. On the 21st of May 1762 his first work, an operetta entitled The Shepherd’s Artifice, with words and music by himself, was produced at this theatre. Other works followed, his reputation being firmly established by the music to the play of The Padlock, produced at Drury Lane under Garrick’s management in 1768, the composer himself taking the part of Mungo with conspicuous success. He continued for some years to be connected with Drury Lane, both as composer and as actor, and produced during this period two of his best known works, The Waterman (1774) and The Quaker (1775). A quarrel with Garrick led to the termination of his engagement. In The Comic Mirror he ridiculed prominent contemporary figures through the medium of a puppet show. In 1782 he became joint manager of the Royal circus, afterwards known as the Surrey theatre. In three years he lost this position owing to a quarrel with his partner. His opera Liberty Hall, containing the successful songs “Jock Ratlin,” “The Highmettled Racer,” and “The Bells of Aberdovey,” was produced at Drury Lane theatre on the 8th of February 1785. In 1788 he sailed for the East Indies, but the vessel having put in to Torbay in stress of weather, he changed his mind and returned to London. In a musical variety entertainment called The Oddities, he succeeded in winning marked popularity with a number of songs that included “’Twas in the good ship ‘Rover’,” “Saturday Night at Sea,” “I sailed from the Downs in the ‘Nancy,’” and the immortal “Tom Bowling,” written on the death of his eldest brother, Captain Thomas Dibdin, at whose invitation he had planned his visit to India. A series of monodramatic entertainments which he gave at his theatre, Sans Souci, in Leicester Square, brought his songs, music and recitations more prominently into notice, and permanently established his fame as a lyric poet. It was at these entertainments that he first introduced many of those sea-songs which so powerfully influenced the national spirit. The words breathe the simple loyalty and dauntless courage that are the cardinal virtues of the British sailor, and the music was appropriate and naturally melodious. Their effect in stimulating and ennobling the spirit of the navy during the war with France was so marked as to call for special acknowledgment. In 1803 Dibdin was rewarded by government with a pension of £200 a year, of which he was only for a time deprived under the administration of Lord Grenville. During this period he opened a music shop in the Strand, but the venture was a failure. Dibdin died of paralysis in London on the 25th of July 1814. Besides his Musical Tour through England (1788), his Professional Life, an autobiography published in 1803, a History of the Stage (1795), and several smaller works, he wrote upwards of 1400 songs and about thirty dramatic pieces. He also wrote the following novels:—The Devil (1785); Hannah Hewitt (1792); The Younger Brother (1793). An edition of his songs by G. Hogarth (1843) contains a memoir of his life. His two sons, Charles and Thomas John Dibdin (q.v.), whose works are often confused with those of their father, were also popular dramatists in their day.
DIBDIN, THOMAS FROGNALL (1776-1847), English bibliographer, born at Calcutta in 1776, was the son of Thomas Dibdin, the sailor brother of Charles Dibdin. His father and mother both died on the way home to England in 1780, and Thomas was brought up by a maternal uncle. He was educated at St John’s College, Oxford, and studied for a time at Lincoln’s Inn. After an unsuccessful attempt to obtain practice as a provincial counsel at Worcester, he was ordained a clergyman at the close of 1804, being appointed to a curacy at Kensington. It was not until 1823 that he received the living of Exning in Sussex. Soon afterwards he was appointed by Lord Liverpool to the rectory of St Mary’s, Bryanston Square, which he held until his death on the 18th of November 1847. The first of his numerous bibliographical works was his Introduction to the Knowledge of Editions of the Classics (1802), which brought him under the notice of the third Earl Spencer, to whom he owed much important aid in his bibliographical pursuits. The rich library at Althorp was thrown open to him; he spent much of his time in it, and in 1814-1815 published his Bibliotheca Spenceriana. As the library was not open to the general public, the information given in the Bibliotheca was found very useful, but since its author was unable even to read the characters in which the books he described were written, the work was marred by the errors which more or less characterize all his productions. This fault of inaccuracy however was less obtrusive in his series of playful, discursive works in the form of dialogues on his favourite subject, the first of which, Bibliomania (1809), was republished with large additions in 1811, and was very popular, passing through numerous editions. To the same class belonged the Bibliographical Decameron, a larger work, which appeared in 1817. In 1810 he began the publication of a new and much extended edition of Ames’s Typographical Antiquities. The first volume was a great success, but the publication was checked by the failure of the fourth volume, and was 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.