Authorities.—P.M. Nitscher, Les Hollandais au Brésil (the Hague, 1853), the work of a Dutch author writing in French. See also Southey, History of Brazil (London, 1810), and E.B. O’Callaghan, History of New Netherland (New York, 1846-1848).
DUTENS, LOUIS (1730-1812), French writer, was born at Tours, of Protestant parents, on the 15th of January 1730. He went to London, where his uncle was a jeweller, and there obtained a situation as tutor in a private family. In this position he learnt Greek and mathematics, and studied oriental languages, also Italian and Spanish. He took orders, and was appointed chaplain and secretary to the English minister at the court of Turin in October 1758. In 1760-1762 he was chargé d’affaires at Turin. Lord Bute, before retiring from office in 1763, procured him a pension. He again went to Turin as chargé d’affaires; and during this second mission he collected and published a complete edition of the works of Leibnitz (Geneva, 6 vols., 1768) and wrote his Recherches sur l’origine des découvertes attribuées aux modernes (1766). On his return to England the duke of Northumberland procured him the living of Elsdon, in Northumberland, and made him tutor to his son. In 1775 he became a member of the French Academy of Inscriptions and a fellow of the Royal Society. Dutens was for a third time chargé d’affaires at Turin. He was in Paris in 1783, and returned to London the following year. He died in London on the 23rd of May 1812.
The principal works of Dutens were his Recherches sur l’origine des découvertes attribuées aux modernes (1766, 2 vols.); Appel au bon sens (London, 1777, 8vo), directed in defence of Christianity against the French philosophers, and published anonymously; Explication de quelques médailles de peuples, de rois et de villes grecques et phéniciennes (London, 1773); Explication de quelques médailles du cabinet de Duane (1774); Troisième dissertation sur quelques médailles grecques et phéniciennes (1776); Logique, ou l’art de raisonner (1773); Des pierres précieuses et des pierres fines, avec les moyens de les connaître et de les évaluer (Paris, 1776); Itinéraire des routes les plus fréquentées, ou journal d’un voyage aux principales villes d’Europe (Paris, 1775), frequently republished; Considérations théologiques sur les moyens de réunir toutes les églises chrétiennes (1798); Œuvres mêlées, containing his most important works published up to the date (London, 1797, 4 vols.); L’Ami des étrangers qui voyagent en Angleterre (1789, 8vo); Histoire de ce qui s’est passé pour le rétablissement d’une régence en Angleterre (1789); Recherches sur le tems le plus reculé de l’usage des voûtes chez les anciens (1795); Mémoires d’un voyageur qui se repose (Paris, 1786, 3 vols.). The first two volumes of the last-named work contain the life of the author, written in a romantic style; the third bears the title of Dutensiana, and is filled with remarks, anecdotes and bons mots. (See memoir of Dutens in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1812.)
DUTROCHET, RENÉ JOACHIM HENRI (1776-1847), French physiologist, was born at Château de Néon (Indre) on the 14th of November 1776, and died at Paris on the 4th of February 1847. In 1799 he entered the military marine at Rochefort, but soon left it to join the Vendean army. In 1802 he began the study of medicine at Paris; and he was subsequently appointed chief physician to the hospital at Burgos. After an attack of typhus he returned in 1809 to France, where he devoted himself to the study of the natural sciences. His scientific publications were numerous, and covered a wide field, but his most noteworthy work was embryological. His “Recherches sur l’accroissement et la reproduction des végétaux,” published in the Mémoires du muséum d’histoire naturelle for 1821, procured him in that year the French Academy’s prize for experimental physiology. In 1837 appeared his Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire anatomique et physiologique des végétaux et des animaux, a collection of all his more important biological papers.
DUTT, MICHAEL MADHU SUDAN (1824-1873), the greatest native poet of India in the 19th century, was born at Sagandari, in the district of Jessore in Bengal, on the 25th of January 1824. His father was a pleader in Calcutta, and young Madhu Sudan received his education in the Hindu college of Calcutta, and was the foremost among the distinguished young students of his day, many of whom lived to make their mark in the literature and social progress of their country. Madhu Sudan left the college in 1842, and in the following year ran away to avoid a marriage into which his father wished to force him, and embraced the Christian religion. Continuing his studies now in the Bishop’s college, Madhu Sudan learnt Greek and Latin and some modern European languages, and in 1848 went to Madras. There he wrote English verses, and married the daughter of a European indigo-planter, but was soon separated from her. He then united himself with an English lady, the daughter of an educational officer; and she remained true to him through life amidst all his misfortunes, and was the mother of the children he left. With her Madhu Sudan returned to Calcutta in 1856, and soon discovered that the true way for winning literary distinction was by writing in his own language, not by composing verses in English. His three classical dramas—Sarmishtha, Padmavati, and Krishna Kumari—appeared between 1858 and 1861, and were recognized as works of merit. But his great ambition was to introduce blank verse into Bengali. His knowledge of Sanskrit poetry, his appreciation of the Greek and Latin epics, and his admiration of Dante and of Milton, impelled him to break through the fetters of the Bengali rhyme, and to attempt a spirited and elevated style in blank verse. His first poem in blank verse, the Tilottama, was only a partial success; but his great epic which followed in 1861, the Meghanad-Badha, took the Indian world by surprise, and at once established his reputation as the greatest poet of his age and country. He took his story from the old Sanskrit epic, the Ramayana, but the beauty of the poem is all his own, and he imparted to it the pathos and sweetness of Eastern ideas combined with the vigour and loftiness of Western thought. In 1862 Madhu Sudan left for Europe. He lived in England for some years, and was called to the bar; and in 1867 returned to his country to practise as a barrister in Calcutta. But the poet was unfitted for a lawyer’s vocation; his liabilities increased, his health failed, his powers declined. He still wrote much, but nothing of enduring merit. His brilliant but erratic life ended in a Calcutta hospital on the 29th of June 1873.
DUTY (from “due,” that which is owing, O. Fr. deu, dû, past participle of devoir; Lat. debere, debitum; cf. “debt”), a term loosely applied to any action or course of action which is regarded as morally incumbent, apart from personal likes and dislikes or any external compulsion. Such action must be viewed in relation to a principle, which may be abstract in the highest sense (e.g. obedience to the dictates of conscience) or based on local and personal relations. That a father and his children have mutual duties implies that there are moral laws regulating their relationship; that it is the duty of a servant to obey his master within certain limits is part of a definite contract, whereby he becomes a servant engaging to do certain things for a specified wage. Thus it is held that it is not the duty of a servant to infringe a moral law even though his master should command it. For the nature of duty in the abstract, and the various criteria on which it has been based, see [Ethics].