DEFAUCONPRET, French litterateur; translator of the novels of Sir Walter Scott and Fenimore Cooper (1767-1843).

DEFENDER OF THE FAITH, a title conferred by Pope Leo X. in 1521 upon Henry VIII. for his defence of the Catholic faith in a treatise against Luther, and retained ever since by the sovereigns of England, though revoked by Pope Paul III. in 1535 in consequence of Henry’s apostasy.

DEFFAND, MARIE, MARQUISE DU, a woman of society, famed for her wit and gallantry; corresponded with the eminent philosophes of the time, in particular Voltaire, as well as with Horace Walpole; her letters are specially brilliant, and display great shrewdness; she is characterised by Prof.  Saintsbury as “the typical French lady of the eighteenth century”; she became blind in 1753, but retained her relish for society, though at length she entered a monastery, where she died (1697-1780).

DEFOE, DANIEL, author of “Robinson Crusoe,” born in London; bred for the Dissenting ministry; turned to business, but took chiefly to politics; was a zealous supporter of William III.; his ironical treatise, “The Shortest Way with Dissenters” (1703), which, treated seriously, was burned by order of the House of Commons, led to his imprisonment and exposed him for three days to the pillory, amidst the cheers, however, not the jeers, of the mob; in prison wrote a “Hymn to the Pillory,” and started his Review; on his release he was employed on political missions, and wrote a “History of the Union,” which he contributed to promote.  The closing years of his life were occupied mainly with literary work, and it was then, in 1719, he produced his world-famous “Robinson Crusoe”; has been described as “master of the art of forging a story and imposing it on the world for truth.”  “His circumstantial invention,” as Stopford Brooke remarks, “combined with a style which exactly fits it by its simplicity, is the root of the charm of his great story” (1661-1731).

DEGE`RANDO, BARON, a French philanthropist and philosopher, born at Lyons, of Italian descent; wrote “History of Philosophy,” long in repute as the best French work on the subject (1772-1842).

DEIANEIRA, the wife of Hercules, whose death she had been the unwitting cause of by giving him the poisoned robe which NESSUS (q. v.) had sent her as potent to preserve her husband’s love; on hearing the fatal result she killed herself in remorse and despair.

DEIPHOBUS, a son of Priam and Hecuba, second in bravery to Hector; married Helen after the death of Paris, and was betrayed by her to the Greeks.

DEIR-AL-KAMAR, a town in Syria, once the capital of the Druses, on a terrace in the heart of the Lebanon Mountains.

DEISM, belief on purely rational grounds in the existence of God, and distinguished from theism as denying His providence.

DEISTS, a set of free-thinkers of various shades, who in England, in the 17th and 18th centuries, discarded revelation and the supernatural generally, and sought to found religion on a purely rational basis.