DENNIS, JOHN (1657-1734).—­Critic, etc., s. of a saddler, was b. in London, and ed. at Harrow and Caius Coll., Camb., from the latter of which he was expelled for stabbing a fellow-student, and transferred himself to Trinity Hall.  He attached himself to the Whigs, in whose interest he wrote several bitter and vituperative pamphlets.  His attempts at play-writing were failures; and he then devoted himself chiefly to criticising the works of his contemporaries.  In this line, while showing some acuteness, he aroused much enmity by his ill-temper and jealousy.  Unfortunately for him, some of those whom he attacked, such as Pope and Swift, had the power of conferring upon him an unenviable immortality.  Embalmed in The Dunciad, his name has attained a fame which no work of his own could have given it.  Of Milton, however, he showed a true appreciation.  Among his works are Rinaldo and Armida (1699), Appius and Virginia (1709), Reflections Critical and Satirical (1711), and Three Letters on Shakespeare.  He d. in straitened circumstances.

DE QUINCEY, THOMAS (1785-1859).—­Essayist and miscellaneous writer, s. of a merchant in Manchester, was b. there.  The aristocratic “De” was assumed by himself, his f., whom he lost while he was still a child, having been known by the name of Quincey, and he claimed descent from a Norman family.  His Autobiographic Sketches give a vivid picture of his early years at the family residence of Greenheys, and show him as a highly imaginative and over-sensitive child, suffering hard things at the hands of a tyrannical elder brother.  He was ed. first at home, then at Bath Grammar School, next at a private school at Winkfield, Wilts, and in 1801 he was sent to the Manchester Grammar School, from which he ran away, and for some time rambled in Wales on a small allowance made to him by his mother.  Tiring of this, he went to London in the end of 1802, where he led the strange Bohemian life related in The Confessions.  His friends, thinking it high time to interfere, sent him in 1803 to Oxf., which did not, however, preclude occasional brief interludes in London, on one of which he made his first acquaintance with opium, which was to play so prominent and disastrous a part in his future life.  In 1807 he became acquainted with Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey, and soon afterwards with C. Lamb.  During the years 1807-9 he paid various visits to the Lakes, and in the latter year he settled at Townend, Grasmere, where Wordsworth had previously lived.  Here he pursued his studies, becoming gradually more and more enslaved by opium, until in 1813 he was taking from 8000 to 12,000 drops daily.  John Wilson (Christopher North), who was then living at Elleray, had become his friend, and brought him to Edinburgh occasionally, which ended in his passing the latter part of his life in that city.  His marriage to Margaret Simpson,