Cotta, Caius, a famous Roman orator, partly contemporary with Cicero,
who mentions him with honour
Courland, a province on the Baltic once belonging to Poland since 1795
to Russia
Coventry, Solicitor-General of England in 1616, Attorney-General in 1620
and Lord Keeper in 1625
Cradock, Joseph, a versatile writer and actor whose rambling Literary
and Miscellaneous Memoirs contain several anecdotes of Johnson and his
circle (1742-1826)
Curll and Osborne, two notorious booksellers who owe their immortality
to Pope’s Dunciad
Curtius, the noble Roman youth who leaped into the chasm in the Forum
and so closed it by the sacrifice of Rome’s most precious possession--a
good citizen
DACIER, Andrew, a French scholar who edited the “Delphin” edition of the
classics for the Dauphin, and translated many of them (1651-1722)
Dangerfield, Thomas, Popish plot discoverer and false witness
(1650?-1685)
Davies, Tom, the actor-bookseller who wrote the Memoirs of David
Garrick, and was one of Johnson’s circle (1712-85). “The famous dogma
of the old physiologists” is “corruptio unius generatio est alterius”
(Notes and Queries, Ser. 8, vol. ix., p. 56)
Davila, a famous French soldier and historian who served under Henry of
Navarre; wrote the famous History of the Civil War in France (1576-1631)
Della Crusca, the signature of Robert Merry (1755-98), the leader of
a mutual-admiration band of poetasters, who had their head-quarters at
Florence, and hence called themselves the Della Cruscans. Gifford (q.v.)
pulverised them in his Baviad and Merviad
Dentatus, the old-type Roman who, after many victories and taking
immense booty, retired to a small farm which he himself tilled
Desfontaines, a Jesuit who put out a pirated edition of Voltaire’s La
Ligue
Dessaix, a distinguished, upright, and chivalrous French general under
Napoleon, who fell at Marengo (1800)
Diafoirus, the name of two pedantic characters in Moliere’s Malade
Imaginaire
Diatessaron, a harmony of the gospels, the earliest example being that
compiled by Tatian c.170 A.D.