DENNIS, JUIIN, was the son of a saddler of London, where be was born in 1657. Having been put to school at Harrow, lie was sent thence in 1675 to Cahn College, Cambridge. In 1679 ho removed to Trinity 11111, in the same university, and in 1633 took his degree of A.M. There appears to be no foundation for the story told in Baker's 'Biographia Dramatica; that be was expelled from college for attempting to stab a person in the dark. On leaving the university he spent some time in travelling through France and Italy. Returning home from the continent, full of dislike to the manners of the people, and especially to the modes of government he had seen there, and finding himself in possession of a small fortune, the bequest of an uncle, he set up for a politician of the Whig school, and formed connexions with several of the leading political and lite rary characters of that party. As a man of letters however he did not confine his acquaintance within the limits of his political par tialities ; Dryden and Wycherley, for instance, as well as Halifax and Congreve, are enumerated among his friends. In the idle and expensive life which he now led he soon dissipated what property he had, and for the rest of his life he was obliged to depend for subsist ence upon his pen, and the still more precarious resource of private patronage. No experience however seems to have cored his impro vidence. in his difficulties the duke of Marlborough procured for him the place of a waiter at the Custom house, a sinecure worth 120/. a year ; but he was not long in selling this appointment, and it was only the kind interference of Lord Halifax that induced him to reserve out of it a small annuity for a certain term of years. This term be outlived, and, to add to his miseries, he became blind in his last days, so that he was in the end reduced to solicit the charity of the public by having a play acted for his benefit, which some of his old friends, and some also whom he had made his enemies, interested themselves in getting up. Dennis died in 1734. Throughout his life the violence and suspiciousness of his temper were such that he rarely made a friend or an acquaintance in whom his distempered vision did not soon discover an enemy in disguise. Yet Dennis wanted neither talents nor acquirements. Many of his literary productions show much acuteness and good sense, as well as considerable learning. He
began to publish occasional pieces in verse, mostly of a satirical cast, about 1690, and from that time till near his death his name was constantly before the public as a small poet, a political and critical pamphleteer, and a writer for the theatres. His poems and plays were sufficiently worthless; but one or two of the latter obtained some notoriety chiefly from the fuel they administered to certain popular prejudices that happened to rage at tho time. His Liberty Asserted,' in particular, was acted with great applause in the Lincoln's Inn Fields theatre in 1704, in consequence of the violent strain of its Anti-Galliciem, a sentiment with which the audience, in the excite ment of the war with France, was then peculiarly disposed to sympathise. Connected with this play are the two well-known stories about Dennis, during the negotiations that preceded the peace of Utrecht, going to the Duke of Marlborough and asking his grace to get an article inserted in the treaty to protect his person from the French king ; and about his afterwards running away from the house of a friend with whom be was staying on the Sussex coast, because he thought that a vessel he saw approaching was corning to seize him. Another of his dramatic attempts, his 'Appius and Virginia,' acted and damned at Drury Lane in 1709, is famous for the new kind of thunder introduced in it, and which the author, when a few nights after he found the players making use of the contrivance in Macbeth, rove In the pit and claimed with an oath as his thunder. Dennis's thunder is said to be that still used at tho theatres.
Among the ablest of his critical disquisitions were his attacks upon Addiaon's 'Cato,' and Pope's 'Essay on Man.' Addison bad been among the number of his friends, but Dennis supposing that some thing in the second and third numbers of the ' Spectator' was intended as an offensive allusion to him, took the opportunity of avenging himself when ' Cato' appeared. Much of bia criticism nevertheless has gene rally been deemed by no means the product of more spite. It was upon this occasion that Pope, in conjunction with Swift, wrote The Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris, concerning the strange and deplorable Frenzy of Mr. John Dennis, an Officer in the Custom house.' Pope also stuck Dennis in his 'Essay on Criticism,' and afterwards gibbeted him much more conspicuously in the Dunciad.'