DELA’DA, the tooth of Buddah, preserved in the Malegawa temple at Kandy.  The natives guard it with the greatest jealousy, from a belief that whoever possesses it acquires the right to govern Ceylon.  When the English (in 1815) obtained possession of this palladium, the natives submitted without resistance.

DELASERRE (Captain Philip), a friend of Harry Bertram.—­Sir W. Scott, Guy Mannering (time, George II.).

DE’LIA, Diana; so called from the island Delos, where she was born.  Similarly, Apollo was called Delius.  Milton says that Eve, e’en

  Delia’s self,
  In gait surpassed and goddess-like deport,
  Though not as she with bow and quiver armed.

Paradise Lost, ix. 338, etc. (1665).

Delia, any female sweetheart.  She is one of the shepherdesses in Virgil’s Eclogues.  Tibullus, the Roman poet, calls his lady-love “Delia,” but what her real name was is not certain.

Delia, the lady-love of James Hammond’s elegies, was Miss Dashwood, who died in 1779.  She rejected his suit, and died unmarried.  In one of the elegies the poet imagines himself married to her, and that they were living happily together till death, when pitying maids would tell of their wondrous loves.

DELIAN KING (The).  Apollo or the sun is so called in the Orphic hymn,

  Oft as the Delian king with Sirius holds
  The central heavens.

Akenside, Hymn to the Naiads (1767).

DELIGHT OF MANKIND (The), Titus the Roman emperor, A.D.40, (79-81).

  Titus indeed gave one short evening gleam,
  More cordial felt, as in the midst it spread
  Of storm and horror:  “The Delight of Men.”

Thomson, Liberty, in. (1725).

DELLA CRUSCA SCHOOL, originally applied in 1582 to a society in Florence, established to purify the national language and sift from it all its impurities; but applied in England to a brotherhood of poets (at the close of the last century) under the leadership of Mrs. Piozzi.  This school was conspicuous for affectation and high-flown panegyrics on each other.  It was stamped out by Gifford, in The Baviad, in 1794, and The Moeviad, in 1796.  Robert Merry, who signed himself Della Crusca, James Cobb, a farce-writer, James Boswell (biographer of Dr. Johnson), O’Keefe, Morton, Reynolds, Holcroft, Sheridan, Colman the younger, Mrs. H. Cowley, and Mrs. Robinson were its best exponents.

DEL’PHINE, (2 syl.), the heroine and title of a novel by Mde. de Stael.  Delphine is a charming character, who has a faithless lover, and dies of a broken heart.  This novel, like Corinne, was written during her banishment from France by Napoleon I., when she travelled in Switzerland and Italy.  It is generally thought that “Delphine” was meant for the authoress herself (1802).

DELPHINE CLASSICS (The), a set of Latin classics edited in France for the use of the grand dauphin (son of Louis XIV.).  Huet was chief editor, assisted by Montausier and Bossuet.  They had thirty-nine scholars working under them.  The indexes of these classics are very valuable.