servation of the diffusion of gases
was recorded by him in 1823 when he noticed the escape of hydrogen from
a cracked jar, attributing it to the capillary action of fissures. His
works included treatises on pneumatic chemistry (1821-1825) and the
chemistry of fermentation (1822).

A correspondence which he carried on with Goethe and Charles August,
grand-duke of Saxe-Weimar, was collected and published at Weimar by
Schade in 1856.

DOBREE, PETER PAUL (1782-1825), English classical scholar and critic,
was born in Guernsey. He was educated at Reading school under Richard
Valpy and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was elected fellow. He
was appointed regius professor of Greek in 1823, and died in Cambridge
on the 24th of September 1825. He was an intimate friend of Porson, whom
he took as his model in textual criticism, although he showed less
caution in conjectural emendation. After Porson's death (1808) Dobree
was commissioned with Monk and Blomfield to edit his literary remains,
which had been bequeathed to Trinity College. Illness and a subsequent
journey to Spain delayed the work until 1820, when Dobree brought out
the _Plutus_ of Aristophanes (with his own and Porson's notes) and all
Porson's _Aristophanica_. Two years later he published the _Lexicon_ of
Photius from Porson's transcript of the Gale MS. in Trinity College
library, to which he appended a _Lexicon rhetoricum_ from the margin of
a Cambridge MS. of Harpocration. James Scholefield, his successor in the
Greek professorship, brought out selections from his notes
(_Adversaria_, 1831-1833) on Greek and Latin authors (especially the
orators), and a reprint of the _Lexicon rhetoricum_, together with notes
on inscriptions (1834-1835). The latest edition of the _Adversaria_ is
by William Wagner (in Bohn's _Collegiate Series_, 1883).

An appreciative estimate of Dobree as a scholar will be found in J.
Bake's _Scholica hypomnemata_, ii. (1839) and in the _Philological
Museum_, i. (1832) by J. C. Hare.

DOBRENTEI, GABOR [GABRIEL] (1786-1851), Hungarian philologist and
antiquary, was born at Nagyszollos in 1786. He completed his studies at
the universities of Wittenberg and Leipzig, and was afterwards engaged
as a tutor in Transylvania. At this period he originated and edited the
_Erdelyi Muzeum_, which, notwithstanding its important influence on the
development of the Magyar language and literature, soon failed for want
of support.