VOLUME VII SLICE IX Dagupan to David (continued 11)

Acting under the advice of Lyell and Hooker, Darwin then began to prepare what was to become the great work of his life. It appeared on the 24th of November 1859, with the full title, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. The whole edition of 1250 copies was exhausted on the day of issue. The first four chapters explain the operation of artificial selection by man and of natural selection in consequence of the struggle for existence. The fifth chapter deals with the laws of variation and causes of modification other than natural selection. The five succeeding chapters consider difficulties in the way of a belief in evolution generally as well as in natural selection. The three remaining chapters (omitting the recapitulation which occupies the last) deal with the evidence for evolution. The theory which suggested a cause of evolution is thus given the foremost place, and the evidence for the existence of evolution considered last of all. This method of presentation was no doubt adopted because it was just the want of a reasonable motive-cause which more than anything else prevented the acceptance of evolution. But the other side of the book must not be eclipsed by the brilliant theory of Darwin and Wallace. The evidence for evolution itself had never before been thought out and marshalled in a manner which bears any comparison with that of Darwin in the Origin, and the work would have been in the highest degree epoch-making had it consisted of the later chapters alone. In the fifth chapter Darwin incorporated a certain proportion of the doctrines of Buffon,—modifications due to the direct influence of environment; and of Lamarck,—the hereditary effects of use and disuse. Lyell for a long time hesitated to accept the new teaching, and Darwin carried on a long correspondence with him. His public confession of faith was made at the anniversary dinner of the Royal Society in 1864. A storm of controversy arose over the book, reaching its height at the meeting of the British Association at Oxford in 1860, when the celebrated duel between T. H. Huxley and Bishop Wilberforce of Oxford took place. Throughout these struggles Huxley was the foremost champion for evolution and for fair play to natural selection, although he never entirely accepted the latter theory, holding that until man by his selection had made his domestic breed sterile inter se, there was no sufficient evidence that selection accounts for natural species which are thus separated by the barrier of sterility. The theory of natural selection was at first greatly misunderstood. Thus some writers thought it implied conscious choice in the animals themselves, others that it was the personification of some active power. By many it was thought to be practically the same idea as Lamarck’s. Herbert Spencer’s alternative phrase, “the survival of the fittest,” probably helped to spread a clear appreciation of Darwin’s meaning.

The history of opinion since 1859 may be summed up as follows. Evolution soon gained general acceptance, except among a certain number of those of middle or more advanced age at the time when the Origin appeared. Although natural selection had been an essential force in producing this conviction, there gradually grew up a tendency to minimize its importance in relation to the causes originally suggested by Buffon and Lamarck, which were ably presented and further elaborated by Herbert Spencer. In America a school of Neo-Lamarckians appeared, and for a time flourished under the inspiration of the vigorous personality of E. D. Cope. The writings of August Weismann next raised a controversy over the scope of heredity, assailing the very foundation of the hypotheses of Buffon, Lamarck and Herbert Spencer by demanding evidence that the “acquired characters” upon which they rest are capable of hereditary transmission. The quantitative determination of heredity has been the subject of much patient investigation under the leadership of Francis Galton. The question of isolation as a factor in species-formation has been greatly discussed, G. J. Romanes proposing, in his hypothesis of “Physiological Selection,” that the barrier of sterility may arise spontaneously by variation between two sets of individuals as the beginning instead of the climax of specific distinction. Others have fixed their attention upon the variations, which provided the material for natural selection, and have advocated the view that evolution proceeds by immense strides instead of the minute steps in which Darwin and Wallace believed. Others, again, have found significance in the artificial production of “monstrosities” or huge modifications during individual development. All through the period a varying proportion of naturalists, probably larger now than at any other time, has followed the founders of the theory, and has sought the motive-cause of evolution in “the accumulative power of natural selection,” which Darwin, as his first public statement indicates, looked upon “as by far the most important element in the production of new forms.” They hold, with Darwin and Wallace, that although variation provides the essential material, natural selection, from its accumulative power, is of such paramount importance that it may be said to create new species as truly as a man may be said to make a building out of the material provided by stones of various shapes, a metaphor suggested and elaborated by Darwin, and forming the concluding sentences of The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication. This, probably the second in importance of all his works, was published in 1868, and may be looked upon as a complete account of the material of which he had given a very condensed abstract in the first chapter of the Origin, together with the conclusions suggested by it. He finally brought together an immense number of apparently disconnected sets of observations under his “provisional hypothesis of pangenesis,” which assumes that every cell in the body, at every stage of growth and in maturity, is represented in each germ-cell by a gemmule. The germ-cell is only the meeting-place of gemmules, and the true reproductive power lies in the whole of the body-cells which despatch their representatives, hence “pangenesis.” There are reasons for believing that this infinitely complex conception, in which, as his letters show, he had great confidence, was forced upon Darwin in order to explain the hereditary transmission of acquired characters involved in the small proportion of Lamarckian doctrine which he incorporated. If such transmission does not occur, a far simpler hypothesis based on the lines of Weismann’s “continuity of the germ-plasm” is sufficient to account for the facts.

The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, was published in 1871; as the title implies, it really consists of two distinct works. The first, and by far the shorter, was the full justification of his statement in the Origin that “light would be thrown on the origin of man and his history.” In the second part he brought together a large mass of evidence in support of his hypothesis of sexual selection which he had briefly described in the 1858 essay. This hypothesis explains the development of colours and structures peculiar to one sex and displayed by it in courtship, by the preferences of the other sex. The majority of naturalists probably agree with Darwin in believing that the explanation is real, but relatively unimportant. It is interesting to note that only in this subject and those treated of in the Variation under Domestication had Darwin exhausted the whole of the material which he had collected. The Expression of the Emotions, published in 1872, offered a natural explanation of phenomena which appeared to be a difficulty in the way of the acceptance of evolution. In 1876 Darwin brought out his two previously published geological works on Volcanic Islands and South America as a single volume. The widely read Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms appeared in 1881. He also published various volumes on botanical subjects. The Fertilization of Orchids appeared in 1862. The subject of cross-fertilization of flowers was in Darwin’s mind, as shown by his note-book in 1837. In 1841 Robert Brown directed his attention to Christian Conrad Sprengel’s work (Berlin, 1793), which confirmed his determination to pursue this line of research. The Effects of Cross- and Self-Fertilization in the Vegetable Kingdom (1876) contained the direct evidence that the offspring of cross-fertilized individuals are more vigorous, as well as more numerous, than those produced by a self-fertilized parent. Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species appeared in 1877. It is here shown that each different form, although possessing both kinds of sexual organs, is specially adapted to be fertilized by the pollen of another form, and that when artificially fertilized by its own pollen less vigorous offspring, bearing some resemblance to hybrids, are produced. He says, “no little discovery of mine ever gave me so much pleasure as the making out the meaning of heterostyled flowers” (Autobiography). Climbing Plants was published in 1875, although it had, in large part, been communicated to the Linnean Society, in whose publications much of the material of several of his other works appeared. This inquiry into the nature of the movements of twining plants was suggested to him in a paper by Asa Gray. The Power of Movement in Plants (1880) was produced by him in conjunction with his son Francis. It was an inquiry into the minute power of movement possessed, he believed, by plants generally, out of which the larger movements of climbing plants of many different groups had been evolved. The work included an investigation of other kinds of plant movement due to light, gravity, &c., all of which he regarded as modifications of the one fundamental movement (circumnutation) which exists in a highly specialized form in climbing plants. Insectivorous Plants (1875) is principally concerned with the description of experiments on the Sun-dew (Drosera), although other insect-catching plants, such as Dionaea, are also investigated.

Charles Darwin’s long life of patient, continuous work, the most fruitful, the most inspiring, in the annals of modern science, came to an end on the 19th of April 1882. He was buried in Westminster Abbey on the 26th. It is of much interest to attempt to set forth some of the main characteristics of the man who did so much for modern science, and in so large a measure moulded the form of modern thought. Although his ill-health prevented Darwin, except on rare occasions, from attending scientific and social meetings, and thus from meeting and knowing the great body of scientific and intellectual workers of his time, probably no man has ever inspired a wider and deeper personal interest and affection. This was in part due to the intimate personal friends who represented him in the circles he was unable frequently to enter, but chiefly to the kindly, generous, and courteous nature which was revealed in his large correspondence and published writings, and especially in his treatment of opponents.

In a deeply interesting chapter of the Life and Letters Francis Darwin has given us his reminiscences of his father’s everyday life. Rising early, he took a short walk before breakfasting alone at 7.45, and then at once set to work, “considering the 1½ hours between 8.0 and 9.30 one of his best working times.” He then read his letters and listened to reading aloud, returning to work at about 10.30. At 12 or 12.15 “he considered his day’s work over,” and went for a walk, whether wet or fine. For a time he rode, but after accidents had occurred twice, was advised to give it up. After lunch he read the newspaper and wrote his letters or the MS. of his books. At about 3.0 he rested and smoked for an hour while being read to, often going to sleep. He then went for a short walk, and returning about 4.30, worked for an hour. After this he rested and smoked, and listened to reading until tea at 7.30, a meal which he came to prefer to late dinner. He then played two games of backgammon, read to himself, and listened to music and to reading aloud. He went to bed, generally very much tired, at 10.30, and was often much troubled by wakefulness and the activity of his thoughts. It is thus apparent that the number of hours devoted to work in each day was comparatively few. The immense amount he achieved was due to concentration during these hours, also to the unfailing and, because of his health, the necessary regularity of his life.

The appearance of Charles Darwin has been made well known in numerous portraits and statues. He was tall and thin, being about six feet high, but looked less because of a stoop, which increased towards the end of his life. As a young man he had been active, with considerable powers of endurance, and possessed in a marked degree those qualities of eye and hand which make the successful sportsman.

Charles Darwin was, as a young man, a believer in Christianity, and was sent to Cambridge with the idea that he would take orders. It is probable, however, that he had merely yielded to the influences of his home, without thinking much on the subject of religion. He first began to reflect deeply on the subject during the two years and a quarter which intervened between his return from the “Beagle” (October 2nd, 1836) and his marriage (January 29th, 1839). His own words are, “disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress.” His attitude was that of the tolerant unaggressive agnostic, sympathizing with and helping in the social and charitable influences of the English Church in his parish. He was evidently most unwilling that his opinions on religious matters should influence others, holding, as his son, Francis Darwin, says, “that a man ought not to publish on a subject to which he has not given special and continuous thought” (l.c. i. p. 305).

In addition to the personal qualities and powers of Charles Darwin, there were other contributing causes without which the world could never have reaped the benefit of his genius. It is evident that Darwin’s health could barely have endured the strain of working for a living, and that nothing would have been left over for his researches. A deep debt of gratitude is owing to his father for placing him in a position in which all his energy could be devoted to scientific work and thought. But his ill-health was such that this important and essential condition would have been insufficient without another even more essential. Francis Darwin, in the Life and Letters (i. pp. 159-160), writes these eloquent and pathetic words:—“No one indeed, except my mother, knows the full amount of suffering he endured, or the full amount of his wonderful patience. For all the latter years of his life she never left him for a night; and her days were so planned that all his resting hours might be shared with her. She shielded him from every avoidable annoyance, and omitted nothing that might save him trouble, or prevent him becoming over-tired, or that might alleviate the many discomforts of his ill-health. I hesitate to speak thus freely of a thing so sacred as the lifelong devotion which prompted all this constant and tender care. But it is, I repeat, a principal feature of his life, that for nearly forty years he never knew one day of the health of ordinary men, and that thus his life was one long struggle against the weariness and the strain of sickness. And this cannot be told without speaking of the one condition which enabled him to bear the strain and fight out the struggle to the end.”

Charles Darwin was honoured by the chief societies of the civilized world. He was made a knight of the Prussian order, “Pour le Mérite,” in 1867, a corresponding member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences in 1863, a fellow in 1878, and later in the same year a corresponding member of the French Institute in the botanical section. He received the Bressa prize of the Royal Academy of Turin, and the Baly medal of the Royal College of Physicians in 1879, the Wollaston medal of the Geological Society in 1859, a Royal medal of the Royal Society in 1853, and the Copley medal in 1864. His health prevented him from accepting the honorary degree which Oxford University wished to confer on him, but his own university had stronger claims, and he received its honorary LL.D. in 1877.

Two daughters and five sons survived him, four of the latter becoming prominent in the scientific world,—Sir George Howard (b. 1845), who became professor of astronomy and experimental philosophy at Cambridge in 1883; Francis (b. 1848), the distinguished botanist; Leonard (b. 1850), a major in the royal engineers, and afterwards well known as an economist; and Horace (b. 1851), civil engineer.

See The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, including an autobiographical chapter, edited by his son Francis Darwin (3 vols., London, 1887); Charles Darwin and the Theory of Natural Selection, by E. B. Poulton (London, 1896); Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, by Leonard Huxley (2 vols., London, 1900); A. R. Wallace, Darwinism (1889); G. J. Romanes, Darwin and after Darwin (1895). Also the article on T. H. Huxley.

(E. B. P.)

DARWIN, ERASMUS (1731-1802), English man of science and poet, was born at Elton, in Nottinghamshire, on the 12th of December 1731. After studying at St John’s College, Cambridge, and at Edinburgh, he settled in 1756 as a physician at Nottingham, but meeting with little success he moved in the following year to Lichfield. There he gained a large practice, and did much, both by example and by more direct effort, to diminish drunkenness among the lower classes. In 1781 he removed to Derby, where he died suddenly on the 18th of April 1802. The fame of Erasmus Darwin as a poet rests upon his Botanic Garden, though he also wrote The Temple of Nature, or the Origin of Society, a Poem, with Philosophical Notes (1803), and The Shrine of Nature (posthumously published). The Botanic Garden (the second part of which—The Loves of the Plants—was published anonymously in 1789, and the whole of which appeared in 1791) is a long poem in the decasyllabic rhymed couplet. Its merit lies in the genuine scientific enthusiasm and interest in nature which pervade it; and of any other poetic quality—except a certain, sometimes felicitous but oftener ill-placed, elaborated pomp of words—it may without injustice be said to be almost destitute. It was for the most part written laboriously, and polished with unsparing care, line by line, often as he rode from one patient to another, and it occupied the leisure hours of many years. The artificial character of the diction renders it in emotional passages stilted and even absurd, and makes Canning’s clever caricature—The Loves of the Triangles—often remarkably like the poem it satirizes: in some passages, however, it is not without a stately appropriateness. Gnomes, sylphs and nereids are introduced on almost every page, and personification is carried to an extraordinary excess. Thus he describes the Loves of the Plants according to the Linnaean system by means of a most ingenious but misplaced and amusing personification of each plant, and often even of the parts of the plant. It is significant that botanical notes are added to the poem, and that its eulogies of scientific men are frequent. Erasmus Darwin’s mind was in fact rather that of a man of science than that of a poet. His most important scientific work is his Zoonomia (1794-1796), which contains a system of pathology, and a treatise on generation, in which he, in the words of his famous grandson, Charles Robert Darwin, “anticipated the views and erroneous grounds of opinions of Lamarck.” The essence of his views is contained in the following passage, which he follows up with the conclusion “that one and the same kind of living filaments is and has been the cause of all organic life”:—

“Would it be too bold to imagine that, in the great length of time since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind,—would it be too bold to imagine that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which the great First Cause endued with animality, with the power of acquiring new parts, attended with new propensities, directed by irritations, sensations, volitions and associations, and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down these improvements by generation to its posterity, world without end!”

In 1799 Darwin published his Phytologia, or the Philosophy of Agriculture and Gardening (1799), in which he states his opinion that plants have sensation and volition. A paper on Female Education in Boarding Schools (1797) completes the list of his works.

Robert Waring Darwin (1766-1848), his third son by his first marriage, a doctor at Shrewsbury, was the father of the famous Charles Darwin; and Violetta, his eldest daughter by his second marriage, was the mother of Francis Galton.

See Anna Seward, Memoirs of the Life of Dr Darwin (1804); and Charles Darwin, Life of Erasmus Darwin, an introduction to an essay on his works by Ernst Krause (1879).

DASENT, SIR GEORGE WEBBE (1817-1896), English writer, was born in St Vincent, West Indies, on the 22nd of May 1817, the son of the attorney-general of that island. He was educated at Westminster school, King’s College, and Oxford, where he was a contemporary of J. T. Delane (q.v.), whose friend he had become at King’s College. On leaving the university in 1840 he was appointed to a diplomatic post in Stockholm. Here he met Jacob Grimm, and at his suggestion first interested himself in Scandinavian literature and mythology. In 1842 he published the results of his studies, a version of The Prose or Younger Edda, and in the following year he issued a Grammar of the Icelandic or Old-Norse Tongue, taken from the Swedish. Returning to England in 1845, he became assistant editor of The Times under Delane, whose sister he married; but he still continued his Scandinavian studies, publishing translations of various Norse stories. In 1853 he was appointed professor of English literature and modern history at King’s College, London. In 1861-1862 he visited Iceland, and subsequently published Gisli the Outlaw and other translations from the Icelandic. In 1870 he was appointed a civil service commissioner and consequently resigned his post on The Times. In 1876 he was knighted. He retired from the public service in 1892, and died at Ascot on the 11th of June 1896. In addition to the works mentioned above, he published The Story of Burnt Njal, from the Icelandic of the Njals Saga (1861).

See the Life of Delane (1908), by Arthur Irwin Dasent.

DASHKOV, CATHERINA ROMANOVNA VORONTSOV, Princess (1744-1810), Russian littérateur, was the third daughter of Count Roman Vorontsov, a member of the Russian senate, distinguished for his intellectual gifts. (For the family see Vorontsov.) She received an exceptionally good education, having displayed from a very early age the masculine ability and masculine tastes which made her whole career so singular. She was well versed in mathematics, which she studied at the university of Moscow, and in general literature her favourite authors were Bayle, Montesquieu, Boileau, Voltaire and Helvetius. While still a girl she was connected with the Russian court, and became one of the leaders of the party that attached itself to the grand duchess (afterwards empress) Catherine. Before she was sixteen she married Prince Mikhail Dashkov, a prominent Russian nobleman, and went to reside with him at Moscow. In 1762 she was at St Petersburg and took a leading part, according to her own account the leading part, in the coup d’état by which Catherine was raised to the throne. (See Catherine II.) Another course of events would probably have resulted in the elevation of the Princess Dashkov’s elder sister, Elizabeth, who was the emperor’s mistress, and in whose favour he made no secret of his intention to depose Catherine. Her relations with the new empress were not of a cordial nature, though she continued devotedly loyal. Her blunt manners, her unconcealed scorn of the male favourites that disgraced the court, and perhaps also her sense of unrequited merit, produced an estrangement between her and the empress, which ended in her asking permission to travel abroad. The cause of the final breach was said to have been the refusal of her request to be appointed colonel of the imperial guards. Her husband having meanwhile died, she set out in 1768 on an extended tour through Europe. She was received with great consideration at foreign courts, and her literary and scientific reputation procured her the entrée to the society of the learned in most of the capitals of Europe. In Paris she secured the warm friendship and admiration of Diderot and Voltaire. She showed in various ways a strong liking for England and the English. She corresponded with Garrick, Dr Blair and Principal Robertson; and when in Edinburgh, where she was very well received, she arranged to entrust the education of her son to Principal Robertson. In 1782 she returned to the Russian capital, and was at once taken into favour by the empress, who strongly sympathized with her in her literary tastes, and specially in her desire to elevate Russ to a place among the literary languages of Europe. Immediately after her return the princess was appointed “directeur” of the St Petersburg Academy of Arts and Sciences; and in 1784 she was named the first president of the Russian Academy, which had been founded at her suggestion. In both positions she acquitted herself with marked ability. She projected the Russian dictionary of the Academy, arranged its plan, and executed a part of the work herself. She edited a monthly magazine; and wrote at least two dramatic works, The Marriage of Fabian, and a comedy entitled Toissiokoff. Shortly before Catherine’s death the friends quarrelled over a tragedy which the princess had allowed to find a place in the publications of the Academy, though it contained revolutionary principles, according to the empress. A partial reconciliation was effected, but the princess soon afterwards retired from court. On the accession of the emperor Paul in 1796 she was deprived of all her offices, and ordered to retire to a miserable village in the government of Novgorod, “to meditate on the events of 1762.” After a time the sentence was partially recalled on the petition of her friends, and she was permitted to pass the closing years of her life on her own estate near Moscow, where she died on the 4th of January 1810.

Her son, the last of the Dashkov family, died in 1807 and bequeathed his fortune to his cousin Illarion Vorontsov, who thereupon by imperial licence assumed the name Vorontsov-Dashkov; and Illarion’s son, Illarion Ivanovich Vorontsov-Dashkov (b. 1837), held an appointment in the tsar’s household from 1881 to 1897.

The Memoirs of the Princess Dashkoff written by herself were published in 1840 in London in two volumes. They were edited by Mrs W. Bradford, who, as Miss Wilmot, had resided with the princess between 1803 and 1808, and had suggested their preparation.

DASS, PETTER (1647-1708), the “father” of modern Norwegian poetry, was the son of Peter Dundas, a Scottish merchant of Dundee, who, leaving his country about 1630 to escape the troubles of the Presbyterian church, settled in Bergen, and in 1646 married a Norse girl of good family. Petter Dass was born in 1647 on the island of Nord Herö; on the north coast of Norway. Seven years later his father died, and his mother placed him with his aunt, the wife of the priest of another little island-parish. In 1660 he was sent to school at Bergen, in 1665 to the university of Copenhagen, and in 1667 he began to earn his daily bread as a private tutor. In 1672 he was ordained priest, and remained till 1681 as under-chaplain at Nesne, a little parish near his birthplace; for eight years more he was resident chaplain at Nesne; and at last in 1689 he received the living of Alstahoug, the most important in the north of Norway. The rule of Alstahoug extended over all the neighbouring districts, including Dass’s native island of Herö, and its privileges were accompanied by great perils, for it was necessary to be constantly crossing stormy firths of sea. Dass lived here in quietude, with something of the honours and responsibilities of a bishop, brought up his family in a God-fearing way, and wrote endless reams of verses. In 1700 he asked leave to resign his living in favour of his son Anders Dass, but this was not permitted; in 1704, however, Anders became his father’s chaplain. About this time Petter went to Bergen, where he visited Dorothea Engelbrechtsdatter, with whom he had been for many years in correspondence. He continued to write till 1707, and died in August 1708. The materials for his biography are very numerous; he was regarded with universal curiosity and admiration in his lifetime; and, besides, he left a garrulous autobiography in verse. A portrait, painted in middle age, now in the church of Melhus, near Trondhjem, represents him in canonicals, with deep red beard and hair, the latter waved and silky, and a head of massive proportions. The face is full of fire and vigour. His writings passed in MS. from hand to hand, and few of them were printed in his lifetime. Nordlands Trompet (The Trumpet of Nordland), his greatest and most famous poem, was not published till 1739; Den norska Dale-Vise (The Norwegian Song of the Valley) appeared in 1696; the Aandelig Tidsfordriv (Spiritual Pastime), a volume of sacred poetry, was published in 1711. The Trumpet of Nordland remains as fresh as ever in the memories of the inhabitants of the north of Norway; boatmen, peasants, priests will alike repeat long extracts from it at the slightest notice, and its popularity is unbounded. It is a rhyming description of the province of Nordland, its natural features, its trades, its advantages and its drawbacks, given in dancing verse of the most breathless kind, and full of humour, fancy, wit and quaint learning. The other poems of Petter Dass are less universally read; they abound, however, in queer turns of thought, and fine homely fancies.

The collected writings of Dass were edited (3 vols., Christiania, 1873-1877) by Dr A. E. Eriksen.

DASYURE, a bookname for any member of the zoological family Dasyuridae. (See Marsupialia.) The name is better restricted to animals of the typical genus Dasyurus, sometimes called true Dasyures. These are mostly inhabitants of the Australian continent and Tasmania, where in the economy of nature they take the place of the smaller predaceous Carnivora, the cats, civets and weasels of other parts of the world. They hide themselves in the daytime in holes among rocks or in hollow trees, but prowl about at night in search of the small living mammals and birds which constitute their prey, and are to some extent arboreal in habit. The spot-tailed dasyure (D. maculatus), about the size of a cat, inhabiting Tasmania and Southern Australia, has transversely striated pads on the soles of the feet. These organs are also present in the North Australian dasyure (D. hallucatus) and the Papuan D. albopunctatus, and are regarded by Oldfield Thomas as indication of arboreal habits; in the common dasyure (D. viverrinus) from Tasmania and Victoria, and the black-tailed dasyure (D. geoffroyi) from South Australia, these feet-pads are absent, whence these species are believed to seek their prey on the ground. The ursine dasyure (Sarcophilus ursinus), often called the “Tasmanian Devil,” constitutes a distinct genus. In size it may be compared to an English badger; the general colour of the fur is black tinged with brown, with white patches on the neck, shoulders, rump and chest. It is a burrowing animal, of nocturnal habits, intensely carnivorous, and commits great depredations on the sheepyards and poultry-lofts of the settlers. In writing of this species Krefft says that one—by no means a large one—escaped from confinement and killed in two nights fifty-four fowls, six geese, an albatross and a cat. It was recaptured in what was considered a stout trap, with a door constructed of iron bars as thick as a lead pencil, but escaped by twisting this solid obstacle aside.

DATE PALM. The dates1 of commerce are the fruit of a species of palm, Phoenix dactylifera, a tree which ranges from the Canary Islands through Northern Africa and the south-east of Asia to India. It has been cultivated and much prized throughout most of these regions from the remotest antiquity. Its cultivation and use are described on the mural tablets of the ancient Assyrians. In Arabia it is the chief source of national wealth, and its fruit forms the staple article of food in that country. The tree has also been introduced along the Mediterranean shores of Europe; but as its fruit does not ripen so far north, the European plants are only used to supply leaves for the festival of Palm Sunday among Christians, and for the celebration of the Passover by Jews. It was introduced into the new world by early Spanish missionaries, and is now cultivated in the dry districts of the south-western United States and in Mexico. The date palm is a beautiful tree, growing to a height of from 60 to 80 ft., and its stem, which is strongly marked with old leaf-scars, terminates in a crown of graceful shining pinnate leaves. The flowers spring in branching spadices from the axils of the leaves, and as the trees are unisexual it is necessary in cultivation to fertilize the female flowers by artificial means. The fruit is oblong, fleshy and contains one very hard seed which is deeply furrowed on the inside. The fruit varies much in size, colour and quality under cultivation. Regarding this fruit, W. G. Palgrave (Central and Eastern Arabia) remarked: “Those who, like most Europeans at home, only know the date from the dried specimens of that fruit shown beneath a label in shop-windows, can hardly imagine how delicious it is when eaten fresh and in Central Arabia. Nor is it, when newly gathered, heating,—a defect inherent to the preserved fruit everywhere; nor does its richness, however great, bring satiety; in short it is an article of food alike pleasant and healthy.” In the oases of Sahara, and in other parts of Northern Africa, dates are pounded and pressed into a cake for food. The dried fruit used for dessert in European countries contains more than half its weight of sugar, about 6% of albumen, and 12% of gummy matter. All parts of the date palm yield valuable economic products. Its trunk furnishes timber for house-building and furniture; the leaves supply thatch; their footstalks are used as fuel, and also yield a fibre from which cordage is spun.

Date sugar is a valuable commercial product of the East Indies, obtained from the sap or toddy of Phoenix sylvestris, the toddy palm, a tree so closely allied to the date palm that it has been supposed to be the parent stock of all the cultivated varieties. The juice, when not boiled down to form sugar, is either drunk fresh, or fermented and distilled to form arrack. The uses of the other parts and products of this tree are the same as those of the date palm products. Date palm meal is obtained from the stem of a small species, Phoenix farinifera, growing in the hill country of southern India.

For further details see Sir G. Watt, Dictionary of the Economic Products of India (1892); and The Date Palm, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Plant Industry, Bulletin No. 53 (W. T. Swingle), 1904.

1 Lat. dactylus, finger, hence fruit of the date palm, gave O. Fr. date, mod. datte; distinguish “date,” in chronology, from Lat. datum, data, given, used at the beginning of a letter, &c., to show time and place of writing, e.g. Datum Romae.

DATIA, a native state of Central India, in the Bundelkhand agency. It lies in the extreme north-west of Bundelkhand, near Gwalior, and is surrounded on all sides by other states of Central India, except on the east where it meets the United Provinces. The state came under the British government after the treaty of Bassein in 1802. Area, 911 sq. m. Pop. (1901) 173,759. Estimated revenue, £70,000; tribute to Sindhia paid through the British Government, £1000. The chief, whose title is maharaja, is a Rajput of the Bundela clan, being descended from a younger son of a former chief of Orchha. The state suffered from famine in 1896-1897, and again to a less extent in 1899-1900. It is traversed by the branch of the Indian Midland railway from Jhansi to Gwalior. The town of Datia has a railway station, 16 m. from Jhansi. Pop. (1901) 24,071. It is surrounded by a stone wall, enclosing handsome palaces, with gardens; the palace of Bir Singh Deo, of the 17th century, is “one of the finest examples of Hindu domestic architecture in India” (Imperial Gazetteer of India, 1908).

DATIVE (Lat. dativus, giving or given, from dare, to give), the name, in grammar, of the case of the “indirect object,” the person or thing to or for whom or which anything is given or done. In law, the word signifies something, such as an office, which may be disposed of at will or pleasure, and is opposed to perpetual. In Scots law the term is applied to persons, duties or powers, appointed or granted by a court of law; thus an “executor-dative” is an executor appointed by the court and not by a testator. It answers, therefore, to the English administrator (q.v.). In Roman law, a tutor was either dativus, if expressly nominated in a testament, or optivus, if a power of selection was given.

DATOLITE, a mineral species consisting of basic calcium and boron orthosilicate, Ca(BOH)SiO4. It was first observed by J. Esmark in 1806, and named by him from δατεῖσθαι, “to divide,” and λίθος, “stone,” in allusion to the granular structure of the massive mineral. It usually occurs as well-developed glassy crystals bounded by numerous bright faces, many of which often have a more or less pentagonal outline. The crystals were for a long time considered to be orthorhombic, and indeed they approach closely to this system in habit, interfacial angles and optical orientation; humboldtite was the name given by A. Lévy in 1823 to monoclinic crystals supposed to be distinct from datolite, but the two were afterwards proved to be identical. The mineral also occurs as masses with a granular to compact texture; when compact the fractured surfaces have the appearance of porcelain. A fibrous variety with a botryoidal or globular surface is known as botryolite. Datolite is white or colourless, often with a greenish tinge; it is transparent or opaque. Hardness 5-5½; specific gravity 3.0.

Datolite is a mineral of secondary origin, and in its mode of occurrence it resembles the zeolites, being found with them in the amygdaloidal cavities of basic igneous rocks such as basalt; it is also found in gneiss and serpentine, and in metalliferous veins and in beds of iron ore. At Arendal in Norway, the original locality for both the crystallized and botryoidal varieties, it is found in a bed of magnetite. In amygdaloidal basaltic rocks it is found at Bishopton in Renfrewshire and near Edinburgh; and as excellent crystallized specimens at several localities in the United States, e.g. at Westfield in Massachusetts, Bergen and Paterson in New Jersey, and in the copper-mining region of Lake Superior. At St Andreasberg in the Harz it occurs both in diabase and in the veins of silver ore. Fine specimens have recently been obtained from Tasmania.

Large crystals of datolite completely altered to chalcedony were formerly found with magnetite in the Haytor iron mine on Dartmoor in Devonshire; to these pseudomorphs the name haytorite has been applied.

(L. J. S.)

DAUB, KARL (1765-1836), German Protestant theologian, was born at Cassel on the 20th of March 1765. He studied philosophy, philology and theology at Marburg in 1786, and eventually (1795) became professor ordinarius of theology at Heidelberg, where he died on the 22nd of November 1836. Daub was one of the leaders of a school which sought to reconcile theology and philosophy, and to bring about a speculative reconstruction of orthodox dogma. In the course of his intellectual development, he came successively under the influence of Kant, Schelling and Hegel, and on account of the different phases through which he passed he was called the Talleyrand of German thought. There was one great defect in his speculative theology: he ignored historical criticism. His purpose was, as Otto Pfleiderer says, “to connect the metaphysical ideas, which had been arrived at by means of philosophical dialectic, directly with the persons and events of the Gospel narratives, thus raising these above the region of ordinary experience into that of the supernatural, and regarding the most absurd assertions as philosophically justified. Daub had become so hopelessly addicted to this perverse principle that he deduced not only Jesus as the embodiment of the philosophical idea of the union of God and man, but also Judas Iscariot as the embodiment of the idea of a rival god, or Satan.” The three stages in Daub’s development are clearly marked in his writings. His Lehrbuch der Katechetik (1801) was written under the spell of Kant. His Theologumena (1806), his Einleitung in das Studium der christl. Dogmatik (1810), and his Judas Ischarioth (2 vols., 1816, 2nd ed., 1818), were all written in the spirit of Schelling, the last of them reflecting a change in Schelling himself from theosophy to positive philosophy. Daub’s Die dogmatische Theologie jetziger Zeit oder die Selbstsucht in der Wissenschaft des Glaubens (1833), and Vorlesungen über die Prolegomena zur Dogmatik (1839), are Hegelian in principle and obscure in language.

See Rosenkranz, Erinnerungen an Karl Daub (1837); D. Fr. Strauss, Charakteristiken und Kritiken (2nd ed., 1844); and cf. F. Lichtenberger, History of German Theology (1889); Otto Pfleiderer, Development of Theology (1890).

(M. A. C.)

DAUBENTON, LOUIS-JEAN-MARIE (1716-1800), French naturalist, was born at Montbar (Côte d’Or) on the 29th of May 1716. His father, Jean Daubenton, a notary, destined him for the church, and sent him to Paris to learn theology, but the study of medicine was more to his taste. The death of his father in 1736 set him free to follow his own inclinations, and accordingly in 1741 he graduated in medicine at Reims, and returned to his native town with the intention of practising as a physician. But about this time Buffon, also a native of Montbar, had formed the plan of bringing out a grand treatise on natural history, and in 1742 he invited Daubenton to assist him by providing the anatomical descriptions for that work. The characters of the two men were opposed in almost every respect. Buffon was violent and impatient; Daubenton, gentle and patient; Buffon was rash in his judgments, and imaginative, seeking rather to divine than to discover truths; Daubenton was cautious, and believed nothing he had not himself been able to see or ascertain. From nature each appeared to have received the qualities requisite to temper those of the other; and a more suitable coadjutor than Daubenton it would have been difficult for Buffon to obtain. In the first section of the natural history Daubenton gave descriptions and details of the dissection of 182 species of quadrupeds, thus procuring for himself a high reputation, and exciting the envy of Réaumur, who considered himself as at the head of the learned in natural history in France. A feeling of jealousy induced Buffon to dispense with the services of Daubenton in the preparation of the subsequent parts of his work, which, as a consequence, lost much in precision and scientific value. Buffon afterwards perceived and acknowledged his error, and renewed his intimacy with his former associate. The number of dissertations on natural history which Daubenton published in the memoirs of the French Academy is very great. Zoological descriptions and dissections, the comparative anatomy of recent and fossil animals, vegetable physiology, mineralogy, experiments in agriculture, and the introduction of the merino sheep into France gave active occupation to his energies; and the cabinet of natural history in Paris, of which in 1744 he was appointed keeper and demonstrator, was arranged and considerably enriched by him. From 1775 Daubenton lectured on natural history in the college of medicine, and in 1783 on rural economy at the Alfort school. He was also professor of mineralogy at the Jardin du Roi. As a lecturer he was in high repute, and to the last retained his popularity. In December 1799 he was appointed a member of the senate, but at the first meeting which he attended he fell from his seat in an apoplectic fit, and after a short illness died at Paris on the 1st of January 1800.

DAUBENY, CHARLES GILES BRIDLE (1795-1867), English chemist, botanist and geologist, was the third son of the Rev. James Daubeny, and was born at Stratton in Gloucestershire on the 11th of February 1795. In 1808 he went to Winchester, and in 1810 he was elected to a demyship at Magdalen College, Oxford, where the lectures of Dr Kidd first awakened in him a desire for the cultivation of natural science. In 1814 he graduated with second-class honours, and in the next year he obtained the prize for the Latin essay. From 1815 to 1818 he studied medicine in London and Edinburgh. He took his M.D. degree at Oxford, and was a fellow of the College of Physicians. In 1819, in the course of a tour through France, he made the volcanic district of Auvergne a special study, and his Letters on the Volcanos of Auvergne were published in The Edinburgh Journal, 1820-21. He was elected F.R.S. in 1822. By subsequent journeys in Hungary, Transylvania, Italy, Sicily, France and Germany he extended his knowledge of volcanic phenomena; and in 1826 the results of his observations were given in a work entitled A Description of Active and Extinct Volcanos (2nd ed., 1848). In common with Gay Lussac and Davy, he held subterraneous thermic disturbances to be probably due to the contact of water with metals of the alkalis and alkaline earths. In November 1822 Daubeny succeeded Dr Kidd as professor of chemistry at Oxford, and retained this post until 1855; and in 1834 he was appointed to the chair of botany, to which was subsequently attached that of rural economy. At the Oxford botanic garden he conducted numerous experiments upon the effect of changes in soil, light and the composition of the atmosphere upon vegetation. In 1830 he published in the Philosophical Transactions a paper on the iodine and bromine of mineral waters. In the following year appeared his Introduction to the Atomic Theory, which was succeeded by a supplement in 1840, and in 1850 by a second edition. In 1831 Daubeny represented the universities of England at the first meeting of the British Association, which at his request held their next session at Oxford. In 1836 he communicated to the Association a report on the subject of mineral and thermal waters. In 1837 he visited the United States, and acquired there the materials for papers on the thermal springs and the geology of North America, read in 1838 before the Ashmolean Society and the British Association. In 1856 he became president of the latter body at its meeting at Cheltenham. In 1841 Daubeny published his Lectures on Agriculture; in 1857 his Lectures on Roman Husbandry; in 1863 Climate: an inquiry into the causes of its differences and into its influence on Vegetable Life; and in 1865 an Essay on the Trees and Shrubs of the Ancients, and a Catalogue of the Trees and Shrubs indigenous to Greece and Italy. His last literary work was the collection of his Miscellanies, published in two volumes, in 1867. In all his undertakings Daubeny was actuated by a practical spirit and a desire for the advancement of knowledge; and his personal influence on his contemporaries was in keeping with the high character of his various literary productions. He died in Oxford on the 12th of December 1867.

See Obituary by John Phillips in Proceedings of Ashmolean Soc., 1868.

DAUBIGNY, CHARLES FRANÇOIS (1817-1878), French landscape painter, allied in several ways with the Barbizon School, was born in Paris, on the 15th of February 1817, but spent much time as a child at Valmondois, a village on the Oise to the north-west of Paris. Daubigny was the son of an artist, and most of his family were painters. He began to paint very early in life, and at the age of seventeen he took a studio of his own. Within twelve months he had saved enough to go to Italy, where he studied and painted for nearly two years; he then returned to Paris, not to leave it again until, in 1860, he took a house at Auvers on the Oise. By 1837 Daubigny had become famous as a river and landscape painter, although he had been devoting himself as well to drawing in black-and-white, to etching, wood engraving, and lithography. In 1855 his picture, “Lock at Optevoz,” now in the Louvre, was purchased by the state; four years later Daubigny was created knight of the Legion of Honour, and in 1874 he was promoted to be an officer. In 1866, at the invitation of Lord, then Mr Leighton and others, he visited London, where, however, he was hurt by his now famous “Moonlight” being badly hung in the Old Royal Academy. But the personal encouragement of his admirers in England made up for the disappointment, and the sale of his picture to a Royal Academician greatly pleased him. In 1870-1871 he again visited London, and subsequently Holland, where he painted a number of river scenes with windmills. In 1874, having returned to Paris, he fell ill, and from that time until he died (on the 19th of February 1878) his work won less distinction than before. In 1904 the municipality of Auvers-sur-Oise decided to erect a bronze monument to Daubigny’s memory.

Daubigny’s finest pictures were painted between 1864 and 1874, and these for the most part consist of carefully completed landscapes with trees, river and a few ducks. It has curiously been said, yet with some appearance of truth, that when Daubigny liked his pictures himself he added another duck or two, so that the number of ducks often indicates greater or less artistic quality in his pictures. One of his sayings was, “The best pictures do not sell,” as he frequently found his finest achievements little understood. Yet although during the latter part of his life he was considered a highly successful painter, the money value of his pictures since his death has increased nearly tenfold. Daubigny is chiefly preferred in his riverside pictures, of which he painted a great number, but although there are two large landscapes by Daubigny in the Louvre, neither is a river view. They are for that reason not so typical as many of his smaller Oise and Seine pictures.

The works of Daubigny are, like Corot’s, to be found in many modern collections. His most ambitious canvases are: “Springtime” (1857), in the Louvre; “Borde de la Cure, Morvan” (1864); “Villerville sur Mer” (1864); “Moonlight” (1865); “Andrésy sur Oise” (1868); and “Return of the Flock—Moonlight” (1878).

His followers and pupils were his son Karl (who sometimes painted so well that his works are occasionally mistaken for those of his father, though in few cases do they equal his father’s mastery), Oudinot, Delpy and Damoye.

See Fred Henriet, C. Daubigny et son œuvre (Paris, 1878); D. Croal Thomson, The Barbizon School of Painters (London, 1890); J. W. Mollett, Daubigny (London, 1890); J. Claretie, Peintres et sculpteurs contemporains: Daubigny (Paris, 1882); Albert Wolff, La Capitale de l’art: Ch. François Daubigny (Paris, 1881).

(D. C. T.)

DAUBRÉE, GABRIEL AUGUSTE (1814-1896), French geologist, was born at Metz, on the 25th of June 1814, and educated at the École Polytechnique in Paris. At the age of twenty he had qualified as a mining engineer, and in 1838 he was appointed to take charge of the mines in the Bas-Rhin (Alsace), and subsequently to be professor of mineralogy and geology at the Faculty of Sciences, Strassburg. In 1859 he became engineer in chief of mines, and in 1861 he was appointed professor of geology at the museum of natural history in Paris and was also elected member of the Academy of Sciences. In the following year he became professor of mineralogy at the École des Mines, and in 1872 director of that school. In 1880 the Geological Society of London awarded to him the Wollaston medal. His published researches date from 1841, when the origin of certain tin minerals attracted his attention; he subsequently discussed the formation of bog-iron ore, and worked out in detail the geology of the Bas-Rhin (1852). From 1857 to 1861, while engaged in engineering works connected with the springs of Plombières, he made a series of interesting observations on thermal waters and their influence on the Roman masonry through which they made their exit. He was, however, especially distinguished for his long-continued and often dangerous experiments on the artificial production of minerals and rocks. He likewise discussed the permeability of rocks by water, and the effects of such infiltration in producing volcanic phenomena; he dealt with the subject of metamorphism, with the deformations of the earth’s crust, with earthquakes, and with the composition and classification of meteorites. He died in Paris on the 29th of May 1896.

His publications were: Études et expériences synthétiques sur le métamorphisme et sur la formation des roches cristallines (1860); Études synthétiques de géologie expérimentale (1879); Les Eaux souterraines à l’époque actuelle (2 vols., 1887); Le Eaux souterraines aux époques anciennes (1887).

DAUDET, ALPHONSE (1840-1897), French novelist, was born at Nîmes on the 13th of May 1840. His family, on both sides, belonged to the bourgeoisie. The father, Vincent Daudet, was a silk manufacturer—a man dogged through life by misfortune and failure. The lad, amid much truancy, had but a depressing boyhood. In 1856 he left Lyons, where his schooldays had been mainly spent, and began life as an usher at Alais, in the south. The position proved to be intolerable. As Dickens declared that all through his prosperous career he was haunted in dreams by the miseries of his apprenticeship to the blacking business, so Daudet says that for months after leaving Alais he would wake with horror thinking he was still among his unruly pupils. On the 1st of November 1857 he abandoned teaching, and took refuge with his brother Ernest, only some three years his senior, who was trying, “and thereto soberly,” to make a living as a journalist in Paris. Alphonse betook himself to his pen likewise,—wrote poems, shortly collected into a small volume Les Amoureuses (1858), which met with a fair reception,—obtained employment on the Figaro, then under Cartier de Villemessant’s energetic editorship, wrote two or three plays, and began to be recognized, among those interested in literature, as possessing individuality and promise. Morny, the emperor’s all-powerful minister, appointed him to be one of his secretaries,—a post which he held till Morny’s death in 1865,—and showed him no small kindness. He had put his foot on the road to fortune.

In 1866 appeared Lettres de mon moulin, which won the attention of many readers. The first of his longer books, Le petit chose (1868), did not, however, produce any very popular sensation. It is, in its main feature, the story of his own earlier years told with much grace and pathos. The year 1872 produced the famous Aventures prodigieuses de Tartarin de Tarascon, and the three-act piece L’Arlésienne. But Fromont jeune et Risler aîné (1874) at once took the world by storm. It struck a note, not new certainly in English literature, but comparatively new in French. Here was a writer who possessed the gift of laughter and tears, a writer not only sensible to pathos and sorrow, but also to moral beauty. He could create too. His characters were real and also typical; the ratés, the men who in life’s battle had flashed in the pan, were touched with a master hand. The book was alive. It gave the illusion of a real world. Jack, the story of an illegitimate child, a martyr to his mother’s selfishness, which followed in 1876, served only to deepen the same impression. Henceforward his career was that of a very successful man of letters,—publishing novel on novel, Le Nabab (1877), Les Rois en exil (1879), Numa Roumestan (1881), Sapho (1884), L’Immortel (1888),—and writing for the stage at frequent intervals,—giving to the world his reminiscences in Trente ans de Paris (1887), and Souvenirs d’un homme de lettres (1888). These, with the three Tartarins,—Tartarin the mighty hunter, Tartarin the mountaineer, Tartarin the colonist,—and the admirable short stories, written for the most part before he had acquired fame and fortune, constitute his life work.

Though Daudet defended himself from the charge of imitating Dickens, it is difficult altogether to believe that so many similarities of spirit and manner were quite unsought. What, however, was purely his own was his style. It is a style that may rightly be called “impressionist,” full of light and colour, not descriptive after the old fashion, but flashing its intended effect by a masterly juxtaposition of words that are like pigments. Nor does it convey, like the style of the Goncourts, for example, a constant feeling of effort. It is full of felicity and charm,—un charmeur Zola has called him. An intimate friend of Edmond de Goncourt (who died in his house), of Flaubert, of Zola, Daudet belonged essentially to the naturalist school of fiction. His own experiences, his surroundings, the men with whom he had been brought into contact, various persons who had played a part, more or less public, in Paris life—all passed into his art. But he vivified the material supplied by his memory. His world has the great gift of life. L’Immortel is a bitter attack on the French Academy, to which august body Daudet never belonged.

Daudet wrote some charming stories for children, among which may be mentioned La Belle Nivernaise, the story of an old boat and her crew. His married life—he married in 1867 Julia Allard—seems to have been singularly happy. There was perfect intellectual harmony, and Madame Daudet herself possessed much of his literary gift; she is known by her Impressions de nature et d’art (1879), L’Enfance d’une Parisienne (1883), and by some literary studies written under the pseudonym of Karl Steen. In his later years Daudet suffered from insomnia, failure of health and consequent use of chloral. He died in Paris on the 17th of December 1897.

The story of Daudet’s earlier years is told in his brother Ernest Daudet’s Mon frère et moi. There is a good deal of autobiographical detail in Daudet’s Trente ans de Paris and Souvenirs d’un homme de lettres, and also scattered in his other books. The references to him in the Journal des Goncourt are numerous. See also L. A. Daudet, Alphonse Daudet (1898), and biographical and critical essays by R. H. Sherard (1894); by A. Gerstmann (1883); by B. Diederich (1900); by A. Hermant (1903), and a bibliography by J. Brivois (1895); also The Works of Alphonse Daudet, translated by L. Ensor, H. Frith, E. Bartow (1902, etc.). Criticism of Daudet is also to be found in F. Brunetière, Le Roman naturaliste (new ed., 1897); J. Lemaître, Les Contemporains (vols. ii. and iv.); G. Pellissier, Le Mouvement littéraire au XIXe siècle (1890); A. Symons, Studies in Prose and Verse (1904).

(F. T. M.)

DAULATABAD, a hill-fortress in Hyderabad state, India, about 10 m. N.W. of the city of Aurangabad. The former city of Daulatabad (Deogiri) has shrunk into a mere village, though to its earlier greatness witness is still borne by its magnificent fortress, and by remains of public buildings noble even in their decay. The fortress stands on a conical rock crowning a hill that rises almost perpendicularly from the plain to a height of some 600 ft. The outer wall, 2¾ m. in circumference, once enclosed the ancient city of Deogiri (Devagiri), and between this and the base of the upper fort are three lines of defences. The fort is a place of extraordinary strength. The only means of access to the summit is afforded by a narrow bridge, with passage for not more than two men abreast, and a long gallery, excavated in the rock, which has for the most part a very gradual upward slope, but about midway is intercepted by a steep stair, the top of which is covered by a grating destined in time of war to form the hearth of a huge fire kept burning by the garrison above. Besides the fortifications Daulatabad contains several notable monuments, of which the chief are the Chand Minar and the Chini Mahal. The Chand Minar, considered one of the most remarkable specimens of Mahommedan architecture in southern India, is a tower 210 ft. high and 70 ft. in circumference at the base, and was originally covered with beautiful Persian glazed tiles. It was erected in 1445 by Ala-ud-din Bahmani to commemorate his capture of the fort. The Chini Mahal, or China Palace, is the ruin of a building once of great beauty. In it Abul Hasan, the last of the Kutb Shahi kings of Golconda, was imprisoned by Aurangzeb in 1687.

Deogiri is said to have been founded c. A.D. 1187 by Bhillama I. the prince who renounced his allegiance to the Chalukyas and established the power of the Yadava dynasty in the west. In 1294 the fort was captured by Ala-ud-din Khilji, and the rajas, so powerful that they were held by the Mussulmans at Delhi to be the rulers of all the Deccan, were reduced to pay tribute. The tribute falling into arrear, Deogiri was again occupied by the Mahommedans under Malik Kafur, in 1307 and 1310, and in 1318 the last raja, Harpal, was flayed alive. Deogiri now became an important base for the operations of the Mussulman conquering expeditions southwards, and in 1339 Mahommed ben Tughlak Shah determined to make it his capital, changed its name to Daulatabad (“Abode of Prosperity”), and made arrangements for transferring to it the whole population of Delhi. The project was interrupted by troubles which summoned him to the north; during his absence the Mussulman governors of the Deccan revolted; and Daulatabad itself fell into the hands of Zafar Khan, the governor of Gulbarga. It remained in the hands of the Bahmanis till 1526, when it was taken by the Nizam Shahis. It was captured by the emperor Akbar, but in 1595 it again surrendered to Ahmad Nizam Shah of Ahmednagar, on the fall of whose dynasty in 1607 it passed into the hands of the usurper, the Nizam Shahi minister Malik Amber, originally an Abyssinian slave, who was the founder of Kharki (the present Aurangabad). His successors held it until their overthrow by Shah Jahan, the Mogul emperor, in 1633; after which it remained in the possession of the Delhi emperors until, after the death of Aurangzeb, it fell to the first nizam of Hyderabad. Its glory, however, had already decayed owing to the removal of the seat of government by the emperors to Aurangabad.

DAUMIER, HONORÉ (1808-1879), French caricaturist and painter, was born at Marseilles. He showed in his earliest youth an irresistible inclination towards the artistic profession, which his father vainly tried to check by placing him first with a huissier, and subsequently with a bookseller. Having mastered the technique of lithography, Daumier started his artistic career by producing plates for music publishers, and illustrations for advertisements; these were followed by anonymous work for publishers, in which he followed the style of Charlet and displayed considerable enthusiasm for the Napoleonic legend. When, in the reign of Louis Philippe, Philipon launched the comic journal, La Caricature, Daumier joined its staff, which included such powerful artists as Devéria, Raffet and Grandville, and started upon his pictorial campaign of scathing satire upon the foibles of the bourgeoisie, the corruption of the law and the incompetence of a blundering government. His caricature of the king as “Gargantua” led to Daumier’s imprisonment for six months at Ste Pélagie in 1832. The publication of La Caricature was discontinued soon after, but Philipon provided a new field for Daumier’s activity when he founded the Charivari. For this journal Daumier produced his famous social caricatures, in which bourgeois society is held up to ridicule in the figure of Robert Macaire, the hero of a then popular melodrama. Another series, “L’histoire ancienne,” was directed against the pseudo-classicism which held the art of the period in fetters. In 1848 Daumier embarked again on his political campaign, still in the service of Charivari, which he left in 1860 and rejoined in 1864. In spite of his prodigious activity in the field of caricature—the list of Daumier’s lithographed plates compiled in 1904 numbers no fewer than 3958—he found time for flight in the higher sphere of painting. Except for the searching truthfulness of his vision and the powerful directness of his brushwork, it would be difficult to recognize the creator of Robert Macaire, of Les Bas bleus, Les Bohémiens de Paris, and the Masques, in the paintings of “Christ and His Apostles” at the Ryks Museum in Amsterdam, or in his “Good Samaritan,” “Don Quixote and Sancho Panza,” “Christ Mocked,” or even in the sketches in the Ionides Collection at South Kensington. But as a painter, Daumier, one of the pioneers of naturalism, was before his time, and did not meet with success until in 1878, a year before his death, when M. Durand-Ruel collected his works for exhibition at his galleries and demonstrated the full range of the genius of the man who has been well called the Michelangelo of caricature. At the time of this exhibition Daumier, totally blind, was living in a cottage at Valmondois, which was placed at his disposal by Corot, and where he breathed his last in 1879. An important exhibition of his works was held at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1900.

His life and art were made the subject of an important volume by Arséne Alexandre in 1888; see also Gustave Geffroy, Daumier (Paris, Libraire de l’Art), and Henri Frantz and Octave Uzanne, Daumier and Gavarni (London, The Studio, 1904), with a large selection of the artist’s work.

DAUN (DHAUN), LEOPOLD JOSEF, Count Von (1705-1766), prince of Thiano, Austrian field marshal, was born at Vienna on the 24th of September 1705. He was intended for the church, but his natural inclination for the army, in which his father and grandfather had been distinguished generals, proved irresistible. In 1718 he served in the campaign in Sicily, in his father’s regiment. He had already risen to the rank of colonel when he saw further active service in Italy and on the Rhine in the War of the Polish Succession (1734-35). He continued to add to his distinctions in the war against the Turks (1737-39), in which he attained the rank of a general officer. In the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-42), Daun, already a lieutenant field marshal in rank, distinguished himself by the careful leadership which was afterwards his greatest military quality. He was present at Chotusitz and Prague, and led the advanced guard of Khevenhüller’s army in the victorious Danube campaign of 1743. Field Marshal Traun, who succeeded Khevenhüller in 1744, thought equally highly of Daun, and entrusted him with the rearguard of the Austrian army when it escaped from the French to attack Frederick the Great. He held important commands in the battles of Hohenfriedberg and Soor, and in the same year (1745) was promoted to the rank of Feldzeugmeister. After this he served in the Low Countries, and was present at the battle of Val. He was highly valued by Maria Theresa, who made him commandant of Vienna and a knight of the Golden Fleece, and in 1754 he was elevated to the rank of field marshal.

During the interval of peace that preceded the Seven Years’ War he was engaged in carrying out an elaborate scheme for the reorganization of the Austrian army; and it was chiefly through his instrumentality that the military academy was established at Wiener-Neustadt in 1751. He was not actively employed in the first campaigns of the war, but in 1757 he was placed at the head of the army which was raised to relieve Prague. On the 18th of June 1757 Daun defeated Frederick for the first time in his career in the desperately fought battle of Kolin (q.v.). In commemoration of this brilliant exploit the queen immediately instituted a military order bearing her name, of which Daun was nominated first grand cross. The union of the relieving army with the forces of Prince Charles at Prague reduced Daun to the position of second in command, and as such he took part in the pursuit of the Prussians and the victory of Breslau. Frederick now reappeared and won the most brilliant victory of the age at Leuthen. Daun was present on that field, but was not held accountable for the disaster, and when Prince Charles resigned his command, Daun was appointed in his place. With the campaign of 1758 began the war of manœuvre in which Daun, if he missed, through over-caution, many opportunities of crushing the Prussians, at least maintained a steady and cool resistance to the fiery strategy of Frederick. In 1758 Major-General Loudon, acting under Daun’s instructions, forced the king to raise the siege of Olmütz, and later in the same year Daun himself surprised Frederick at Hochkirch and inflicted a severe defeat upon him (October 14th). In the following year the war of manœuvre continued, and on the 20th and 21st of November he surrounded the entire corps of General Finck at Maxen, forcing the Prussians to surrender. These successes were counterbalanced in the following year by the defeat of Loudon at Liegnitz, which was attributed to the dilatoriness of Daun, and Daun’s own defeat in the great battle of Torgau (q.v.). In this engagement Daun was so severely wounded that he had to return to Vienna to recruit.

He continued to command until the end of the war, and afterwards worked with the greatest energy at the reorganization of the imperial forces. In 1762 he had been appointed president of the Hofkriegsrath. He died on the 5th of February 1766. By the order of Maria Theresa a monument to his memory was erected in the church of the Augustinians, with an inscription styling him the “saviour of her states.” In 1888 the 56th regiment of Austrian infantry was named after him. As a general Daun has been reproached for the dilatoriness of his operations, but wariness was not misplaced in opposing a general like Frederick, who was quick and unexpected in his movements beyond all precedent. Less defence perhaps may be made for him on the score of inability to profit by a victory.

See Der deutsche Fabius Cunctator, oder Leben u. Thaten S. E. des H. Leopold Reichsgrafen v. Dhaun K.K.F.M. (Frankfort and Leipzig, 1759-1760), and works dealing with the wars of the period.

DAUNOU, PIERRE CLAUDE FRANÇOIS (1761-1840), French statesman and historian, was born at Boulogne-sur-Mer, and after a brilliant career in the school of the Oratorians there, joined the order in Paris in 1777. He was professor in various seminaries from 1780 till 1787, when he was ordained priest. He was already known in literary circles by several essays and poems, when the revolution opened a wider career. He threw himself with ardour into the struggle for liberty, and refused to be silenced in his advocacy of the civil constitution of the clergy by the offer of high office in the church. Elected to the Convention by Pas-le-Calais, he associated himself with the Girondists, but strongly opposed the death sentence on the king. He took little part in the struggle against the Mountain, but was involved in the overthrow of his friends, and was imprisoned for a year. In December 1794 he returned to the Convention, and was the principal author of the constitution of the year III. It seems to have been due to his Girondist ideas that the Ancients were given the right of convoking the corps législatif outside Paris, an expedient which made possible Napoleon’s coup d’état of the 18th and 19th Brumaire. The creation of the Institute was also due to Daunou, who drew up the plan for its organization. His energy was largely responsible for the suppression of the royalist insurrection of the 13th Vendémiaire, and the important place he occupied at the beginning of the Directory is indicated by the fact that he was elected by twenty-seven departments as member of the Council of Five Hundred, and became its first president. He had himself set the age qualification of the directors at forty, and thus debarred himself as candidate, as he was only thirty-four. The direction of affairs having passed into the hands of Talleyrand and his associates, Daunou turned once more to literature, but in 1798 he was sent to Rome to organize the republic there, and again, almost against his will, he lent his aid to Napoleon in the preparation of the constitution of the year VIII. His attitude towards Napoleon was not lacking in independence, but in this controversy with the pope, the emperor was able again to secure from him the learned treatise Sur la puissance temporelle du Pape (1809). Still he took little part in the new régime, with which at heart he had no sympathy, and turned more and more to literature. At the Restoration he was deprived of the post of archivist of the empire, which he had held from 1807, but from 1819 to 1830 (when he again became archivist of the kingdom) he held the chair of history and ethics at the Collège de France, and his courses were among the most famous of that age of public lectures. During the reign of Louis Philippe he received many honours. In 1839 he was made a peer. He died in 1840.

In politics Daunou was a Girondist without combativeness; a confirmed republican, who lent himself always to the policy of conciliation, but whose probity remained unchallenged. He belonged essentially to the centre, and lacked both the genius and the temperament which would secure for him a commanding place in a revolutionary era. As an historian his breadth of view is remarkable for his time; for although thoroughly imbued with the classical spirit of the 18th century, he was able to do justice to the middle ages. His Discours sur l’état des lettres au XIIIe siècle, in the sixteenth volume of the Histoire littéraire de France, is a remarkable contribution to that vast collection, especially as coming from an author so profoundly learned in the ancient classics. Daunou’s lectures at the Collège de France, collected and published after his death, fill twenty volumes (Cours d’études historiques, 1842-1846). They treat principally of the criticism of sources and the proper method of writing history, and occupy an important place in the evolution of the scientific study of history in France. All his works were written in the most elegant style and chaste diction; but apart from his share in the editing of the Historiens de la France, they were mostly in the form of separate articles on literary and historical subjects. Personally Daunou was reserved and somewhat austere, preserving in his habits a strange mixture of bourgeois and monk. His indefatigable work as archivist in the time when Napoleon was transferring so many treasures to Paris is not his least claim to the gratitude of scholars.

See Mignet, Notice historique sur la vie et les travaux de Daunou (Paris, 1843); Taillandier, Documents bibliographiques sur Daunou (Paris, 1847), including a full list of his works; Sainte-Beuve, Daunou in his Portraits Contemporains, t. iii. (unfavourable and somewhat unfair).

DAUPHIN (Lat. Delphinus), an ancient feudal title in France, borne only by the counts and dauphins of Vienne, the dauphins of Auvergne, and from 1364 by the eldest sons of the kings of France. The origin of this curious title is obscure and has been the subject of much ingenious controversy; but it now seems clear that it was in the first instance a proper name. Among the Norsemen, and in the countries colonized by them, the name Dolphin or Dolfin (dolfr, “a wound”) was fairly common, e.g. in the north of England; thus a Dolfin is mentioned among the tenants-in-chief in Domesday Book, and there was a Dolphin, lord of Carlisle, towards the end of the 11th century. It has thus been conjectured by some that the dauphins of Vienne derived their title from Teutonic sources through Germany. But in the south, too, the name—not necessarily derived from the same root—was not unknown, though exceedingly rare, and was moreover illustrated by two conspicuous figures in the Catholic martyrology: St Delphinus, bishop of Bordeaux from 380 to 404, and St Annemundus, surnamed Dalfinus, bishop of Lyons from c. 650 to 657. Whatever its origin, this name was borne by Guigo, or Guigue IV. (d. 1142), count of Albon and Grenoble, as an additional name, during the lifetime of his father, and was also adopted by his son Guigue V. Beatrice, daughter and heiress of Guigue V., whose second husband was Hugh III., duke of Burgundy, bestowed the name on their son André, to recall his descent from the ancient house of the counts of Albon, and in the charters he is called sometimes Andreas Dalphinus, sometimes Dalphinus simply, but his style is still “count of Albon and Vienne.” His successors Guigue VI. (d. 1270) and John I. (d. 1282) call themselves sometimes Delphinus, sometimes Delphini, the name being obviously treated as a patronymic, and in the latter form it was borne by the sons of the reigning “dauphin.” But even under Guigue VI. foreigners had begun to confuse the name with a title of dignity, an imperial diploma of 1248 describing Guigue as “Guigo Dalphinus Viennensis.”

It was not until the third dynasty, founded by the marriage of Anne, heiress of John I., with Humbert, lord of La Tour du Pin, that “dauphin” became definitely established as a title. Humbert not only assumed the name of Delphinus, but styled himself regularly Dauphin of the Viennois (Dalphinus Viennensis), and in a treaty concluded in 1285 between Humbert and Robert, duke of Burgundy, the word delphinatus (Dauphiné) appears for the first time, as a synonym for comitatus (county). In 1349 Humbert II., the last of his race, sold Dauphiné to Charles of Valois, who, when he became king of France in 1364, transferred it to his eldest son. From that time the eldest sons of the kings of France were always either actual or titular dauphins of the Viennois. The “canting arms” of a dolphin, which they quartered with the royal fleurs de lys, were originally assumed by Dauphin, count of Clermont, instead of the arms of Auvergne (the earliest extant example is appended to a deed of 1199), and from him they were borrowed by the counts of the Viennois. Guigue VI. used this device on his secret seal from his accession, the earliest extant example dating from 1237, but, though no specimens have survived, M. Prudhomme thinks it probable that the dolphin was also borne by André Dauphin. It was also assumed by Guigue V., count of Forez (1203-1241), a descendant of Guigue Raymond of the Viennois, count of Forez, in right of his wife Ida Raymonde. It is thus abundantly clear that the name of Dauphin was not assumed from the armorial device, but vice versa.

The eldest son of the French king was sometimes called “the king dauphin” (le roy daulphin), to distinguish him from the dauphin of Auvergne, who was known, since Auvergne became an appanage of the royal house, as “the prince dauphin.” The dauphinate of Auvergne, which is to be distinguished from the county, dates from 1155, when William VII., count of Auvergne, was deposed by his uncle William VIII. “the Old.” William VII. had married a daughter of Guigue IV. Dauphin, after whom their son was named Dauphin (Delphinus). The name continued, as in Viennois, as a patronymic, and was not used as a title until 1281, when Robert II., count of Clermont, in his will, styles himself for the first time Dauphin of Auvergne (Alvernie delphinus) for the portion of the county of Auvergne left to his house. In 1428 Jeanne, heiress of the dauphin Béraud III., married Louis de Bourbon, count of Montpensier (d. 1486), thus bringing the dauphinate into the royal house of France. It was annexed to the crown in 1693.

See A. Prudhomme, “De l’origine et du sens des mots dauphin et dauphiné” in Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, liv. an. 1893 (Paris, 1893).

DAUPHINÉ, one of the old provinces (the name being still in current use in the country) of pre-Revolutionary France, in the south-east portion of France, between Provence and Savoy; since 1790 it forms the departments of the Isère, the Drôme and the Hautes Alpes.

After the death of the last king of Burgundy, Rudolf III., in 1032, the territories known later as Dauphiné (as part of his realm) reverted to the far-distant emperor. Much confusion followed, out of which the counts of Albon (between Valence and Vienne) gradually came to the front. The first dynasty ended in 1162 with Guigue V., whose daughter and heiress, Beatrice, carried the possessions of her house to her husband, Hugh III., duke of Burgundy. Their son, André, continued the race, this second dynasty making many territorial acquisitions, among them (by marriage) the Embrunais and the Gapençais in 1232. In 1282 the second dynasty ended in another heiress, Anna, who carried all to her husband, Humbert, lord of La Tour du Pin (between Lyons and Grenoble). The title of the chief of the house was Count (later Dauphin) of the Viennois, not of Dauphiné. (For the origin of the terms Dauphin and Dauphiné see Dauphin.) Humbert II. (1333-1349), grandson of the heiress Anna, was the last independent Dauphin, selling his dominions in 1349 to Charles of Valois, who on his accession to the throne of France as Charles V. bestowed Dauphiné on his eldest son, and the title was borne by all succeeding eldest sons of the kings of France. In 1422 the Diois and the Valentinois, by the will of the last count, passed to the eldest son of Charles VI., and in 1424 were annexed to the Dauphiné. Louis (1440-1461), later Louis XI. of France, was the last Dauphin who occupied a semi-independent position, Dauphiné being annexed to the crown in 1456. The suzerainty of the emperor (who in 1378 had named the Dauphin “Imperial Vicar” within Dauphiné and Provence) gradually died out. In the 16th century the names of the reformer Guillaume Farel (1489-1565) and of the duke of Lesdiguières (1543-1626) are prominent in Dauphiné history. The “States” of Dauphiné (dating from about the middle of the 14th century) were suspended by Louis XIII. in 1628, but their unauthorized meeting (on the 21st of July 1788) in the tennis court (Salle du Jeu de Paume) of the castle of Vizille, near Grenoble, was one of the earliest premonitory signs of the great French Revolution of 1789. It was at Laffrey, near Grenoble, that Napoleon (March 7th, 1815) was first acclaimed by his old soldiers sent to arrest him.

Bibliography.—J. Brun-Durand, Dictionnaire topographique du département de la Drôme (Paris, 1891); Jules Chevalier, Essai historique sur l’église et la ville de Die, Montélimar and Valence (2 vols., 1888 and 1896); W. A. B. Coolidge, H. Duhamel and Félix Perrin, Climbers’ Guide to the Central Alps of the Dauphiny (a revision of a French work by the same, issued at Grenoble in 1887), London, 1892 (new ed. 1905); J. J. Guiffrey, Histoire de la réunion du Dauphiné à la France (Paris, 1868); Joanne, Dauphiné (Paris, 1905); A. Prudhomme, Histoire de Grenoble (Grenoble, 1888); Ib., “De l’origine des mots ‘Dauphin’ et Dauphiné” (article in vol. liv. (1893) of the Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes); A. Rochas, Biographie du Dauphiné (2 vols., Paris, 1856); J. Roman, Dictionnaire topographique (Paris, 1884); Tableau historique (Paris, 2 vols., 1887 and 1890); and Répertoire archéologique du département des Hautes-Alpes (Paris, 1888); J. Roman, Histoire de la ville de Gap (Gap, 1892); A. De Terrebasse, Notice sur les Dauphins de Viennois (Vienne, 1875); J. M. De Valbonnais, Histoire de Dauphiné (2 vols., Geneva, 1722); J. A. Félix Faure, Les Assemblées de Vizille et de Romans, 1788 (Paris, 1887); O. Chenavas, La Révolution de 1788 en Dauphiné (Grenoble, 1888); C. Lory, Description géologique du Dauphiné (Paris, 1860).

(W. A. B. C.)

DAURAT (or Dorat), JEAN (in Lat. Auratus), (1508-1588), French poet and scholar, and member of the Pléiade, was born at Limoges in 1508. His name was originally Dinemandy. He belonged to a noble family, and, after studying at the college of Limoges, came up to Paris to be presented to Francis I., who made him tutor to his pages. He rapidly gained an immense reputation as a classical scholar. As a private tutor in the house of Lazare de Baïf, he had J. A. de Baïf for his pupil. His son, Louis, showed great precocity, and at the age of ten translated into French verse one of his father’s Latin pieces; his poems were published with his father’s. Jean Daurat became the director of the Collège de Coqueret, where he had among his pupils, besides Baïf, Ronsard, Remy, Belleau and Pontus de Tyard. Joachim du Bellay was added by Ronsard to this group; and these five young poets, under the direction of Daurat, formed a society for the reformation of the French language and literature. They increased their number to seven by the initiation of the dramatist Étienne Jodelle, and thereupon they named themselves La Pléiade, in emulation of the seven Greek poets of Alexandria. The election of Daurat as their president proved the weight of his personal influence, and the value his pupils set on the learning to which he introduced them, but as a writer of French verse he is the least important of the seven. Meanwhile he collected around him a sort of Academy, and stimulated the students on all sides to a passionate study of Greek and Latin poetry. He himself wrote incessantly in both those languages, and was styled the Modern Pindar. His influence extended beyond the bounds of his own country, and he was famous as a scholar in England, Italy and Germany. In 1556 he was appointed professor of Greek at the Collège Royale, a post which he continued to hold until, in 1567, he resigned it in favour of his nephew, Nicolas Goulu. Charles IX. gave him the title of poeta regius. His flow of language was the wonder of his time; he is said to have composed more than 15,000 Greek and Latin verses. The best of these he published at Paris in 1586 as J. Aurati Lemovicis poëtae et interpretis regii poëmata. He died at Paris on the 1st of November 1588, having survived all his illustrious pupils of the Pléiade, except Pontus de Tyard. He was a little, restless man, of untiring energy, rustic in manner and appearance. His unequalled personal influence over the most graceful minds of his age gives him an importance in the history of literature for which his own somewhat vapid writings do not fully account.

The Œuvres poétiques in the vernacular of Jean Daurat were edited (1875) with biographical notice and bibliography by Ch. Marty-Laveaux in his Pléiade française.

DAVENANT, CHARLES (1656-1714), English economist, eldest son of Sir William Davenant, the poet, was born in London, and educated at Cheam grammar school and Balliol College, Oxford, but left the university without taking a degree. At the age of nineteen he had composed a tragedy, Circe, which met with some success, but he soon turned his attention to law, and having taken the degree of LL.D., he became a member of Doctors’ Commons. He was member of parliament successively for St Ives, Cornwall, and for Great Bedwyn. He held the post of commissioner of excise from 1683 to 1689, and that of inspector-general of exports and imports from 1705 till his death in 1714. He was also secretary to the commission appointed to treat for the union with Scotland. As an economist, he must be classed as a strong supporter of the mercantile theory, and in his economic pamphlets—as distinct from his political writings—he takes up an eclectic position, recommending governmental restrictions on colonial commerce as strongly as he advocates freedom of exchange at home. Of his writings, a complete edition of which was published in London in 1771, the following are the more important:—An Essay on the East India Trade (1697); Two Discourses on the Public Revenues and Trade of England (1698); An Essay on the probable means of making the people gainers in the balance of Trade (1699); A Discourse on Grants and Resumptions and Essays on the Balance of Power (1701).

DAVENANT (or D’Avenant), SIR WILLIAM (1606-1668), English poet and dramatist, was baptized on the 3rd of March 1606; he was born at the Crown Inn, Oxford, of which his father, a wealthy vintner, was proprietor. It was stated that Shakespeare always stopped at this house in passing through the city of Oxford, and out of his known or rumoured admiration of the hostess, a very fine woman, there sprang a scandalous story which attributed Davenant’s paternity to Shakespeare, a legend which there is reason to believe Davenant himself encouraged, but which later criticism has cast aside as spurious. In 1621 the vintner was made mayor of Oxford, and in the same year his son left the grammar school of All Saints, where his master had been Edward Sylvester, and was entered an undergraduate of Lincoln College, Oxford. He did not stay at the university, however, long enough to take a degree, but was hurried away to appear at court as a page, in the retinue of the gorgeous duchess of Richmond. From her service he passed into that of Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, in whose house he remained until the murder of that eminent man in 1628. This blow threw him upon the world, not altogether without private means, but greatly in need of a profitable employment.

He turned to the stage for subsistence, and in 1629 produced his first play, the tragedy of Albovine. It was not a very brilliant performance, but it pleased the town, and decided the poet to pursue a dramatic career. The next year saw the production at Blackfriars of The Cruel Brother, a tragedy, and The Just Italian, a tragi-comedy. Inigo Jones, the court architect, for whom Ben Jonson had long supplied the words of masques and complimentary pieces, quarrelled with his great colleague in the year 1634, and applied to William Davenant for verses. The result was The Temple of Love, performed by the queen and her ladies at Whitehall on Shrove Tuesday, 1634, and printed in that year. Another masque, The Triumphs of the Prince D’Amour, followed in 1636. The poet returned to the legitimate drama by the publication of the tragi-comedy of The Platonic Lovers, and the famous comedy of The Wits, in 1636, the latter of which, however, had been licensed in 1633. The masque of Britannica Triumphans (1637) brought him into some trouble, for it was suppressed as a punishment for its first performance having been arranged for a Sunday. By this time Davenant had, however, thoroughly ingratiated himself with the court; and on the death of Ben Jonson in 1637 he was rewarded with the office of poet-laureate, to the exclusion of Thomas May, who considered himself entitled to the honour. It was shortly after this event that Davenant collected his minor lyrical pieces in a volume entitled Madagascar and other Poems (1638); and in 1639 he became manager of the new theatre in Drury Lane. The civil war, however, put a check upon this prosperous career; and he was among the most active partisans of royalty through the whole of that struggle for supremacy.

As early as May 1642, Davenant was accused before the Long Parliament of being mainly concerned in a scheme to seduce the army to overthrow the Commons. He was accordingly apprehended at Faversham, and imprisoned for two months in London; he then attempted to escape to France, and succeeded in reaching Canterbury, where he was recaptured. Escaping a second time, he made good his way to the queen, with whom he remained in France until he volunteered to carry over to England some military stores for the army of his old friend the earl of Newcastle, by whom he was induced to enter the service as lieutenant-general of ordnance. He acquitted himself with so much bravery and skill that, after the siege of Gloucester, in 1643, he was knighted by the king. After the battle of Naseby he retired to Paris, where he became a Roman Catholic, and spent some months in the composition of his epic poem of Gondibert. In 1646 he was sent by the queen on a mission to Charles I., then at Newcastle, to advise him to “part with the church for his peace and security.” The king dismissed him with some sharpness, and Davenant returned to Paris, where he was the guest of Lord Jermyn. In 1650 he took the command of a colonizing expedition that set sail from France to Virginia, but was captured in the Channel by a parliamentary man-of-war, which took him back to the Isle of Wight. Imprisoned in Cowes castle until 1651, he tempered the discomfort and suspense of his condition by continuing the composition of Gondibert. He was sent up to the Tower to await his trial for high treason, but just as the storm was about to break over his head, all cleared away. It is believed that the personal intercession of Milton led to this result. Another account is that he was released by the desire of two aldermen of York, once his prisoners, whom he had allowed to escape. Davenant, released from prison, immediately published Gondibert, the work on which his fame mainly rests, a chivalric epic in the four-line stanza which Sir John Davies had made popular by his Nosce teipsum, the influence of which is strongly marked in the philosophical passages of Gondibert. It is a cumbrous, dull production, but is relieved with a multitude of fine and felicitous passages, and lends itself most happily to quotation.

During the civil war one of his plays had been printed, the tragedy of The Unfortunate Lovers, in 1643. One of his best plays, Love and Honour, was published in 1649, but appears to have been acted long before. He found that there were many who desired him to recommence his theatrical career. Such a step, however, was absolutely forbidden by Puritan law. Davenant, therefore, by the help of some influential friends, obtained permission to open a sort of theatre at Rutland House, in Charterhouse Yard, where, on the 21st of May 1656, he began a series of representations, which he called operas, as an inoffensive term. This word was then first introduced into the English language. The opening piece was a kind of dialogue defending the drama in the abstract. This was followed by his own Siege of Rhodes, printed the same year, which was performed with stage decorations and machinery of a kind hitherto quite unthought of in England. Two other innovations in its production were the introduction of recitative and the appearance of a woman, Mrs Coleman, on the stage. He continued until the Restoration to produce ephemeral works of this kind, only one of which, The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru, in 1658, was of sufficient literary merit to survive. In 1660 he had the infinite satisfaction of being able to preserve the life of that glorious poet who had, nine years before, saved his own from a not less imminent danger. The mutual relations of Milton and Davenant do honour to the generosity of two men who, sincerely opposed in politics, knew how to forget their personal anger in their common love of letters. In 1659 Davenant suffered a short imprisonment for complicity in Sir George Booth’s revolt. Under Charles II. Davenant flourished in the dramatic world; he opened a new theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, which he called the Duke’s; and he introduced a luxury and polish into the theatrical life which it had never before known in England. Under his management, the great actors of the Restoration, Betterton and his coevals, took their peculiar French style and appearance; and the ancient simplicity of the English stage was completely buried under the tinsel of decoration and splendid scenery. Davenant brought out six new plays in the Duke’s Theatre, The Rivals (1668), an adaptation of The Two Noble Kinsmen, which Davenant never owned, The Man’s the Master (1669), comedies translated from Scarron, News from Plymouth, The Distresses, The Siege, The Fair Favourite, tragi-comedies, all of which were printed after his death, and only one of which survived their author on the stage. He died at his house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields on the night of the 7th of April 1668, and two days afterwards was buried in Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey, with the inscription “O rare Sir William Davenant!” In 1672 his writings were collected in folio. His last work had been to travesty Shakespeare’s Tempest in company with Dryden.