master, Simon de Villanova, led him, in 1530, to accept the post of secretary to Jean de Langeac, bishop of Limoges and French ambassador to the republic of Venice; he contrived, however, to attend the lectures of the Venetian scholar Battista Egnazio, and found time to write Latin love poems to some Venetian Elena. Returning to France soon afterwards he proceeded to Toulouse to study law; but there he soon became involved in the violent disputes between the different “nations” of the university, was thrown into prison, and finally banished by a decree of the parlement. In 1535 he entered the lists against Erasmus in the famous Ciceronian controversy, by publishing through Sebastien Gryphe (Gryphius) at Lyons a Dialogus de imitatione Ciceroniana; and the following year saw the appearance of his two folio volumes Commentariorum linguae Latinae. This work was dedicated to Francis I., who gave him the privilege of printing during ten years any works in Latin, Greek, Italian or French, which were the product of his own pen or had received his supervision; and accordingly, on his release from an imprisonment occasioned by his justifiable homicide of a painter named Compaing, he began at Lyons his typographical and editorial labours. That he was not altogether unaware of the dangers to which he was exposed from the bigotry of the time is shown not only by the tone of his mottoes—Préserve moi, Seigneur, des calomnies des hommes, and Durior est spectatae virtutis quam incognitae conditio—but also by the fact that he endeavoured first of all to conciliate his opponents by publishing a Cato christianus, or Christian moralist, in which he made profession of his creed. The catholicity of his literary appreciation, in spite of his ultra-Ciceronianism, was soon displayed by the works which proceeded from his press—ancient and modern, sacred and secular, from the New Testament in Latin to Rabelais in French. But before the term of his privilege expired his labours were interrupted by his enemies, who succeeded in imprisoning him (1542) on the charge of atheism. From a first imprisonment of fifteen months Dolet was released by the advocacy of Pierre Duchâtel, bishop of Tulle; from a second (1544) he escaped by his own ingenuity; but, venturing back from Piedmont, whither he had fled in order that he might print at Lyons the letters by which he appealed for justice to the king of France, the queen of Navarre and the parlement of Paris, he was again arrested, branded as a relapsed atheist by the theological faculty of the Sorbonne, and on the 3rd of August 1546 put to the torture, strangled and burned in the Place Maubert. On his way thither he is said to have composed the punning pentameter—Non dolet ipse Dolet, sed pia turba dolet.
Whether Dolet is to be classed with the representatives of Protestantism or with the advocates of anti-Christian rationalism has been frequently disputed; by the principal Protestants of his own time he was not recognized, and by Calvin he is formally condemned, along with Agrippa and his master Villanova, as having uttered execrable blasphemies against the Son of God; but, to judge by the religious character of a large number of the books which he translated or published, such a condemnation is altogether misplaced. His repeated advocacy of the reading of the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue is especially noticeable. A statue of Dolet was erected on the Place Maubert in 1889.
See J. F. Née de la Rochelle, Vie d’Étienne Dolet (1779); Joseph Boulmier, E. Dolet, sa vie, ses œuvres, son martyre (1857); A. F. Didot, Essai sur la typographie (1852) and article in the Nouvelle Biographie générale; L. Michel. Dolet: sa statue, place Maubert: ses amis, ses ennemis (1889); R. C. Christie, Étienne Dolet, the Martyr of the Renaissance (2nd ed., 1889), containing a full bibliography of works published by him as author or printer; O. Galtier, Étienne Dolet (Paris, 1908). The procès, or trial, of Dolet was published (1836) by A. H. Taillandier from the registers of the parlement of Paris.
DOLGELLEY (Dolgellau, dale of hazels), a market town and the county town of Merionethshire, North Wales, situated on the streams Wnion and Aran at the north base of Cader Idris, on the Cambrian and Great Western railways, 232 m. from London. Pop. of urban district (1901) 2437. It consists of small squares and narrow streets, with a free grammar school (1665), market hall, assize hall, county gaol, &c. The so-called parliament house (1404) of Owen Glendower’s members has been demolished. There is some trade in coarse flannel and tweed. Glendower’s treaty with Charles of France (Owinus D.G. princeps Walliae. . . Datum apud Dolguelli . . . ) was dated here. The families of county rank in the neighbourhood include those of Nannau, Hengwrt (the famous Hengwrt Welsh MSS. are at Peniarth), Caerynwch, Fronwnion, Bron-y-gadair, Brynygwin, Brynadda, Abergwynnant, Garthangharad. The county family, Vaughan, claims descent from Rodric Fawr, king of North Wales, Glendower’s kinsman and enemy lived at Nannau. Scott (Marmion, vi. canto, note) refers to the demon oak at Nannau in 1813. Among neighbouring hills are Moel Offrwm (or Orthrwm—of sacrifice or of oppression) and Moel Cynwch.
DOLGORUKI, VASILY LUKICH, Count (1672–1739), Russian diplomatist and minister, was one of the first batch of young Russians whom Peter the Great sent abroad to be educated. From 1687 to 1700 he resided at Paris, where he learned thoroughly the principal European languages, acquired the superficial elegance of the court of Versailles, and associated with the Jesuits, whose moral system he is said to have appropriated. On his return home he entered the diplomatic service. From 1706 to 1707 he represented Russia in Poland; and from 1707 to 1720 he was her minister at Copenhagen, where he succeeded in persuading King Frederick IV. to join the second coalition against Charles XII. At the end of 1720 he was transferred to Versailles, in order to seek the mediation of France in the projected negotiations with Sweden and obtain the recognition of Peter’s imperial title by the French court. In 1724 he represented Russia at Warsaw and in 1726 at Stockholm, the object of the latter mission being to detach Sweden from the Hanoverian alliance, in which he did not succeed. During the reign of Peter II. (1727–1730) Dolgoruki was appointed a member of the supreme privy council, and after procuring the banishment of Menshikov he appropriated the person of the young emperor, whom he would have forced to marry his niece Catherine but for Peter’s untimely death. He then drew up a letter purporting to be the last will of the emperor, appointing Catherine Dolgoruki his successor, but shortly afterwards abandoned the nefarious scheme as impracticable, and was one of the first to support the election of Anne of Courland to the throne on condition that she first signed nine “articles of limitation,” which left the supreme power in the hands of the Russian council. Anne, who repudiated the “articles” on the first opportunity, never forgave Dolgoruki for this. He was deprived of all his offices and dignities on the 17th of April 1730, and banished first to his country seat and then to the Solovetsky monastery. Nine years later the charge of forging the will of Peter II. was revived against him, and he was tortured and then beheaded at Novgorod on the 8th of November 1739.
See Robert Nisbet Bain, The Pupils of Peter the Great (London, 1895). (R. N. B.)
DOLHAIN, the most eastern town of Belgium, situated on the Vesdre, N. E. of Verviers and close to the Prussian frontier. Pop. (1904) 4757. It is quite a modern town, occupying the site of the lower town of the ancient city of Limburg, which was destroyed by Louis XIV. in 1675. On a rocky eminence above Dolhain are still to be seen the fine ruins of the old castle of Limburg, the cradle of the ancient family of that name from which sprang the Luxemburg family and several emperors of Germany. The Gothic church of St George of the 13th century has been restored. At a short distance from Dolhain is the famous dam of the Gileppe, the vast reservoir constructed to supply Verviers with water free from lime for its cloth manufactures. The aqueduct from Gileppe to Verviers is nearly 512 m. in length.
DOLICHOCEPHALIC (long-headed), a term invented by Andreas Retzius to denote (as opposed to “brachycephalic”) those skulls the diameter of which from side to side, or the transverse diameter, is small in comparison with the longitudinal diameter or that from front to back. Retzius, though inventing the term, did not define it precisely. Paul Broca applied it to skulls having a cephalic index of seventy-five and under, and this limit is generally adopted. Dolichocephaly, according to Retzius, was the distinctive cranial feature of the earliest inhabitants of Europe. To-day it is characteristic of the negro races, of the
