attractive to the dupes whose money he won by gambling. Her success surpassing his expectations, his hopes took a higher flight, and through Lebel, valet de chambre of Louis XV., and the duc de Richelieu, he succeeded in installing her as mistress of the king. In order to present her at court it was necessary to find a title for her, and as Count Jean du Barry was married himself his brother Guillaume offered himself as nominal husband. The comtesse du Barry was presented at court on the 22nd of April 1769, and became official mistress of the king. Her influence over the monarch was absolute until his death, and courtiers and ministers were in favour or disgrace with him in exact accordance with her wishes. The duc de Choiseul, who refused to acknowledge her, was disgraced in 1771; and the duc d’Aiguillon, who had the reputation of being her lover, took his place, and in concert with her governed the monarch. Louis XV. built for her the magnificent mansion of Luciennes. At his death in 1774 an order of his successor banished her to the abbey of Pont-aux-Dames, near Meaux, but, the queen interceding for her, the king in the following year gave her permission to reside at Luciennes with a pension. Here she led a retired life with the comte de Cossé-Brissac, and was visited there by Benjamin Franklin and the emperor Joseph II., among many other distinguished men. Having gone to England in 1792 to endeavour to raise money on her jewels, she was on her return accused before the Revolutionary Tribunal of having dissipated the treasures of the state, conspired against the republic, and worn, in London, “mourning for the tyrant.” She was condemned to death on the 7th of December 1793, and beheaded the same evening. Her contemporaries, scorning her low birth rather than her vices, attributed to her a malicious political rôle of which she was at heart incapable, and have done scant justice to her quick wit, her frank but gracious manners, and her seductive beauty. The volume of Lettres et Anecdotes (1779) which bears her name was not written by her.
See E. and J. de Goncourt, La du Barry (Paris, 1880); C. Vatel, Histoire de Madame du Barry (1882–1883), based on sources; R. Douglas, The Life and Times of Madame du Barry (London, 1896).
DU BARTAS, GUILLAUME DE SALUSTE, Seigneur (1544–1590), French poet, was born near Auch in 1544. He was employed by Henry IV. of France in England, Denmark and Scotland; and he commanded a troop of horse in Gascony, under the marshal de Martingan. He was a convinced Huguenot, and cherished the idea of writing a great religious epic in which biblical characters and Christian sentiment were to supplant the pagan mise en scène then in fashion. His first epic, Judith, appeared in a volume entitled La Muse chrétienne (Bordeaux, 1573). This was followed five years later by his principal work, La Sepmaine, a poem on the creation of the world. This work was held by admirers of du Bartas to put him on a level with Ronsard, and thirty editions of it were printed within six years after its appearance. Its religious tone and fanciful style made it a great favourite in England, where the author was called the “divine” du Bartas, and placed on an equality with Ariosto. Spenser, Hall and Ben Jonson, all speak in the highest terms of what seems to us a most uninteresting poem. King James VI. of Scotland tried his “prentice hand” at the translation of du Bartas’s poem L’Uranie, and the compliment was returned by the French writer, who translated, as La Lepanthe, James’s poem on the battle of Lepanto. Du Bartas began the publication of the Seconde Semaine in 1584. He aimed at a great epic which should stretch from the story of the creation to the coming of the Messiah. Of this great scheme he only executed a part, marked by a certain elevation of style, but he did not succeed in acclimatizing the religious epic in France. The work is spoiled by a constant tendency to moralize, and is filled with the indiscriminate information that passed under the name of science in the 16th century. Du Bartas, perhaps more than any other writer, brought the Ronsardist tradition into dispute. He introduced many unwieldy compounds foreign to the genius of the French language, and in his borrowings from old French, from provincial dialects and from Latin, he failed to show the sure instinct and prudence of Ronsard and du Bellay. He was also guilty of reduplicating the first syllables of words, producing such expressions as pépétiller, sousouflantes. Du Bartas died in July 1590 in Paris from wounds received at the battle of Ivry.
Joshua Sylvester translated the Sepmaine in 1598; other English translations from du Bartas are The Historie of Judith ... (1584), by Thomas Hudson; of portions of the “Weeks” (1625) by William Lisle (1569–1637), the Anglo-Saxon scholar; Urania (1589), by Robert Ashley (1565–1641); and Sir Philip Sidney (see Florio’s dedication of the second book of his translation of Montaigne to Lady Rich) wrote a translation of the first “Week,” which is lost. The Œuvres complètes of du Bartas were printed at Paris (1579), Paris and Bordeaux (1611). See also G. Pellissier, La Vie et les œuvres de du Bartas (1883).
DUBAWNT, or Doobaunt (Indian Toobaung, i.e. turbid), a river of Mackenzie and Keewatin districts, Canada. It rises in Wholdaia (or Daly) Lake, in 104° 20′ W. and 60° 15′ N., and flows northward to its confluence with the Thelon river, and thence eastward to Chesterfield Inlet, an arm of Hudson Bay. It passes through numerous lake-expansions, including Dubawnt Lake, with an area of 1700 sq. m. and an altitude of 500 ft. above the sea; Aberdeen, altitude 130 ft.; and Baker, 30 ft. From the head of Wholdaia Lake to the head of Chesterfield Inlet is 750 m. and thence to the west coast of Hudson Bay 125 m. The river is shallow, and banks and bed are chiefly composed of boulders; grassy slopes, however, occur at intervals along its banks, especially on the shores of Dubawnt Lake, and are the feeding grounds of large bands of cariboo. Discovered in 1770 by Samuel Hearne, the Dubawnt was explored by J. B. Tyrrell in 1893, and the Thelon by David Hanbury in 1899.
See Annual Report of the Geological Survey of Canada for 1896 (printed 1898).
DUBBO, a municipal town of Lincoln county, New South Wales, Australia, on the Macquarie river, 278 m. by rail N.W. of Sydney. Pop. (1901) 3409. It is a flourishing manufacturing town in a pastoral district, in part also cultivated. Coal and copper are found in the neighbourhood.
DU BELLAY, GUILLAUME, Sieur de Langey (1491–1543), French soldier and diplomat, was born at the château of Glatigny, near Montmirail, in 1491. His father, Louis du Bellay-Langey was a younger son of the Angevin family of du Bellay, which from the 14th century was distinguished in the service of the dukes of Anjou and afterwards of the kings of France; and Louis had six sons, who were among the best servants of Francis I. Guillaume, the eldest, is one of the most remarkable figures of the time; a brave soldier, a humanist and a historian, he was above all the most able diplomat at the command of Francis I., prodigiously active, and excelling in secret negotiations. He entered the military service at an early age, was taken prisoner at Pavia (1525) and shared the captivity of Francis I. His skill and devotion attached him to the king. His missions to Spain, Italy, England and Germany were innumerable; sent three times to England in 1529–1530, he was occupied with the execution of the treaty of Cambrai and also with the question of Henry VIII.’s divorce, and with the help of his brother Jean, then bishop of Paris, he obtained a decision favourable to Henry VIII. from the Sorbonne (July 2, 1530). From 1532 to 1536, though he went three times to England, he was principally employed in uniting the German princes against Charles V.; in May 1532 he signed the treaty of Scheyern with the dukes of Bavaria, the landgrave of Hesse, and the elector of Saxony, and in January 1534 the treaty of Augsburg. During the war of 1537 Francis I. sent him on missions to Piedmont; he was governor of Turin from December 1537 till the end of 1539, and subsequently replacing Marshal d’Annebaut as governor of the whole of Piedmont, he displayed great capacity in organization. But at the end of 1542, overwhelmed by work, he was compelled to return to France, and died near Lyons on the 9th of January 1543. Rabelais, an eye-witness, has left a moving story of his death (Pantagruel, iii. ch. 21, and iv. ch. 27). He was buried in the cathedral of Le Mans, where a monument was erected to his memory, with the inscription, “Ci gît Langey, dont la plume et l’épée Ont surmonté Cicéron et Pompée”; Charles V. is said to have remarked that Langey, by his own unaided efforts,
