Page:EB1911 - Volume 07.djvu/875

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DAUPHINÉ—DAVENANT, SIR W.
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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 Bibliotheque 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 Bibliothéque 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,