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HISTORY OF PRINTING.
Another student warmly espoused the cause of the city. This led to replies and rminders, and at length to the imprisonment of Dolet. After a month's confinement he was expelled from Toulouse. This happened in 1533.
In 1534, he came to Paris, and puhlished some works: returned to Lyons in April, 1536; hut in the year following, having killed a man who attacked him, was obliged to hare recourse to flight: came again to Paris, implored the king's pardon, and obtained it. Dolet laments this event in several passages of his Latin poems.
Soon afterwards, he is found again at Lyons, in the character of a printer; and the first pro- duction of bis press was the collection of^his own poems : Carmiimm Libri IV. 4to, Lugduni,
1538. About this time he married; and in
1539, had a son named Claude, whose birth he commemorates in some verses which he printed that year.
Though few of the incidents of his life are known, it would appear from some lines of his Second Enter, that lie was imprisoned twice at Lyons, and once at Paris, after his incarceration at Toulouse, and before that final one at Paris which preceded his condemnation. The occa- sions of these successive imprisonments are un- known; but it is supposed, his satirical and over- bearing temper had made him many enemies; and that they, availing themselves of the free- dom with which he had spoken on religious sub- jects, took occasion to bring him into trouble. It is certain at least, that upon a religious cltarge he was imprisoned at Paris in 1544 ; but on that occasion he obtained his liberation, as we have before shown, through the kind offices of Pierre du Chastel, then bishop of Tulle.
That Dolet should have exposed himself to martyrdom by the rash profession of atheistical sentiments, seems very incredible. But if his case involved a question of heterodoxy with respect to the religious disputes of the time, it is extraordinary that he met with as little com- miseration from the reformed, as from his catho- lic persecutors. Niceron considers that well known punning story as an invention "apres coup :' that when the victim, on his way to the scene of punishment, observed the popular signs of compassion, he exclaimed:
" Non dolet ipse Dolet, sed pU tnrba dolet"
upon which the confessor who attended him, said:
" Non pla tnrba dolet, sed dolet ipse Dolet."
Calvin is reported to have described this un- fortunate man as an impious wretch and an atheist. _ Theodore Beza, when he composed his Juvenalia, thought and spoke more charitably of him. But he suppressea this liberal testimony in the later editions of his poems
Niceron has specified at least twenty-four dis- tinct works by Dolet, many of which are in the French tongue, and severed of a religious com-
plexion; which may serve further to annul the charge of atheism or impie^. Dolet seems to adopt the language of decided fatalism: Mait- taire finds not that he maintained otherwise any infidel tenets ; says that in his instructions to his son he inculcates the being of God, the immor- tality of the soul, and the hope of heaven, to- gether with pure moral precepts: that he seems to have in some respects diflTered from the church of Rome : and to have been an advocate for the perusal of thescriptures in the vernacular tongues.
This singular, mysterious, and ill-fated scholar, says Greswell, exercised at Lyons the profession of an " Imprimeur," but the productions of his press are comparatively few, and of rare occur- rence. His imigne typogrophicum or mark, bears an obscure allusion to his name : a hand furnished with an axe, and hewing a knotty block of wood, which is marked by a line: "manus dolabra stipitem nodosam et informem ad amussim do- lans," (says Maittaire,) with the legend : " Sea- bra et impolita ad amussim doloatqueperpolio:" and generally "ad finem libri," the same device, with the name " Doletus," and this motto : "Durior est spectatse virtutis quani incognits conditio."
1547, Jan. 15. On this day was beheaded on tower hill, in the prime of life, Henry Howard, earl of Surry, " a man," oberves sir Walter Raleigh, " no less valiant than learned, and of excellent hopes." He excelled in all the mili- tary exercises of the age ; he encouraged litera- ture and the fine arts, both by his patronage and example. He cultivated the friendship of learned men, particularly Erasmus, sir Thomas More, and sir Thomas Wyat, the elder. He was uni- versally acknowledged to be the most gallant man, the most polite lover, and the most accom- plished gentleman of his time. His poetical talents have been celebrated by Drayton, Dry- den, Fenton, and Pope. He was a great refiner of the English language, and is much celebrated for the sweetness and harmony of his numbers.
The first English blank verse* ever written appears to have been the translation of the first and fourth books of the ^neid, by lord Surry, which was printed shortly after his death, under the title of the Fourth Boke of Virgill, intreeting of the Loue beiwene ^neat and Dido ; tnaulated into Englishe, and drawen into ttraunge metre. London, without date, 4(0. 1557, along with the second book ; but which must have been written at least ten years before. Surry most probably borrowed the idea of this innovation from the Italians; but Dr. Nott is of opinion that Surry
- Blank verse is verse without rhrme, or the conso-
nance of final sjllables. Of this species is all the verse of the ancient Greeks and Romans that has come down to us. Bnt during the middle ages, rhjrme, however it origi- nated, came to be employed as a common ornament of poetical composition, both in Latin and in the vemacnlar tongnes of most of the modern nations of Europe. In the fifteenth century, when a recurrence to classical models became the fashion, attempts were made in raiious langnages to reject rhyme, as a relic of barbarism. Thns, Homer's Odyuey was translated into Spanish blank verse by OonsalTO Percr, the secretary of state to the emperor Charles V., and afterwards to Philip II.
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