Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Dolle, William
DOLLE, WILLIAM (fl. 1670–1680), engraver, was employed by the booksellers in engraving portraits and frontispieces. His engravings are weakly and stiffly executed, and show little merit or originality. The most creditable among them is the frontispiece to Theophilus de Garencières's translation of Nostradamus's ‘Prophecies’ (1672), which shows the author seated at his writing-table, while above are portraits in ovals of his friend Nathaniel Parker of Gray's Inn, and of Nostradamus himself. In the first edition (1670) of Izaak Walton's ‘Lives’ the portraits of Sir Henry Wotton and Richard Hooker are by Dolle, the former being a reduced copy of an engraving by Lombart, and the latter of one by Faithorne. In the ‘Reliquiæ Wottonianæ’ (1672) there are portraits of Sir Henry Wotton, Robert Devereux, earl of Essex, and George Villiers, duke of Buckingham, by Dolle, the last named a poor reduction from Delff's engraving. A small portrait of John Milton by Dolle, a reduced copy of one by Faithorne, is prefixed to his ‘Artis Logicæ Institutio’ (1672), ‘Poems on Several Occasions’ (1673), and the small 8vo edition of ‘Paradise Lost’ (1674). Other portraits engraved by Dolle are those of John Cosin, bishop of Durham, Robert Sanderson, bishop of Lincoln, Dr. Mark Frank, master of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, Dr. Francis Glisson, Samuel Botley, shorthand writer, and others. They are mostly prefixed as frontispieces to their works, and are to be found separately in the collection of the print room at the British Museum.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Strutt's Dict. of Engravers; Bromley's Cat. of Engraved British Portraits; Lowndes's Bibl. Man.]