arms, took the command of a company of troops. His fearlessness and unshaken resolution had no small influence in encouraging the regents and the citizens to prolong the defence. On the foundation of the university of Leiden by William the Silent, Dousa was appointed first curator, and he held this office for nearly thirty years. Through his friendships with foreign scholars he drew to Leiden many illustrious teachers and professors. After the assassination of the prince of Orange in 1584, Dousa undertook a private journey to England to try and persuade Queen Elizabeth to support the cause of the states, and in 1585 he went at the head of a formal embassy for the same purpose. About the same time he was appointed keeper of the archives of Holland (registermeester van Holland), and the opportunities thus afforded him of historical research he turned to good account. He had three sons and five daughters. All his sons acquired a reputation for learning, but two of them died before their father. Dousa was author of several volumes of Latin verse and of philological commentaries on Horace, Plautus, Catullus and other Latin poets. His principal work is the Annals of Holland, which first appeared in a metrical form in 1599, and was published in prose under the title of Bataviae Hollandiaeque annales in 1601. Dousa also took part as editor or contributor in various other publications. He died at Noordwyck on the 8th of October 1604, and was interred at the Hague; but no monument was erected to his memory till 1792, when one of his descendants placed a tomb to his honour in the church of Noordwyck. There are good portraits of the Great Dousa, as he is often called, by Visscher and Houbraken.
DOUVILLE, JEAN BAPTISTE (1794?–1837), French traveller, was born at Hambye, in the department of Manche. Having at an early age inherited a fortune, he decided to gratify his taste for foreign travel. According to his own profession he visited India, Kashmir, Khorasan, Persia, Asia Minor and many parts of Europe. In 1826 he went to South America, and in 1827 left Brazil for the Portuguese possessions on the west coast of Africa, where his presence in March 1828 is proved by the mention made of him in letters of Castillo Branco, the governor-general of Loanda. In May 1831 he reappeared in France, claiming to have pushed his explorations into the very heart of central Africa. His story was readily accepted by the Société de Géographie of Paris, which hastened to recognize his services by assigning him the great gold medal, and appointing him their secretary for the year 1832. On the publication of his narrative, Voyage au Congo et dans l’intérieur de l’Afrique équinoxiale, which occupied three volumes and was accompanied by an elaborate atlas, public enthusiasm ran high. Before the year 1832 was out, however, it was established that Douville’s Voyage was romance and not verity. He had probably been inspired by the appearance of René Caillié’s account of his journey to Timbuktu, and wished to obtain a share of the fame attaching to African explorers. Douville tried vainly to establish the truth of his story in Ma Défense (1832), and Trente mois de ma vie, ou quinze mois avant et quinze mois après mon voyage au Congo (1833). Mlle Audrun, a lady to whom he was about to be married, committed suicide from grief at the disgrace; and the adventurer withdrew in 1833 to Brazil, and proceeded to make explorations in the valley of the Amazon. According to Dr G. Gardner, in his Travels in the Interior of Brazil (1846), he was murdered in 1837 on the banks of the Sao Francisco for charging too high for his medical assistance. Douville may well have explored part of the province of Angola, and Sir Richard Burton maintained that the Frenchman’s descriptions of the country of the Congo were lifelike; that his observations on the anthropology, ceremonies, customs and maladies of the people were remarkably accurate; and that even the native words used in his narrative were “for the most part given with unusual correctness.” It has been shown, however, that the chief source of Douville’s inspiration was a number of unpublished Portuguese manuscripts to which he had access.
DOUW (or Dow), GERHARD (1613–1680), Dutch painter, was born at Leiden on the 7th of April 1613. His first instructor in drawing and design was Bartholomew Dolendo, an engraver; and he afterwards learned the art of glass-painting under Peter Kouwhoorn. At the age of fifteen he became a pupil of Rembrandt, with whom he continued for three years. From the great master of the Flemish school he acquired his skill in colouring, and in the more subtle effects of chiaroscuro; and the style of Rembrandt is reflected in several of his earlier pictures, notably in a portrait of himself at the age of twenty-two, in the Bridgewater House gallery, and in the “Blind Tobit going to meet his Son,” at Wardour Castle. At a comparatively early point in his career, however, he had formed a manner of his own distinct from, and indeed in some respects antagonistic to, that of his master. Gifted with unusual clearness of vision and precision of manipulation, he cultivated a minute and elaborate style of treatment; and probably few painters ever spent more time and pains on all the details of their pictures down to the most trivial. He is said to have spent five days in painting a hand; and his work was so fine that he found it necessary to manufacture his own brushes. Notwithstanding the minuteness of his touch, however, the general effect was harmonious and free from stiffness, and his colour was always admirably fresh and transparent. He was fond of representing subjects in lantern or candle light, the effects of which he reproduced with a fidelity and skill which no other master has equalled. He frequently painted by the aid of a concave mirror, and to obtain exactness looked at his subject through a frame crossed with squares of silk thread. His practice as a portrait painter, which was at first considerable, gradually declined, sitters being unwilling to give him the time that he deemed necessary. His pictures were always small in size, and represented chiefly subjects in still life. Upwards of 200 are attributed to him, and specimens are to be found in most of the great public collections of Europe. His chef-d’œuvre is generally considered to be the “Woman sick of the Dropsy,” in the Louvre. The “Evening School,” in the Amsterdam gallery, is the best example of the candlelight scenes in which he excelled. In the National Gallery, London, favourable specimens are to be seen in the “Poulterer’s Shop,” and a portrait of himself. Douw’s pictures brought high prices, and it is said that President Van Spiring of the Hague paid him 1000 florins a year simply for the right of pre-emption. Douw died in 1680. His most celebrated pupil was Francis Mieris.
DOVE, a river of England, tributary to the Trent, rising in Axe Edge, Derbyshire, and through almost its entire course forming the boundary of that county with Staffordshire. In its upper course it traverses a fine narrow valley, where the limestone hills exhibit many picturesque cliffs, gullies and caves. Dovedale, that part of the valley which lies between Dove Holes and Thorpe Cloud (or with a wider significance between the towns of Hartington and Ashbourne), is especially famous. Below Thorpe Cloud the Dove receives on the west the waters of the Manifold, which, like its tributary the Hamps, and other streams in the limestone district, has part of its course below ground. Near the village of Rocester the Churnet joins the Dove on the west, and then the course of the main stream, hitherto southerly, bends nearly easterly on passing Uttoxeter, and, winding through a widening valley, joins the Trent at Newton Solney, a short distance below Burton-on-Trent. The length of the valley is about 40 m. and the total fall of the river about 1450 ft. The Dove is well known for its trout-fishing, and the portion of the upper valley called Beresford Dale, below Hartington, has a special interest for fishermen through its associations with Izaak Walton and his friend Charles Cotton, whose fishing-house stands near the Pike Pool, a reach of the river with a lofty rock rising from its centre.
DOVE (Dutch duyve, Dan. due, Ice. dufa, Ger. Taube), a name most commonly applied by ornithologists to the smaller members of the group of birds usually called pigeons (Columbae); but no sharp distinction can be drawn between pigeons and doves, and in general literature the two words are used almost indifferently, while no one species can be pointed out to which the word dove, taken alone, seems to be absolutely proper. The largest of the group to which the name is applicable is perhaps the ring-dove, or wood-pigeon, also called in many parts of
