in Drury Lane. The civil war, however, put a check upon this prosperous career ; and he was among the most active partisans of royalty through the whole of that struggle for supremacy. As early as May 1642, Davenant was accused before the Long Parliament of being mainly con cerned in a scheme to seduce the army to overthrow the Commons. He was accordingly apprehended at Faversham, and imprisoned for two months in London ; he then attempted to escape to France, and succeeded in reaching Canterbury, where he was re-captured. Escaping a second time, he made good his way to the queen, with whom he remained in France until he volunteered to carry over to England some military stores for the army of his old friend the earl of Newcastle, by whom he was induced to enter the service as lieutenant-general of ordnance. He acquitted himself with so much bravery and skill that, after the siege of Gloucester, in 1643, he was knighted by the king. After the battle of Naseby, he retired to Paris, where he became a Roman Catholic, and spent some months iu the composition of his epic poem of Gondibert. In 1650 he took the command of a colonizing expedition that set sail from France to Virginia, but was captured in the Channel by a Parliamentary man-of-war, which took him back to the Isle of Wight. Imprisoned in Cowes Castle until 1651, he tempered the discomfort and suspense of his condition by continuing the composition of Gon dibert. He was sent up to the TWer to await his trial for high treason, but just as the storm was about to break over his head, all cleared away. It is believed that the personal intercession of Milton led to this result. Davenant, released from prison, immediately published Gondibert, the work on which his fame mainly rests, a chivalric epic in the stanza of Nosce Teipsum, the influence of which poem is strongly marked in its philosophical pas sages. It is a cumbrous, dull poem, but is relieved with a multitude of fine and felicitous passages, and lends itself most happily to quotation. During the civil war one of his plays had been printed, the tragedy of The Unfortunate Lovers, in 1643. He found that there were many who desired him to recommence his theatrical career. Such a step, however, was absolutely forbidden by Puritan law. Davenant, therefore, by the help of some influential friends, obtained permission to open a sort of theatre at Rutland House, in Charterhouse Yard, where, on the 21st of May 1656, he began a series of representations, which he called operas, as an inoffensive term. This word was then first introduced into our language. The opening piece was his own Siege of Rhodes, printed the same year, which was per formed with stage-decorations and machinery of a kind hitherto quite unthought of in England. He continued until the Restoration to produce ephemeral works of this kind, only one of which, Tlie Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru, in 1658, was of sufficient literary merit to survive. In 1660 he had the infinite satisfaction of being able to preserve the life of that glorious poet who had, nine years before, saved his own from a not less imminent danger. The mutual relations of Milton and Davenant do honour to the generosity of two men who, sincerely opposed iu politics, knew how to forget their personal anger in their common love of letters. Under Charles II., Davenant flourished in the dramatic world ; he opened a new theatre in Lincoln s Inn Fields, which he called the Duke s ; and he introduced a luxury and polish into the theatrical life which it had never before known in England. Under his management, the great actors of the Restoration, Betterton and his coevals, took their peculiar French style and appearance ; and the ancient simplicity of the English stage was completely buried under the tinsel of decoration and splendid scenery. Davenant brought out six new plays in the Duke s Theatre, The Rivals, The Man s the Master, comedies translated from Scarron, News from Plymouth, The Distresses, The Siege, The Fair Favourite, tragi comedies, all of which were printed after his death, and not one of which survived their author on the stage. He died on the 17th of April 1668, and two days afterwards was buried in Poet s Corner, Westminster Abbey, with the in scription " rare Sir William Davenant ! " In 1672 his writings were collected in folio. His last work had been to
travesty Shakespeare s Tempest, in company with Dryden.The personal character, adventures, and fame of Davenant, and more especially his position as a leading reformer, or rather debaser, of the stage, have always given him a prominence in the history of literature which his writings hardly justify. His plays are utterly unreadable, and his poems are usually stilted and unnatural. With Cowley, he marks the process of transition from the poetry of the imagination to the poetry of the intelligence ; but he had far less genius than Cowley, and his influence on our drama must be condemned as wholly deplorable.
DAVENPORT, a city of the United States, capital of Scott county, Iowa, is situated on the west bank of the Upper Mississippi, opposite Rock Island, about 110 miles above Keokuk (following the course of the river), and 160 miles west of Chicago. The city, which is regularly laid out, contains a city hall, a county court-house, an opera house, and a number of churches. Among the educa tional institutions may be mentioned Griswold College, belonging to the Episcopalian denomination, and the Catholic Academy of the Immaculate Conception. There is also an academy of natural science. The trade of Davenport is considerable, consisting chiefly of grain and domestic pro duce, while its manufactures are not unimportant, compris ing waggons, agricultural implements, joinery and cabinet work, tobacco, &c. The city is governed by a mayor and 12 aldermen. It was first settled in 1836, and was incorporated as a town in 1842 and as a city in 1851. Population in 1860, 11,267 ; and in 1870, 20,038.
DAVID (Hebrew, TH beloved], son of Jesse, second king of Israel, and founder of the dynasty which continued to reign at Jerusalem until the Babylonian captivity. According to the usual chronology, he reigned 1055-1015 B.C., but the computations which produce this date by counting back from the destruction of Jerusalem, 588 B.C., or the fall of Samaria, 722 B.C., contain numerous pre carious elements. Ewald puts the date ten years earlier, but recent investigations on the contrary make it not improbable that David flourished as much as from thirty years to half a century later than is usually assumed.[1]
changed the whole face of Hebrew history. During the period of the Judges, the Hebrews were weakened by an exaggerated love of personal independence, divided by tribal jealousies, and oppressed by a succession of foreign enemies, of whom the latest and most dangerous were the Philistines, an immigrant people whose main settlements in the fruitful coastland of southern Canaan appear to have taken place after the Hebrews were established in the land.
Forcing their way inland, the Philistines struck a decisive
- ↑ The admitted confusion in the chronology of the books of Kings can hardly be cleared up without the aid of synchronisms with the history of foreign nations, Egypt and Assyria. The Assyrian syn chronisms seem to bring down the date of Jehu, and hence of all who preceded him, by nearly forty years. This is at least not contradicted by the only available Egyptian synchronism, the war of Shishak with Rehoboam. (See Schrader, Keilinschriften und A. T., Giessen, 1872, and in control of his conclusions Wellhausen in the Jakrbiicher fur Deutsche Theologie, 1875, p. 607, seq., and G. Smith s Assyrian Eponym Canon, 1875.) An additional element of uncertainty lies in the forty years reign ascribed to Solomon. Forty is often used as an indefinite number, and the marriage of Reboboam to Absalom s daughter seems inconsistent with so long a reign, as Rehoboam came to the throne at the age of forty-one.
