re much
employed for road-mending and for kerbstones, though their dark colour
and the tendency they have to weather with a dingy brown crust make them
unsuitable for the better classes of architectural work. (J. S. F.)

DOLET, ETIENNE (1509-1546), French scholar and printer, was born at
Orleans on the 3rd of August 1509. A doubtful tradition makes him the
illegitimate son of Francis I.; but it is evident that he was at least
connected with some family of rank and wealth. From Orleans he was taken
to Paris about 1521; and after studying under Nicolas Berauld, the
teacher of Coligny, he proceeded in 1526 to Padua. The death of his
friend and master, Simon de Villanova, led him, in 1530, to accept the
post of secretary to Jean de Langeac, bishop of Limoges and French
ambassador to the republic of Venice; he contrived, however, to attend
the lectures of the Venetian scholar Battista Egnazio, and found time to
write Latin love poems to some Venetian Elena. Returning to France soon
afterwards he proceeded to Toulouse to study law; but there he soon
became involved in the violent disputes between the different "nations"
of the university, was thrown into prison, and finally banished by a
decree of the parlement. In 1535 he entered the lists against Erasmus in
the famous Ciceronian controversy, by publishing through Sebastien
Gryphe (Gryphius) at Lyons a _Dialogus de imitatione Ciceroniana_; and
the following year saw the appearance of his two folio volumes
_Commentariorum linguae Latinae_. This work was dedicated to Francis I.,
who gave him the privilege of printing during ten years any works in
Latin, Greek, Italian or French, which were the product of his own pen
or had received his supervision; and accordingly, on his release from an
imprisonment occasioned by his justifiable homicide of a painter named
Compaing, he began at Lyons his typographical and editorial labours.
That he was not altogether unaware of the dangers to which he was
exposed from the bigotry of the time is shown not only by the tone of
his mottoes--_Preserve moi, Seigneur, des calomnies des hommes_, and
_Durior est spectatae virtutis quam incognitae conditio_--but also by
the fact that he endeavoured first of all to conciliate his opponents by
publishing a _Cato christianus_, or Christian moralist, in which he made
profession of his creed. The catholicity of his literary appreciation,
in spite of his ultra-Ciceronianism, was soon displayed by th