(R. P. S.)
DOPPLERITE, a naturally occurring organic substance found in amorphous, elastic or jelly-like masses, of brownish-black colour, in peat beds in Styria and in Switzerland. It is tasteless, insoluble in alcohol and ether, and is described by Dana as an acid substance, or mixture of different acids, related to humic acid.
DORAN, JOHN (1807-1878), English author, was born in London of Irish parentage on the 11th of March 1807. He became tutor in several distinguished families, and while travelling on the continent contributed journalistic sketches to The Literary Chronicle, a paper which was afterwards incorporated with The Athenaeum. His play, Justice or the Venetian Jew, was produced at the Surrey theatre in 1824, and in 1830 he began to write translations from French, German, Latin and Italian authors for The Bath Journal. After some years of travel on the continent he became in 1841 literary editor of The Church and State Gazette, and in 1852 under the title of Filia dolorosa produced a memoir of Maria Thérèse Charlotte, duchesse d’Angoulême. Two years later he became a regular contributor to The Athenaeum, succeeding Hepworth Dixon as editor for a short time in 1869, until he became editor of Notes and Queries in 1870. His most elaborate work, Their Majesties’ Servants, a history of the English stage from Betterton to Kean, was published in 1860, and was supplemented by In and About Drury Lane, which was written for Temple Bar and was not published in book form till 1885, after Doran’s death. Among his other works may be mentioned Table Traits and Habits of Men (1854), The Queens of the House of Hanover (1855), Knights and their Days (1856), Monarchs retired from Business (1856), The History of Court Fools (1858), an edition of the Bentley Ballads (1858), The Last Journals of Horace Walpole (2 vols., 1859), The Princess of Wales (1860), and the Memoirs of Queen Adelaide (1861). These were followed by A Lady of the Last Century (1873), an account of Mrs Elizabeth Montagu and the blue-stockings; London in Jacobite Times (1877); and Memories of our Great Towns (1878). Doran died in London, on the 25th of January 1878.
DORAT, CLAUDE JOSEPH (1734-1780), French man of letters, was born in Paris on the 31st of December 1734. He belonged to a family whose members had for generations been lawyers, and he entered the corps of the king’s musketeers. He obtained a great vogue by his Réponse d’Abailard à Héloïse, and followed up this first success with a number of heroic epistles, Les Victimes de l’amour, ou lettres de quelques amants célèbres (1776). Dorat was possessed by an ambition quite out of proportion to his very mediocre ability. Besides light verse he wrote comedies, fables and, among other novels, Les Sacrifices de l’amour, ou lettres de la vicomtesse de Senanges et du chevalier de Versenay (1771). He tried to cover his failures as a dramatist by buying up a great number of seats, and his books were lavishly illustrated by good artists and expensively produced, to secure their success. He was maladroit enough to draw down on himself the hatred both of the philosophe party and of their arch-enemy Charles Palissot, and thus cut himself off from the possibility of academic honours. Le Tartufe littéraire (1777) attacked La Harpe and Palissot, and at the same time D’Alembert and Mlle de Lespinasse. Dorat died on the 29th of April 1780 in Paris.
See G. Desnoireterres, Le Chevalier Dorat et les poètes légers au XVIIIe siècle (1887). For the bibliographical value of his works, see Henry Cohen, Guide de l’amateur de livres à figures et à vignettes du XVIIIe siècle (editions of Ch. Mehl, 1876, and R. Portalis, 1887).
DORCHESTER, DUDLEY CARLETON, Viscount (1573-1632), English diplomatist, son of Antony Carleton of Baldwin Brightwell, Oxfordshire, and of Jocosa, daughter of John Goodwin of Winchington, Buckinghamshire, was born on the 10th of March 1573, and educated at Westminster school and Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated M.A. in 1600. He travelled abroad, and was returned to the parliament of 1604 as member for St Mawes. Through his connexion as secretary with the earl of Northumberland his name was associated with the Gunpowder Plot, but after a short confinement he succeeded in clearing himself of any share in the conspiracy. In 1610 he was knighted and was sent as ambassador to Venice, where he was the means of concluding the treaty of Asti. He returned in 1615, and next year was appointed ambassador to Holland. The policy of England on the continent depended mainly upon its relations with that state, and Carleton succeeded in improving these, in spite of his firm attitude on the subject of the massacre of Amboyna, the bitter commercial disputes between the two countries, and the fatal tendency of James I. to seek alliance with Spain. It was in his house at the Hague that the unfortunate Elector Frederick and the princess Elizabeth took refuge in 1621. Carleton returned to England in 1625 with the duke of Buckingham, and was made vice-chamberlain of the household and a privy councillor. Shortly afterwards he took part in an abortive mission to France in favour of the French Protestants and to inspire a league against the house of Austria. On his return in 1626 he found the attention of parliament, to which he had been elected for Hastings, completely occupied with the attack upon Buckingham. Carleton endeavoured to defend his patron, and supported the king’s violent exercise of his prerogative. It was perhaps fortunate that his further career in the Commons was cut short by his elevation in May to the peerage as Baron Carleton of Imbercourt. Shortly afterwards he was despatched on another mission to the Hague, on his return from which he was created Viscount Dorchester in July 1628. He was active in forwarding the conferences between Buckingham and Contarini for a peace with France on the eve of the duke’s intended departure for La Rochelle, which was prevented by the latter’s assassination. In December 1628 he was made principal secretary of state, and died on the 15th of February 1632, being buried in Westminster Abbey. He was twice married, and had children, but all died in infancy, and the title became extinct. Carleton was one of the ablest diplomatists of the time, and his talents would have secured greater triumphs had he not been persistently hampered by the mistaken and hesitating foreign policy of the court.