261 



VALLE, PIETRO DELLA. 



VALMONT DE BOMABE, J. C. 



262 



dides, and Herodotus. The last translation was incomplete when he 

 died, and was finished by Pontanvts. His translatious have been 

 severely censured by modern critics for their carelessness and inaccu- 

 racy, but it must be borne in mind that many of their deficiencies may 

 not have risen altos ether from his imperfect knowledge of Greek or 

 carelessness, but also from the bad manuscripts which he used. 



The biography of Valla involves many difficulties, which partly 

 arise from the false or exaggerated accounts of his enemies. A minute 

 and critical history of the life of Valla is given by Drakenborch, in 

 the seventh volume of his edition of Livy. Compare also Hodius, 

 De Greeds Jllustribus, p. 104, &c. ; Vossius, De Histor. Lot., p. 579, &c.; 

 Fabricius, Bibliotheca Latino, Medice et Iwfimce JStat., under ' Valla/ 

 where a complete list of his works is given ; Bayle, Dictionnaire 

 Ilistorique et Critique, under ' Valla.' 



VALLE, PIETRO DELLA, surnamed II Pellegrino, a traveller of 

 the 17th century, was born at Rome on the 2nd of April 1586. Pos- 

 sessed of an independent fortune, he spent his youth in literary pur- 

 suits; his verses procured him admission into the academy of the 

 Uruoristi. The expectation of a war created by the disturbances 

 which followed the death of Henry IV., induced Delia Valle to turn 

 soldier. He does not appear however to have seen any land service 

 at that time, and of a cruise which he made off the coasts of Barbary 

 in a Spanish fleet in 1611, he says himself that they had only scuffles, 

 not battles. 



An unsuccessful love affair, in which he was engaged on his return 

 to Rome, drove him to Naples to consult his friend Mario Schipano, 

 about a project he had formed to visit the Holy Land. At Naples Le 

 took upon him the habit, and made a vow always to bear the name, 

 of a pilgrim. He embarked at Venice on the 8th of June, 1614, and 

 continued an unsettled traveller till 1626. He first bent his course 

 to Constantinople, which he reached on the 15th of August; he 

 remained there till the 25th of September 1615. From Constantinople 

 he proceeded by way of Rhodes and Alexandria to Cairo. Leaving 

 Cairo on the 8th of March 1616, he travelled by land to Aleppo and 

 Baghdad, where he fell in love with Maani Gioerida, a young Chaldean, 

 a native of Mardin, whence her parents had been driven by the Kurds, 

 and married her. Delia Valle carried his wife into Persia, where he 

 was favourably received by Shah Abbaa. He remained in Persia six 

 years (January 1617, to January 1623), during which time he visited, 

 in the suite of the king, Ispahan, the Caspian provinces, and Azer- 

 bijan. He served in a war between Persia and the Porte, and endea- 

 voured to procure some amelioration of the condition of Christians 

 in Persia. In December, 1621, his wife died : he had her corpse 

 embalmed, intending to carry it to Rome with him. In the beginning 

 of 1623 he sailed from Gambroon to Surat : he remained in India till 

 the close of 1624. He returned by Muscat to Basrah, traversed the 

 desert to Aleppo, and visiting Cyprus, Malta, Sicily, and Naples by 

 the way, he arrived at Rome on the 28th of March 1626. Here Delia 

 Valle deposited the body of his wife in the tomb of his ancestors, on 

 the 23rd of May 1627 : he pronounced a funeral oration over her, in 

 the delivery of which he was interrupted by his tears. Some authors 

 say that his audience sympathised with him ; others that they laughed 

 at him. 



Urban VIIL, to whom Delia Valle presented a memoir on the con- 

 dition of Georgia, appointed him an honorary gentleman of his bed- 

 chamber. Soon after he buried his first wife, Delia Valle married a 

 young relation of hers who had accompanied him on his travels. 

 Having in a violent access of anger killed a coachman on the Place of 

 St. Peter, while the pope was in the act of pronouncing the benediction, 

 Delia Valle was banished from Rome, but soon obtained a pardon and 

 leave to return. He died on the 20th of April 1652. 



Delia Valle caused to be printed in 1627, but did not publish, the 

 oration which he pronounced over his wife's body at the funeral cere- 

 mony. In 1628 he caused to be printed at Venice an account of Shah 

 Abbas, which Bellori (1662) says was not published : a French trans- 

 lation of this work appeared at Paris in 1631. Delia Valle published in 

 1641, ' Di tre riuove Maniere di Verso sdrucciolo, Discorso di Pietro 

 della Valle nell' Academia degli Umoristi il Fantastico, detta nella 

 stessa, a' 20 di Novembre, 1633." In 1650 he published the first part of 

 the letters written to his friend Schipano in the course of his travels : 

 this first part was contained in one 4to volume, and brought down the 

 narrative to the time of his marriage with Maani Gioerida. The 

 letters relating to Persia were published after his death, in 1659, in 

 two volumes : the third part his Indian travels and his return to 

 Rome were published in 1662. This work has been translated into 

 French, Dutch, and German ; an English translation of the last part 

 was published in 1665. The memoir on Georgia presented to 

 Urban VIIL was inserted by Thdvdnot in the first volume of his 

 Collection. In 1644 Delia Valle composed a narrative of the adven- 

 tures of his second wife, which does not appear ever to have been 

 published. He also left in manuscript an account, in Latin, of the 

 kings or chiefs subject to Persia, and some plans and drawings, which 

 his widow refused to communicate for publication. Delia Valle 

 appears to have been rash and vain, but he possessed the susceptibility 

 to external impressions, retentive memory, and facility of expression, 

 which is frequently found in persons of that character. His accounts 

 of routes and distances, of the external appearance, of countries, and 

 of manners and customs, are lively and accurate. 



(Pietro della Valle, Viaggi detcritti in Lettere familiare al *ua amico 

 Mario Schipano ; Bellori, Life of Delia, Valle, prefixed to the edition 

 of his Travels published at Rome in 1662 ; li-ioyraphie UniocrsMe.) 



VALLISNE'RI, or VALISNIE'RI, ANTONIO, an Italian natu- 

 ralist, was born on May the 3rd, 1661, at the castle of Tresilico, of 

 which his father was governor. He received his early education from 

 the Jesuits at Modena, and by them was instructed in the philosophy 

 and science of the schools of the day. In 1683 he repaired to Bologna, 

 where he studied medicine under the celebrated Malpighi, and acquired 

 from him a taste for the observation of nature, as well as an impres- 

 sion of the unsoundness of the prevailing systems of philosophy and 

 science. In 1684 he graduated at Reggio, but again returned to 

 Bologna, to pursue his natural-history studies under Malpighi, who 

 after three more years of application, is said to have dismissed his 

 pupil in these words : " Systems are ideal and mutable. Observation 

 and experience are solid and unchangeable." He visited Padua, 

 Venice, and Parma, and in 1688 commenced the practice of a physician 

 in Reggio. Here he devoted all his leisure to the study of nature : 

 he planted a botanic garden, made collections of plants, minerals, and 

 objects of interest in his neighbourhood, and commenced a series of 

 observations on the anatomy of the silkworm, from which he was led 

 to the study generally of the metamorphoses and generation of insects. 

 Having published his observations, they acquired him great reputa- 

 tion, and he was invited to occupy a chair amongst the medical pro- 

 fessors of the University of Padua in 1700. On taking his position 

 amongst the teachers of an old university, he felt that his views were 

 opposed to prevailing systems, and in order to prevent any alarm at 

 his teaching, he published a lecture in which he endeavoured to main- 

 tain the position that the studies of the moderns do not overturn, but 

 confirm the medical knowledge of the ancients. Notwithstanding 

 this attempt to appease the advocates of old systems, and of entire 

 obedience to prescribed authority, Vallisneri attacked with so much 

 energy the prevailing errors in medicine, and especially in the sciences 

 of anatomy and physiology, that he met with much opposition. But 

 he found an able protector in Frederic Marcello, the procurator of 

 St. Mark, and in 1711 was appointed to the first chair of the theory 

 of medicine. 



During the interval of his lectures Vallisneri took every oppor- 

 tunity of studying natural history, and for this purpose made an 

 excursion to the Apennines, and also visited Lucca, Pisa, Leghorn, 

 Florence, and other parts of Italy. In these excursions he made con- 

 siderable collections of objects in natural history, as well as found 

 many subjects of interesting research for the microscope, which he 

 used with great success. In 1720 he was invited by Pope Clement XI. 

 to become physician to his holiness in the place of the celebrated 

 Lancisi, but he refused. In 1728 the Duke of Mo.dena presented him 

 with the order of knighthood, which was to be hereditary in his 

 family. He was also invited early in his career to become first pro- 

 fessor of physic at Turin, with a large salary, which he declined. He 

 was known by his writings and correspondence to men of science in 

 Great Britain, and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of 

 London. Vallisneri was married in 1692, and although his wife pro- 

 duced him eighteen children, she managed his family with so much 

 good sense and prudence, that he was always in easy circumstances, 

 and enjoyed much domestic felicity. He died on the 12th of January 



1730, and was buried in the church of the Eremitani at Padua. He 

 left behind him only four of his numerous family, three daughters and 

 one son, who published an edition of his father's works, in three folio 

 volumes, at Venice, in 1733. 



Vallisneri deservedly ranks high as a naturalist and a physician. 

 He published many papers on the various departments of natural 

 history, in which he pointed out the necessity of observation of external 

 nature before proceeding to generalisation. He did much by his ana- 

 tomical and physiological inquiries, in conjunction with the labours 

 of Malpighi, Redi, and others, to rescue medicine from the thraldom 

 of received opinions, and to upset the absurd hypotheses of the 

 functions of the animal economy which prevailed in his day. He was 

 a great opponent of the doctrine of equivocal or spontaneous gene- 

 ration, a notion that was generally entertained by physiologists of 

 that day, and which then, as now, was often looked upon as involving 

 consequences opposed to religious truth. His contributions to botany 

 were not numerous; but his catalogue of plants collected around 

 Leghorn was a valuable production for its time, and his paper on the 

 fructification of Lemna was an important addition to existing know- 

 ledge of the structure of a very obscure and interesting tribe of 

 plants. Asa physician he was a judicious observer of the effects of 

 remedies in relieving disease, and was among the first to use Peruvian 

 bark : he published several essays on the action of this and other 

 medicines on the human economy. His name is perpetuated in 

 that of a curious and interesting genus of plants, called by Micheli 

 Vallisneria. 



(Bischoff, Lehrluch der Botanik ; Haller, Bib. Bot. ; Sir J. E. Smith.) 

 VALMONT DE BOMARK, J. C., was born at Rouen in September 



1731. He originally studied the law for the purpose of practising at 

 the bar, but his attachment to natural history induced him to abandon 

 a profession so foreign to his tastes. Having obtained from the Duke 

 d'Argenson a travelling appointment of some kind, he visited the 

 principal cities of Europe, and examined with great care the various 



