385 



VILLANUEVA, JOAQUIN LORENZO DE. 



VILLARS, DOMINIQUE. 



380 



under the title, ' Philippi Villani Vitas Dantia, Petrarchto, et Boccacii,' 

 Florence, 1826. Mazzuchelli published an old Italian version of the 

 Lives of Filippo Villani by an anonymous translator, before the dis- 

 covery of the Latin text: 'Le Vite d'Uomini illustri Fiorentini, 

 scritte da Filippo Villani, colle Annotazioni del Conte Mazzuchelli,' 

 1747. 



Filippo Villani wrote also a work ' De Origine Regum Francorum,' 

 which we believe is still inedited. He died about 1404. 



Giovanni Villani, the Florentine historian, must not be confounded 

 with another Giovanni Villani, who wrote chronicles of the town of 

 Naples, and also of the kingdom of Sicily, which are of no great 

 value. 



(Tiraboschi, Storia della Letteratura Italiana; Corniani, I Secoli 

 della Letter atura Italiana ; Gamba, Serie del Testi di Lingua.) 



VILLANUEVA, JOAQUIN LORENZO DE, a learned and liberal 

 Spanish author, was born at Jativa, in the kingdom of Valencia, on 

 the 10th of August 1757, and studied at the University of Valencia, 

 where Munoz, well known for his ' History of the New World,' was 

 one of his tutors. After taking holy orders he fixed his residence in 

 the capital, where ho became one of the literary ornaments of the 

 reign of Charles III., which is regarded as that of the revival of sound 

 literature in Spain. His most noted work at this epoch is his ' A no 

 Cristiano de Espana,' or Spanish Christian Year, an account of the 

 festivals of the Spanish Church, the lives of its saints and martyrs, 

 &c., which, although it extends to nineteen octavo volumes, has passed 

 through several editions. Another work by him, ' De la leccion de la 

 sagrada Escritura en lenguas vulgares ' (On the Reading of the Holy 

 Scriptures in the common languages), folio, Valencia, 1791, in which he 

 advocated that practice, was not looked upon with favour by his eccle- 

 siastical brethren ; nor did he regain favour by promulgating the doc- 

 trine that the jurisdiction of the tribunal of the Inquisition was 

 incompatible with the fundamental laws of Spain. He held neverthe- 

 less the offices of court preacher and confessor of the royal chapel at 

 the time of the general convulsion of Spanish affairs on the invasion 

 of 1808, when he became a distinguished member of the patriotic and 

 constitutional party. In 1810 he was chosen a member of the Cortes, 

 and in 1812 he supported the principles of constitutionalism by argu- 

 ments from the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas in a dissertation 

 entitled 'Angelicas Fuentes 6 el Tomista en las Cortes.' On the 

 return of King Ferdinand he was shut up for six years in a sort of 

 imprisonment in the monastery of Salceda, but allowed to solace his 

 confinement by making use of the treasures of a good library. The 

 resumption of constitutional government in 1820 led to his liberation, 

 and he was sent by the Cortes on a mission to the court of Home, 

 whose pretensions he had always been conspicuous for opposing, while 

 defending what he considered the rights of the Church of Spain, in a 

 spirit analogous to that which once animated the Gallican clergy. 

 His negociations met with no success ; and on the overthrow of the 

 constitutional government he thought it advisable to emigrate to 

 England, from which he afterwards transferred his residence to 

 Ireland. While in London he published what he called his " literary 

 life" (' Vida Literaria de J. L. de Villanueva,' 2 vols. 8vo, 1825), but 

 the work is too much occupied with dissertations on the rights of the 

 Spanish Church and on the Council of Trent to be very attractive to 

 an English reader. He translated Paley's ' Natural Theology ' and 

 some other works into Spanish ; but his chief literary labour here was 

 a dissertation in Latin on Irish antiquities and the colonisation of 

 Ireland by the Phoenicians, 'Ibernia Phcenicea sou Phcenicum in 

 Ibernia incolatus,' Dublin, 1831. He died at Dublin, on the 26th of 

 March 1837. He was a poet as well as a prose writer, and a volume 

 of his select poems, 'Poesias Escogidas,' appeared at London in 1833. 



His younger brother, JAIME VILLANUEVA, born at San Felipe in 

 1765, and first a Dominican, then a secularised priest, shared his 

 opinions, his literary fame, and his exile. He was the author of a 

 Literary Tour to the Churches of Spain ' (Viage Literaria a las 

 Iglesias de Espana), commenced at Madrid in 1803, and left imperfect 

 in thirteen or fourteen volumes ; a work full of valuable information 

 on the ecclesiastical archives of that country. His brother Joaquin 

 Lorenzo contributed many portions to the earlier volumes. Jaime 

 Villanueva died at London, on the 14th of November 1824. 



VILLARET, CLAUDE, was born at Paris about the year 1715, or 

 soon after, and was educated for the bar ; but a love of light literature 

 and worse levities disinclining him for that or any other laborious 

 profession, he took to writing books, and produced, in 1745, a romance 

 entitled ' Histoire du Cceur Humain, ou Me"inoires du Marquis de 



;' besides a one act play, entitled ' Quartier d'Hiver,' in which he 

 was assisted by two other writers ; and some other things of the same 

 kind, said to be all of little value. It is not certain however that he 

 was really the author of all the pieces that have been attributed to 

 him. In 1748 his embarrassments forced him to leave Paris, upon 

 which he joined a company of provincial players, being smitten, it is 

 said, by the charms of one of the females. He now took the name of 

 Dorval, and made his first appearance at Rouen in the character of a 

 lover ; but he soon rose to a higher range of parts, and at length 

 became manager of a company, which performed at Liege. He left 

 the stage however in 1756. In 1758 he published anonymously at 

 Geneva an answer to Rousseau's ' Lettre sur les Spectacles,' under the 

 title of ' Considerations sur 1'Art du Theatre,' which is said to have 



BIOG. DIV. VOL. VI. 



been the best that appeared next to that by d'Alembert. This was 

 followed in 1759 by a volume, also anonymous, of selections from 

 Voltaire, which he called ' Esprit de Voltaire,' and which was well 

 received. In 1760 he returned to Paris with some literary reputation, 

 and his friends got him the office of first clerk to the Chamber of 

 Accounts (Premier commis a la Chambre des Comptea), an appoint- 

 ment which led him to the study of the national historians of the 

 middle ages ; so that when the booksellers Desaint and Saillant were 

 looking out for a writer to continue the ' Histoire de France,' com- 

 menced by the Abbe" Velly, recently dead, they were induced to select 

 Villaret. He conducted or compiled and wrote the work, from the 

 226th page of the 8th volume to the 348th page of the 17th, being the 

 portion extending from 1329, the second year of Philip de Valois, to 

 1469, the 9th year of Louis XI. Villaret's first volumes are said to 

 have so greatly extended the sale of the work, that the publishers 

 raised the salary of their new editor to triple what they had paid to 

 his predecessor ; but as this would have made his remuneration not 

 less than 4500 livres per volume, the statement is regarded by the 

 writer of his life in the ' Biographic Universelle ' as more than doubt- 

 ful. This writer considers Villaret's to be the best written portion of 

 the work, and intimates that it has been generally so esteemed by the 

 public. The Abbe* de Castres, on the contrary (in his ' Trois Siecles 

 de la LitteVature Fran9oise,' iv. 436), describes Villaret as being to his 

 predecessor what Seneca is to Cicero ; and asserts that he wanted the 

 art of skilfully waiving his researches into the substance of his narra- 

 tive " il n'a pas eu, comme son modele, 1'art de fondre avec adresse 

 ses recherches dans la narration." Villaret also held the office, made 

 for him, of secretary to the dukes and peers (Secretaire des Dues et 

 Pairs) ; and he is said, in the latter part of his life, to have been con- 

 cerned in one or two other literary undertakings of the day. He died 

 in February 1766. His successor in the compilation of the ' Histoire 

 de France ' was the Abbe" Gamier. 



VILLARS, DOMINIQUE, French botanist, was born on the 14th 

 of November 1745, in a hamlet of the village of Noyer in Dauphine. 

 His father taught him reading and writing, and he learned Latin and 

 geometry of the parish priest. When he was only fourteen years oli 

 his father died, and being the eldest in the family, at that early age he 

 was obliged to superintend the duties of the farm on which his family 

 lived. He was also appointed to his father's post of parish registrar, 

 and in order to fit himself for his duties, he received instruction from 

 a notary, in whose library he met with books on natural history, 

 which so engaged his attention that he determined to pursue the 

 study of botany and medicine at his leisure. This led his mother to 

 fear that he would neglect his agricultural pursuits ; and accordingly, 

 at the age of seventeen, she persuaded him to marry, in the hope that 

 this would be a check to his pursuit of science. But in this she was 

 disappointed; for in 1765 Villars made an excursion through Lyon- 

 nais, Bourgogne, La Franche-Comte', and Bresse, and collected many 

 plants, and otherwise added to his knowledge of natural history. He 

 afterwards became known to the Abbe" Chaix, a good botanist, with 

 whom he made many excursions in the mountains of Gapencois. He 

 thus became acquainted with M. de Marche'val of Grenoble, and in 

 1771 proceeded to the military hospital of Grenoble for the purpose 

 of studying medicine. Here his botanical knowledge soon brought 

 him into notice, and in 1773 he gave a course of lectures on botany 

 to the pupils of the hospital. From this period to 1776 he made 

 several excursions in Bas-Dauphine", Provence, Languedoc, and La 

 Grande Chartreuse, for the purpose of studying the natural history, 

 more particularly the botany, of these districts. In 1777 he visited 

 Paris, where his reputation as a botanist secured him a very flattering 

 reception. In 1778 he took his degree as Doctor of Medicine, and 

 would have returned to Noyer to practise medicine, but his friend 

 M. Marche'val secured him an increase of stipend for his lectures at 

 Grenoble, and in 1782 he was appointed physician to the hospital ; he 

 continued in this position till the suppression of the hospital by the 

 French government in 1803. As this was unexpected, he remained 

 for some time in considerable difficulties, but in 1805 he was appointed 

 professor of botany and medicine in the school of medicine at Stras- 

 bourg, where he remained till his death, which took place on the 27th 

 of June 1814. 



Villars wrote several works on botany and medicine, but that which 

 secured him the greatest reputation is his ' Natural History of the 

 Plants of Dauphine" ' (Histoire Naturelle des Plantes du Dauphine"). 

 This work was published in 4 vols. 4to, in 1786 and successive years; 

 it contains 65 plates of the plants described. Each of the volumes 

 contains a preface, in which an account is given of the various excur- 

 sions which he made. All the plants are arranged according to a 

 classification of his own, in which tie reduces the number of the 

 Linneean classes to twelve, by considering only the number of the 

 stamens as a character of the classes. Under these classes he arranges 

 27 natural orders, named after the ' Fragments ' of Linnaeus. It also 

 includes a dictionary of terms, and lists of plants found in particular 

 districts. This work was submitted to the French Institute, and a 

 critical report given of its merits by Jussieu, Geoffrey, and Tessier. 

 Although in some respects unfavourable to the work, the author was 

 modest enough to print each report of the members of the Institute 

 at the commencement of the volumes as they appeared. In 1801 he 

 published a catalogue of the plants growing in the botanic garden at 



2C 



