[422] _Tiraboschi Storia della letter. Ital. tom. vi. p. ii. p. 303._ If credit may be given to Valla’s own assertion, his introduction into the world was announced in a supernatural manner. He boasts in his _Antidotus_, _p. 191_, that his mother being ignorant that she was pregnant, was apprized of that circumstance by the interposition of an oracle, which informed her that she would be brought to bed of a son, and gave particular directions with respect to her offspring’s name. It might have been reasonably conjectured that this oracle was some experienced matron; but by the subsequent part of Valla’s narration, it seems that the important admonition in question proceeded from one of the saints. [423] _Valla Antidotus in Poggium, p. 200._ [424] _Ibid, p. 201._ [425] _Vallæ Antidotus in Poggium, p. 201._ [426] This treatise is printed in the first volume of the _Fasciculus Rer. expet. et fugiend._ [427] _Vallæ Antidotus, p. 210._ [428] _Ibid, p. 211._ [429] See the account given of this transaction by Valla in his _Antidotus_, _p. 218._ Poggio, towards the conclusion of his third invective, asserts, that Valla was on this occasion subjected to the discipline of the scourge, and narrates the manner and form of his punishment with great minuteness. [430] Valla’s invective against Beccatelli and Facio is divided into four books, and occupies fifty-two pages of the edition of his works, published by Ascensius in folio, an. 1528. [431] Valla triumphantly boasts, (_Antidotus, p. 167_) that Nicolas V. presented to him with his own hand five hundred gold crowns as a remuneration for his Latin version of Thucydides. This version was printed by Henry Stephens, in his edition of that author, in the preface to which he complains of Valla’s inaccuracy and inelegance of style. That this complaint is just, abundant proof may be found in Stephens’s marginal corrections of Valla’s translation. [432] _Poggii Opera, p. 188-205._ [433] The passage which thus irritated the feeling of the Catalonian nobleman occurs in Poggio’s epistle to Andreolo Giustiniano, in which he remarks, upon the assertion of Francesco di Pistoia, that some Catalans had stolen a marble statue which he had in charge to deliver to Poggio: “in quo ut conjicio manifeste mentitus fuit. Non enim marmoria sculpti Cathalani cupidi sunt, sed auri et servorum quibus ad remigium utantur.”—_Poggii Opera, p. 329._ [434] This attack on Poggio’s moral character occurs in the proemium to the _Antidotus_, and is couched in the following atrocious terms. “Ostendam itaque eum quasi alterum Regulum, malum quidem virum, non quod libidinosus ac prope libidinis professor, non quod adulter atquo adeo alienarum uxorum præreptor, non quod vinolentus semper ac potius temulentus, non quod falsarius et quidem convictus, non quod avarus, sacrilegus, perjurus, corruptor, spurcus, aliaque quæ extra nostram causam sunt, sed quatenus ad causam nostram facit, quod manifestarius calumniator.”—_Antidotus, p. 8._