“Father Du Cerceau for his work made use of a French translation of the life by the Italian contemporary printed in Bracciano, 1624, executed by Father Sanadon, another Jesuit, from whom he received the Ms. This proves that Du Cerceau knew little of our ‘volgar lingua’ of the fourteenth century.  But the errors into which he has run shew, that even that little was unknown to his guide, and still less to Father Brumoy, (however learned and reputed the latter might be in French literature,) who, after the death of Du Cerceau, supplied the deficiencies in the first pages of the author’s Ms., which were, I know not how, lost; and in this part are found the more striking errors in the work, which shall be noticed in the proper place; in the meantime, one specimen will suffice.  In the third chapter, book i., Cola, addressing the Romans, says, ’Che lo giubileo si approssima, che se la gente, la quale verra al giubileo, li trova sproveduti di annona, le pietre (per metatesi sta scritto le preite) ne porteranno da Roma per rabbia di fame, e le pietre non basteranno a tanta moltitudine.  Il francese traduce.  Le jubile approche, et vous n’avez ni provisions, ni vivres; les etrangers...trouvent votre ville denue de tout.  Ne comptez point sur les secours des gens d’Eglise; ils sortiront de la ville, s’ils n’y trouvent de quoi subsister:  et d’ailleurs pourroient-ils suffire a la multitude innombrable, que se trouvera dans vos murs?’” (The English translator could not fail to adopt the Frenchman’s ludicrous mistake.) “Buon Dio!” exclaims the learned Zefirino, “Buon Dio! le pietre prese per tanta gente di chiesa!” (See Preface to Zefirino Re’s edition of the “Life of Rienzi,” page 9, note on Du Cerceau.)

Another blunder little less extraordinary occurs in Chapter vi., in which the ordinances of Rienzi’s Buono Stato are recited.

It is set forth as the third ordinance:—­“Che nulla case di Roma sia data per terra per alcuna cagione, ma vada in commune;” which simply means, that the houses of delinquents should in no instance be razed, but added to the community or confiscated.  This law being intended partly to meet the barbarous violences with which the excesses and quarrels of the Barons had half dismantled Rome, and principally to repeal some old penal laws by which the houses of a certain class of offenders might be destroyed; but the French translator construes it, “Que nulle maison de Rome ne saroit donnee en propre, pour quelque raison que ce put etre; mais que les revenus en appartiendroient au public!” (The English translator makes this law unintelligible:—­“That no family of Rome shall appropriate to their own use what they think fit, but that the revenues shall appertain to the public"!!!—­the revenues of what?)

But enough of the blunders arising from ignorance.—­I must now be permitted to set before the reader a few of the graver offences of wilful assumption and preposterous invention.

When Rienzi condemned some of the Barons to death, the Pere thus writes; I take the recent translation published by Mr. Whittaker:—­