[1] The first critic to call Compagni’s authenticity in question was Pietro Fanfani, in an article of Il Pievano Arlotto, 1858.  The cause was taken up, shortly after this date, by an abler German authority, P. Scheffer-Boichorst.  The works which I have studied on this subject are, 1. Florentiner Studien, von P. Scheffer-Boichorst, Leipzig, Hirzel, 1874. 2. Dino Compagni vendicato dalla Calunnia di Scrittore della Cronica, di Pietro Fanfani, Milano, Carrara, 1875. 3. Die Chronik des Dino Compagni, Versuch einer Rettung, von Dr. Carl Hegel, Leipzig, Hirzel, 1875. 4. Die Chronik des Dino Compagni, Kritik der Hegelschen Schrift, von P. Scheffer-Boichorst, Leipzig, Hirzel, 1875. 5.  The note appended to Gino Capponi’s Storia della Repubblica di Firenze. 6. Dino Compagni e la sua Chronica, per Isidoro del Lungo, Firenze, Le Mornier.  Unluckily, the last-named work, though it consists already of two bulky volumes in large 8vo, is not yet complete; and the part which will treat of the question of authorship and MS. authority has not appeared.

The year 1300, which Dante chose for the date of his descent with Virgil to the nether world, and which marked the beginning of Villani’s ‘Chronicle,’ is also mentioned by Dino Compagni in the first sentence of the preface to his work.  ‘The recollections of ancient histories,’ he says, ’have a long while stirred my mind to writing the perilous and ill-fated events, which the noble city, daughter of Rome, has suffered many years, and especially at the time of the jubilee in the year 1300.’  Dino Compagni, whose ‘Chronicle’ embraces the period between 1280 and 1312, took the popular side in the struggles of 1282, sat as Prior in 1289, and in 1301, and was chosen Gonfalonier of Justice in 1293.  He was therefore a prominent actor in the drama of those troublous times.  He died in 1324, two years and four months after the date of Dante’s death, and was buried in the church of Santa Trinita.  He was a man of the same stamp as Dante;[1] burning with love for his country, but still more a lover of the truth; severe in judgment, but beyond suspicion of mere partisanship; brief in utterance, but weighty with personal experience, profound conviction, prophetic intensity of feeling, sincerity, and justice.  As a historian, he narrowed his labors to the field of one small but highly finished picture.  He undertook to narrate the civic quarrels of his times, and to show how the commonwealth of Florence was brought to ruin by the selfishness of her own citizens; nor can his ‘Chronicle,’ although it is by no means a masterpiece of historical accuracy or of lucid arrangement, be surpassed for the liveliness of its delineation, the graphic clearness of its characters, the earnestness of its patriotic spirit, and the acute analysis which lays bare the political situation of a republic torn by factions, during the memorable period which embraced the revolution of Giano della