development from Scheffer-Boichorst.  In his last essay he undertakes to show that many passages of the ‘Chronicle,’ especially the important one which refers to the Ordinamenti della Giustizia, have been borrowed from Villani.[4] This critical weapon is difficult to handle, for it almost always cuts both ways.  Yet the German historian has made out an undoubtedly good case by proving Villani’s language closer to the original Ordinamenti than Compagni’s.  With regard to MS. authority, the codices of Dino’s ‘Chronicle’ extant in Italy are all of them derived from a MS. transcribed by Noferi Busini and given by him to Giovanni Mazzuoli, surnamed Lo Stradino, who was a member of the Florentine Academy and a greedy collector of antiquities.  This MS. bears the date 1514.  The recent origin of this parent codex, and the questionable character of Lo Stradino, gave rise to not unreasonable suspicions.  Fanfani roundly asserted that the ‘Chronicle’ must have been fabricated as a hoax upon the uncritical antiquary, since it suddenly appeared without a pedigree, at a moment when such forgeries were not uncommon.  Scheffer-Boichorst, in his most recent pamphlet, committed himself to the opinion that either Lo Stradino himself, nicknamed Cronaca Scorretta by his Florentine cronies, or one of his contemporaries, was the forger.[5] An Italian impugner of the ‘Chronicle,’ Giusto Grion of Verona, declared for Antonfrancesco Doni as the fabricator.[6] These hypotheses, however, are, to say the least, unlucky for their suggestors, and really serve to weaken rather than to strengthen the destructive line of argument.  There exists an elder codex of which Fanfani and his followers were ignorant.  It is a MS. of perhaps the middle of the fifteenth century, which was purchased for the Ashburnham Library in 1846.  This MS. has been minutely described by Professor Paul Meyer; and Isidoro del Lungo publishes a fac-simile specimen of one of its pages.[7] By some unaccountable negligence this latest and most determined defender of Compagni has failed to examine the MS. with his own eyes.

    [1] This is Isidoro del Lungo’s Codex A. The note occurs also in the
    Ashburnham MS. which Del Lungo refers to the fifteenth century.

[2] On this point it is worth mentioning that some good critics refer the poems to an elder Dino Compagni, who sat as Ancient in 1251.  See the discussion of this question, as also of the authorship of the Intelligenza, claimed by Isidoro del Lungo for the writer of the ‘Chronicle,’ in Borgognini’s Essays (Scritti Vari, Bologna, Romagnoli, 1877, vol. i.).  With regard to the oration to Pope John XXII. date 1326, it must be noted that this performance was first printed by Anton Francesco Doni in 1547, and that its genuineness may be disputed.  See Carl Hegel, op. cit. pp. 18-22.

[3] The most important of Fanfani’s numerous essays on the Compagni controversy, together