uspend their
judgment. The analysis of style receives a different 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 dis