cussion 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 with minor notes by his supporters, are
collected in the book quoted above, Note to p. 241. Fanfani exceeds
all bounds of decency in the language he uses, and in his arrogant
claims to be considered an unique judge of fourteenth-century style.
These claims he bases in some measure upon the fact that he deceived
the Della Crusca by a forgery of his own making, which was actually
accepted for the _Archivio Storico_. See op. cit. p. 181.

[4] _Die Chronik_, etc., pp. 53-57.

[5] _Die Chronik_, etc., p. 39.

[6] See Hegel's op. cit. p. 6.

[7] See Del Lungo, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 19-23, and fac-simile, to
face p. 1. This MS. was bought by G. Libri from the Pucci family in
1840, and sold to Lord Ashburnham. Del Lungo identifies it with a
MS. which Braccio Compagni in the seventeenth century spoke of as
'la copia piu antica, appresso il Signor senatore Pandolfini.'

Thus stands the question of Dino Compagni's 'Chronicle.' The defenders
of its authenticity, forced to admit Compagni's glaring inaccuracies,
fall back upon arguments deduced from the internal spirit of the author,
from the difficulties of fabricating a personal narrative instinct with
the spirit of the fourteenth century, from the hypotheses of a copyist's
errors or of a thorough-going literary process of rewriting at a later
date, from the absence of any positive evidence of forgery, and from
general considerations affecting the validity of destructive criticism.
One thing has been clearly proved in the course of the controversy, that
the book can have but little historical value when not corroborated.
Still there is a wide gap between inaccuracy and willful fabrication.
Until the best judges of Italian style are agreed that the 'Chronicle'
could not have been written in the second decade of the fourteenth
century, the arguments adduced from an examin