e chi fosse arrivato ed avesse legato il cavallo ad uno
de' predetti anelli, doveva esser ospite della famiglia, che indicava l'
anello cui il cavallo era attaccato.

TRANSLATION.

In the time of Guido in Brettinoro even the nobles ploughed the land;
but discords arose among them, and innocence of life disappeared, and
with it liberality. The people of Brettinoro determined to erect in the
pub lic square a column with as many iron rings upon it as there were
noble families in that stronghold, and he who should arrive and tie his
horse to one of those rings was to be the guest of the family pointed
out by the ring to which the horse was attached.

Surely, Signor Tamburini has fixed the dunce's cap on his own head so
that it can never he taken off. The commonest Latin phrases, which the
dullest schoolboy could not mistranslate, he misunderstands, turning
the pleasant sense of the worthy commentator into the most
self-contradictory nonsense.

"Ad confirmandum propositum," says Benvenuto, "oceurrit mihi res
jocosa,"[A]--"In confirmation of this statement, a laughable matter
occurs to me"; and he goes on to relate a story about the famous
astrologer Pietro di Abano. But our translator is not content without
making him stultify himself, and renders the words we have quoted, "A
maggiore conferma referiro un fatto a me accaduto"; that is, he makes
Benvenuto say, "I will report an incident that happened to me," and then
go on to tell the story of Pietro di Abano, which had no more to do with
him than with Signor Tamburini himself.

[Footnote A: Comment on Purg. xvi. 80.]

We might fill page after page with examples such as these of the
distortions and corruptions of Benvenuto's meaning which we have noted
on the margin of this so-called translation. But we have given more than
enough to prove the charge of incompetence against the President of
the "Academy of the Industrious," and we pass on to exhibit him now no
longer as simply an ignoramus, but as a mean and treacherous rogue.

Among the excellent qualities of Benvenuto there are few more marked
than his freedom in speaking his opinion of rulers and ecclesiastics,
and in holding up their vices to reproach, while at the same time he
shows a due spirit of respect for proper civil and ecclesiastical
authority. In this he imitates the temper of the poet upon whose work he
comments,--and in so doing he has left many most valuable records of
the character and manners espec