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.