[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 più 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