and the other in manuscript, but neither of them traceable to the
alleged original. They are both of them of uncertain date. The
printed copy appears in the work of Ramusio, first published in
1556; when Verrazzano and Francis I, the parties to it, were both
dead, and a generation of men had almost passed away since the
events which it announced had, according to its authority, taken
place, and probably no one connected with the government of France
at that time could have survived to gainsay, the story, were it
untrue.[Footnote: Verrazzano died in 1527; Louise, the mother of
Francis I in September, 1582, and Francis himself in March, 1547.]
Ramusio does not state when or how he obtained what he published. In
the preface to the volume in which it is printed, dated three years
before, he merely speaks of the narrative incidentally, but in a
discourse preceding it, he obscurely alludes to the place where he
found it, remarking that it was the only letter of Verrazzano that
he had "been able to have, because the others had got astray in the
troubles of the unfortunate city of Florence." The origin of the
manuscript version is equally involved in mystery. It forms part of
a codex which contains also a copy of a letter purporting to have
been written by Fernando Carli, from Lyons to his father in
Florence, on the 4th of August, 1524, giving an account of the
arrival of Verrazzano at Dieppe, and inclosing a copy of his letter
to the King. The epistles of Carli and Verrazzano are thus connected
together in the manuscript in fact, and by reference in that of
Carli, making the copy of the Verrazzano letter a part of Carli's,
and so to relate to the same date. But as the Carli letter in the
manuscript is itself only a copy, there is nothing to show when that
was really written; nor is it stated when the manuscript itself was
made. All that is positively known in regard to the latter is, that
it was mentioned in 1768, as being then in existence in the Strozzi