results of an expedition of the crown, by an officer in his service,
would have been written in that language, it is, nevertheless,
highly improbable that any letter could, in this instance, have been
so addressed to the King, and two different translations made from
it into Italian, one by Carli in Lyons in 1524, and the other by
Ramusio in Venice twenty-nine years afterwards, and yet no copy of
it in French, or any memorial of its existence in that language be
known. This explanation must therefore be abandoned. If on the other
hand, one of these copies was so rendered from the French, or from
an original in either form in which it appears in Italian, whether
by Verrazzano or not, the other must have been rewritten from it. It
is evident, however, that the Carli version could not have been
derived from that contained in Ramusio, because it contains an
entire part consisting of several pages, embracing the
cosmographical explanations of the voyage, not found in the latter.
As we are restricted to these two copies as the sole authority for
the letter, and are, therefore, governed in any conclusion on this
subject by what they teach, it must be determined that the letter in
Ramusio is a version of that contained in the Carli manuscript. This
suggestion is not new. It was made by Mr. Greene in his monograph on
Verrazzano, without his following it to the conclusion to which it
inevitably leads. If the version in Ramusio be a recomposition of
the Carli copy, an important step is gained towards determining the
origin of the Verrazzano letter, as in that case the inquiry is
brought down to the consideration of the authenticity of the Carli
letter, of which it forms a part. But before proceeding to that
question, the reasons assigned by Mr. Greene, and some incidental
facts stated by him in connection with them, should be given. He
says: