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 piu 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 the book can have but little historical value when not corroborated.
Still there is a wide gap between inaccuracy and willful fabrication.
Until the best judges of Italian style are agreed that the 'Chronicle' could not have been written in the second decade of the fourteenth century, the arguments adduced from an examination of the facts recorded in it are not strong enough to demonstrate a forgery.

There is the further question of _cui bono ?_ which in all problems of literary forgery must first receive some probable solution.

What proof is there that the vanity or the cupidity of any parties was satisfied by its production?
A book exists in a MS.