If it be objected that, on the hypothesis of genuineness, the MS.

of the 'Chronicle' must have been divulged before the beginning of the sixteenth century, we can adduce two plausible answers.

In the first place, Dino was the partisan of a conquered cause; and his family had nothing to gain by publishing an acrimonious political pamphlet during the triumph of his antagonists.

In the second place, MSS.

of even greater literary importance disappeared in the course of the fourteenth century, to be reproduced when their subjects again excited interest in the literary world.