The history of Dante's treatise _De Vulgari Eloquio_ is a case in point.

With regard to style, no foreigner can pretend to be a competent judge.

Reading the celebrated description of Florence at the opening of Dino's 'Chronicle,' I seem indeed, for my own part, to discern a post-Boccaccian artificiality of phrase.

Still there is nothing to render it impossible that the 'Chronicle,' as we possess it, in the texts of 1450( ?) and 1514, may be a _rifacimento_ of an elder and simpler work.

In that section of my history which deals with Italian literature of the fifteenth century, I shall have occasion to show that such remodeling of ancient texts to suit the fashion of the time was by no means unfrequent.