Page:A translation of the Latin works of Dante Alighieri.djvu/137

118 Trissino himself, for the version was issued at Vicenza by the same publisher (Tolomeo Janiculo of Brescia), who also published at about the same time the Castellano, the Letter to Clement VII., and two other acknowledged works by Trissino. These works were all printed in the same size, on the same kind of paper, and with the new letters of Trissino's invention; and in addition to this, the passages of the De Vulari Eloquentia cited in the Castellano are quoted from the anonymous version. No one in fact now doubts that this version came from Trissino's pen. He probably thought that if he had put his name to it, his opponents would suspect him of having not translated, but fabricated the book. As a matter of fact the version was at first believed to be a fabrication; and for about half a century more the original was still unpublished and generally unknown. Not till 1577 was the Latin text first published at Paris by Jacopo Corbinelli, a Florentine refugee who, after many wanderings, had obtained an appointment at the court of Henry III. of France, Trissino's version was reprinted at Ferrara in 1583, and again at Venice in 1643 and 1696. Early in the seventeenth century another Italian version was made by Celso Cittadini. The MS. of it is now at Vienna, and some specimens of it are printed by Rajna in his larger edition of the Latin text. It is curious to notice that Trissino's version was the cause of the first reprint of the original, for it was in a reprint of Trissino's works at Verona in 1729 that the Latin text was next given to the world, in parallel columns with the Italian version.