Note 452 — Chapter II · THE ITALIAN DECADENCE AND THE SPANIARDS.

Madrid, 1624. Noted by Señor Menéndez (who has given the whole passage, iii. 457-60) as a specially rare book. Fortunately the British Museum, according to a wise habit of its own in such cases (cf. Capriano), has two copies, and M. Morel-Fatio has included the piece which concerns us in an invaluable collection (also including Lope’s Arte Nuevo and other things) of Spanish critical documents, which he is issuing in the Bulletin Hispanique of the Faculty of Letters of Bordeaux, and republishing separately (Paris, Fontemoing; Bordeaux, Feret, 1901-1902). The man who gives a text attains merit which mere commentators and historians can never hope to have imputed to them.