Note 1 — Chapter VI

The collection of Italian poetry made by Lorenzo de’ Medici for Don Federigo is to be found—not, indeed, in the original, which was lost probably during the French invasion of Naples in 1495—but in a copy made either at the end of the fifteenth or in the sixteenth century, and now in the Florentine National Library (Magliabecchi), to which it passed with the Palatine MSS. (Fr. Palermo, I manoscritti Palatini di Firenze, Flor. 1853 seq.; i. 353 seq.). This MS. belonged to Marco Foscarini, with whose library it went in 1800 to Vienna, and later to the Archduke, afterwards Grand Duke, Leopold, when he collected and published the poems of Lorenzo (Opere di Lorenzo de’ Medici, Florence, 1825, 4 vols. i. p. xxvi., where occur also Apostolo Zeno’s remarks on the MS. in question). On the MSS. and printed copies of Lorenzo’s poems, compare the same edition, i. p. xiii.-xlv., and Gamba, Testi di Lingua, pp. 648-660. For a complete critically revised text much is still wanting, even after the splendid edition of 1825, which came out under the auspices of the della Crusca Academy. A large and well-arranged selection, Poesie di Lorenzo de’ Medici, Flor. 1859, has an introduction by Giosuè Carducci, which has been a guide to much of what is said here of Lorenzo as a poet.