‘Barberino never appears to have taken a very active part in politics, but he inclined to the Imperial and Ghibelline party. This contributes with other things to render it rather singular that we find no poetic correspondence or apparent communication of any kind between him and his many great countrymen, contemporaries of his long life, and with whom he had more than one bond of sympathy. His career stretched from Dante, Guido Cavalcanti, and Cino da Pistoia, to Petrarca and Boccaccio: yet only in one respectful but not enthusiastic notice of him by the last-named writer (_Genealogia degli Dei_) do we ever meet with an allusion to him by any of the greatest men of his time. Nor in his own writings, as far as I remember, are _they_ ever referred to. His epitaph is said to have been written by Boccaccio, but this is doubtful. On reviewing the present series, I am sorry, on the whole, not to have included more specimens of Barberino; whose writings, though not very easy to tackle in the mass, would afford an excellent field for selection and summary.’ Thus far my brother. I will only add to his biographical details that, at the very end of Francesco da Barberino’s life, he and one of his sons were elected the Priori, or joint chief-magistrates of the Florentine Republic; and that the Barberini who came to the papal chair in 1623 as Urban VIII. was of the same family. His patronymic is enshrined to many loose memories in the epigram ‘_Quod non fecere Barbari fecere Barberini_.’ To all that my brother has said of the qualities, and especially the merits, of Francesco, I cordially subscribe. The _Documenti d’Amore_ is really a most capital book,—I should suppose, unsurpassed of its kind, and also in its interest for students of the early mediæval manners, and modes of thought. Its diction is remarkably condensed—(Italian scholars say that it shows strong traces of the author’s Provençal studies and predilections)—and it is proportionately stiff work to hasty readers. Those who will peruse it deliberately, and weigh its words, find many niceties of laconism, and much terse and sententious good sense as well—lengthy as is the entire book. This is indeed no slight matter—twelve sections, and something like 8500 lines. It is exactly the sort of work to elicit and to account for editorial enthusiasm. [Sidenote: THE DOCUMENTI D'AMORE.]