He writes:⁠— “Sordello, native of Goïto, (Sordel de Goi,) a village in the Mantuan territory, was born in 1184, and was the son of a poor knight named Elcort.” He then repeats the story of Count Saint Boniface, and of Sordello’s reception by Count Raymond in Provence, and adds: “Having afterwards returned to Italy, he governed Mantua with the title of Regent and Captain-General; and was opposed to the tyrant Ezzelino, being a great lover of justice, as Agnelli writes. Finally he died, very old and full of honor, about 1280. He wrote not only in Provençal, but also in our own common Italian tongue; and he was one of those poets who avoided the dialect of his own province, and used the good, choice language, as Dante affirms in his book of Volgar Eloquenza .” If the reader is not already sufficiently confused, he can easily become so by turning to Tiraboschi, Storia della Lett. Ital. , IV 360, where he will find the matter thoroughly discussed, in sixteen solid pages, by the patient librarian of Modena, who finally gives up in despair and calls on the Royal Academy for help; “But that were overbold;⁠— Who would has heard Sordello’s story told.” ↩