1 Consider: ‘The name Emilia is not an uncommon name for an Italian woman, but, on the other hand, it is not one of the commonest’ (p. 36(5). ‘She is presumably Italian or of Italian descent, since it is she who has caused the poet to write in Italian’ (p. 365)— my non-Italian wife is living proof that such evidence lets us presume nothing. There are also opaque phrases ('elegantly original in content,’ p. 374) and the description of a completed thought as a ‘sentence’ in several places (e.g., p. 377).

2 Two startling misprints occur on p. 375: ‘d'ogni valorc’ appears as ‘d'gni valore’ and ‘saette ed arco’ becomes ‘saette er arco'—startling because the footnote calls attention to the care taken with textual variants. Too, Professor Giamatti's revision did not apparently extend as far as incorporating his contribution on pp. 379-380—which is rather like reading, in a presumed book, ‘The purpose of my paper this evening is.…’

The punctuation of citations is haphazard. The frequency of typographical errors in this small section is distressing: p. 371, ‘on’ for ‘no'; p. 374, ‘tuone for ‘tuono'; p. 375, ‘ars’ for ‘are'; p. 378, ‘Chioboli’ for ‘Chiorboli'; p. 379, ‘glivaglia’ for ‘gli vaglia'; p. 380, ‘Amore’ for ‘Amor'; p. 381, ‘si’ for ‘si'; p. 383, ‘or’ for ‘or'; p. 384, ‘adhor’ for ‘adhor ad hor’ (the error makes hash of the footnote), and ‘come’ for ‘comes'; p. 389, ‘d'altra and ‘Farù for ‘d'atra’ and ‘Farò'.