48 INTRODUCTION. 
the composition of the poem and the time of Villa 
Nova, it is not improbable that some alterations had 
been made in the intermediate period, and that even 
his text is not immaculate. Perhaps it was origi- 
nally very short, not much more than the general 
precepts. An attentive examination would lead one 
to imagine that: some verses had been altered, or 
added. Lines where there is aehange of person, of 
number ; verses which do.not rhyme, or which are 3 
not in the hexameter form: all repetitions of the 
, same rule in other words: or rules which seem to 
be in the nature of explanations or comments: lines 
the opinions in the medical science, which prevailed 
_ in the eleventh century.” He vishes therefore to see 
%t In its original simplicity, in the precise state im 
