Moreover his manuscript is lost, and the only means we have of knowing anything about it is by a very incorrectly printed Italian version, printed in 1571, and two early Synopses, one in Latin in the Decades of Peter Martyr, the other in Italian, by Messer Zuane de Strozi of Ferrara, which has been quite recently published for the first time.
"The Arawack Language of Guiana in its Linguistic and Ethnological Relations"
Daniel G. Brinton
The division begins with the text itself, and even the laziest reader will find the Synopses of Burton's "partitions" a curious study.
"A History of English Literature Elizabethan Literature"
George Saintsbury
It seems probable on the whole that the author, with the scholastic habits of his time, did actually draw out a programme for the treatment of his subject in some form not very different from these wonderful Synopses, and did actually endeavour to keep to it, or at any rate to work on its lines within the general compass of the scheme.
"A History of English Literature Elizabethan Literature"
George Saintsbury