scorn. Nevertheless, he sends him a copy of the Divine Comedy, which he bids him welcome and admire.

To appraise the relative merits of these pioneers would be an arduous and delicate task. As a Latinist, Boccaccio was doubtless the inferior; but, by way of compensation, he acquired a knowledge of Greek, and by procuring the establishment at Florence of a chair in that language, assisted in promoting the study of classical literature. In all this he was the educator of his time. In disposition, however, Boccaccio was the antipodes of a schoolmaster. He did not exist to teach, to inculcate prudence and morality. He existed to enjoy, and because he found pleasure the ideal of Antiquity, therefore Antiquity interested him. From the charnel house of the unlovely Middle Age the voluptuous Florentine hasted with nimble foot into the parterre of the old world, radiant with nature and with art. Filled with the spirit of revolt, he did without paltering what Petrarch did with hesitancy and fear. He renounced and ridiculed the asceticism and "otherworldliness" of the Ages of Faith. He sought to kill monkery with a laugh. This bold originality of character was bound to express, as well as impress, itself. If I may so divide the matter, the impression is seen in the Renaissance, the expression in a series of works embodying his own feelings, or, in the case of the Decameron, his experience of men and books.

Boccaccio was the son of a Florentine merchant and a Parisian gentlewoman called Jeanne. Giovanni, therefore, bore the names of both parents. Like Dante and Petrarch, he was by force of circumstances a citizen

of the world. Born at Paris about 1310, we find him seventeen years later at Naples, where his

Parentage and youth.

father proposed to initiate him into the mysteries of commerce. The luxury, the soft climate, and the brilliant natural tints of the southern city, encountered in Boccaccio a responsive and sympathetic disposition, and he easily succumbed to the vision of a beautiful kneeling girl. Maria d' Aquino was, like himself, a "love-child," being the offspring of King Robert and a frail Provençal beauty; and Boccaccio first saw her on Good Friday, 1334, in the Church of San Lorenzo. Giovanni's passion was reciprocated, and for some time the pair seem to have invented or embraced opportunities of meeting. These were no innocent trysts. It was a regular and genuine amour, such as might be predicted from the circumstances and the example of their respective parents. But at length a coolness set in, and Boccaccio vented his disappointment in a sonnet anticipating Time's re

venges:

"S' egli avvien mai che tanto gli anni miei
Lunghi si faccian, che le chiome d'oro
Vegga d'argento onde io m' innamoro,
E crespo farsi il viso di costei,

E crespi gli occhi bei, che tanto rei

Son per me,

lasso! ed il caro tesoro

Del sen ritrarsi, ed il suo canto sonoro
Divenir roco sì com' io vorrei,

Ogni mio spirto, ogni dolore e pianto

Si farà riso, e pur sarò si pronto,

Ch' io dirò; Donna, Amor non l' ha più cara," &c.1

1 It may be worth while to contrast with this spiteful effusion a

&c.

Boccaccio's sonnets will not compare with those of Petrarch in respect of finish; but his verse is graphic, The Filocopo, and that dealing with episodes of Neapolitan life has somewhat the effect of instantaneous photography. A prose effort, the Filocopo, partakes of the same quality. The meaning of this word is supposed to be "love's labour," but Boccaccio's compounds are truly wonderful. The Filocopo is one of many versions of the old French romance Floire et Blanceflor, which was probably brought from Greece at the time. of the Crusades. On the side of art, the story has often been more worthily presented, but, as autobiography, the work is certainly arresting. A lover goes in search of his mistress. Having put to sea, he is driven by stress of weather to Naples, where he finds her in the midst of a gay company. Fiammetta is, of course, Maria, and the pictures Boccaccio draws of Neapolitan society are no doubt faithful reflections of the scenes sonnet of Petrarch's on the same theme. The translation is a rash attempt dating from college-days.

If but my life can so much foil present

To my harsh torment, and to all my woes,
That I may see, by virtue of life's close,
Lady, the light of your bright eyes quite spent-
The fine gold of your hair with silver blent,
And coronals despised, and worldly shows,
And that face colourless, which in my throes
Makes me afraid and backward to lament.
Then Love will grant me valiance so keen,

That I will show you of mine agonies

The years, and days, and hours, what they have been;

And if my wishes fair the time denies,

It cannot fortune but that to my teen

At least there come some succour of late sighs.

1 Filostrato, for example, is a horrid mule, its parentage being pla

and stratus, and its meaning "laid low by love."

with which protracted residence in the city had made him familiar. The reigning queen, Giovanna, was, as Villemain observes, a kind of earlier parousia of Mary Queen of Scots, and her court appears to have been modelled on the Courts of Love. At any rate, the questions propounded have a remarkable affinity to the questions that formed the staple of the tensos. With the Filocopo it is natural to associate two other romances, the Ameto (or Commedia delle Donne Fiorentine) and the Fiammetta. The former is an unsuccessful attempt to reconcile idyll and allegory, pagan fable and Christian moral, which things are past reconciling. The latter, addressed to ladies, is a psychological romance, a romance of the heart. This work is, in some ways, the counterpart of the Vita Nuova and Secretum; but with this important distinction, that the lady speaks, or rather is made to speak, whatever may suit her admirer. It is certain that the desertion was the act, not of Panfilo, but of Fiammetta.

Boccaccio was engaged on these works between 1338 and 1343, but his pains were not monopolised The Amorosa by prose. Even the Ameto is interVisione. larded with terzines; and, besides these, he composed a long poem wholly in that metre. The Amorosa Visione extends to fifty cantos, and the general notion is that of a dream wherein the poet, in company with a lady, visits the realms of Fame, Love, Happiness, and the Garden of Wellbeing. Here also we meet with hopeless contradictions the form of the Dantesque vision, the symbolism of allegorical French poetry, and, mingled

with myth and legend, reminiscences of the gentlewomen of the Neapolitan court. More notable than anything is the discordancy between the spirit of the poem and that which the consecrated metre would lead us to anticipate. Damnation and purgatorial pains are out of date, and for saints and sinners are substituted heroes, and poets, and lovers. The chief end, the wished-for consummation, is the satisfaction of the sexual passion. It is worth remarking that the identity of Fiammetta and Maria is established by the dedication of the Amorosa Visione.

Boccaccio did not confine himself to terza rima as a metre. It is impossible to be quite certain about the matter, but there is some reason to suppose

A new epic. that he was really the inventor of that ottava rima which was to become, as it were, specialised as the metre of Italian epic. Both terza and ottava1 being rime incatenate, it is conceivable that the one was evolved from the other. Boccaccio wrote three poems in the octave stanza, the Filostrato, the Teseide, and the Ninfale Fiesolano. These compositions are linked, not only by community of form, but by similarity of subject, as they are all stories of love. The Filostrato, which is in eight cantos, or, as the poet calls them "parts," tells of the love of Troilus and "Griseida," young people of Troy. Chalcas, Griseida's father, foreseeing the ruin of his country, has taken refuge in the Greek camp, and desires to have his daughter with him. Diomed negotiates an exchange, and though the girl parts from her lover with many tokens of sorrow and 1 The rhyme-scheme of the ottava is: abababec.