the latter is both quantitatively and qualitatively a torso. It extended only to the seventeenth canto of the Inferno, and is wanting in many elements of interest to be anticipated from a quasi-contemporary. There remains the immortal work so truly and aptly named the Commedia umana.1

In 1348 a desolating plague swept over Europe. Advancing from the East, the rumours of its approach filled all hearts with terror, and the inciThe Decameron. dents of its progress equalled, if they did not surpass, the worst forebodings. A detailed account of the horrors makes up the proem of the Decameron, a singular proem due to the singular conduct of the persons of the drama-in other words, the storytellers. Seven young ladies and three youths, all of them Florentines, retire to a country house in the neighbourhood of the city, and pass the time principally in relating tales. Each day a lady or gentleman recounts ten stories of similar import, and the whole performance lasts ten days. That is the origin of the title, which, it is to be feared, is not quite such good Greek as Boccaccio imagined. As the Decameron has been freely pronounced immoral, and is not a book to be placed unreservedly in the hands of the young person, the question is inevitable, Is there not between the proem and the work proper, between the historical background and the lightness and frivolity of the imaginary actors, an inherent contradiction? Well,

1 The Decameron: A Ten Days' Entertainment. With Introduction by T. Wright. London: 1872.

2 The word should be Dechemeron-certainly an ugly duckling.

Villemain thinks that Boccaccio might have produced an analogy in the gaiety of the Court of Naples under the adulterous Giovanna, whose crimes transformed the city into a shambles. The analogy, however, is unnecessary. It is notorious that, in times of pestilence, misery and suspense frequently provoke a lamentable outbreak of immorality. This, as Thucydides testifies, was the case at Athens. So then, if Boccaccio's little coterie diverted themselves with dancing and repeating questionable stories, unbecoming as we may find their conduct, it was neither impossible nor improbable. Villemain is so impressed with the indecency of the Decameron, that he declines to sully his pages by the most distant approach to quotation. This excess of prudery argues an imperfect acquaintance with the book-though, it is true, the story of Griselda translated by Petrarch into Latin, and by Chaucer into English, cannot be termed representative. But the Decameron, however immoral it may be, is not immoral only. The humour of it goes a long way to excuse its indelicacy. Moreover, Boccaccio did not choose his themes because they were improper. He took them very much as they came, and if they fulfilled the indispensable condition of arousing interest, forthwith adopted them.

Villemain makes great sport of Bottari for maintaining the absolute innocence of Boccaccio's intenBoccaccio's tions-not too wisely perhaps, for in ceruniversality. tain matters it is doubtful whether Messer Giovanni ever grasped the distinction between right and wrong. On one point, however, the critics are

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agreed. They all acknowledge the wonderful variety of Boccaccio's pantomime representing every age, sex, and condition, and under the most different lights. In this quality of breadth he is rivalled by Dante and Shakespeare alone. Like both these world-artists, he hews his materials from near and far; but, having hewn them, treats them as his own property, alters, transforms, retrenches, amplifies, answerably to his own judgment, taste, instinct, and even caprice. The stamp of his personality is on every novel, and on every sentence, of the Decameron. Single stories had been wafted about the world for centuries, and having formed part of the stock-in-trade of wandering jongleur and popular preacher, might be termed old favourites, but they had never received that artistic setting necessary to fit them for a higher plane of existence. To change the simile, the chemical conditions are profoundly modified by the introduction of a fresh ingredient. To the rude and crude, if vivid and vigorous, presentments that had served hitherto, culture was added. The Decameron was, to all intents, a new phenomenon.

It is impossible to say of every tale from what source exactly Boccaccio borrowed it. You may

indeed compile a learned and, approximSources. ately, exhaustive work, as Herr Landau has done in his invaluable Quellen des Decameron, setting forth the pedigree, antecedents, and collateral relations of the tales; but it is needless to point out the difference between the book and the man. The Decameron was, as it were, a natural growth

which Boccaccio appropriated and brought to perfection, but it does not follow that he was conversant with the botanical processes preceding the final development of every individual stamen. To take an extreme instance, he did not, you may be sure, know anything of Azraki's Sindibad Nameh. Such studies did not belong to his day. There are, however, three sources from which he may reasonably be supposed to have drawn medieval Latin writings, e.g., the Vita Patrum, Gesta Romanorum, and Legenda Aurea; almost any poetry and prose in the Romance languages; 1 and oral traditions, respecting which last Dante supplies important evidence in the Commedia. Besides and beyond what may be termed the commonplace of literature, Boccaccio imports into his work recent and almost contemporary scandals-real people under their real names.

Butts.

Such are the tales relating to that sorry butt, Calandrino. I am aware that the existence of this artist, as well as that of Buffalmacco, has been disputed; but, so far as I can perceive, without just cause. Those incomparable wags, Bruno and Buffalmacco, figure not only in the Decameron, but, in precisely the same character, in the pages of Vasari and Sacchetti, while Manni in his Veglie Piacevoli (ii. 33-37) claims to have proved the historical reality of Calandrino and his termagant spouse,

1 Great mistakes, however, are made even here. Thus Legrand and Manni both imagined that the tale of Griselda was taken from Le Parement et Triomphe des Dames of Olivier de la Marche — a chronological absurdity.

2 See especially Paradiso, xv. 125; xxix. 103.

Tessa, from original documents. Another example of Florentine gossip immortalised by Boccaccio is the story of Giotto and Messer Forese da Rabatta, to which Vasari alludes in his Lives of the Painters.

Signor Casini has pointed out, what is of the highest interest with regard to the novels, that, from the longest to the shortest, they are diviMethod. sible into three dramatic moments: the introduction, in which the leading personages are brought forward, and the stage described whereon the actions are "played off"; the development, in which more or less rapidly, and aided more or less by collateral circumstances, the narrator conducts the action to the culminating point; and the solution, in which the knot of the intrigue is, at the conclusion, finally disentangled. We may take as an instance the tale of

"The spectre huntsman of Onesti's line,

His hell-dogs and their chase."

A young gentleman of Ravenna, Nastagio degli Onesti, falls in love with a proud girl, daughter of Taming a Paolo Traversari, who disdains his offer. lady. In despair Nastagio is at first minded to kill himself, but afterwards is persuaded to leave Ravenna, and goes to live in a pine-wood, about three miles away. Here a strange thing betides him. In his solitary wandering, he fancies he hears. great weeping and loud shrieks as of a woman; and, raising his head, he descries running towards the spot where he is standing, dishevelled and torn by boughs and brambles, a beautiful maid. She cries