regularity, an accuracy, a grace, a polish, and a rhythm, which till attained, the prose of no nation can be called perfect. With such views it was that he wrought at the work which was soon to be the foundation of his imperishable fame. While yet in Naples during the year 1348—that of the great plague—whether at the command of the queen, or for the reasons which he has himself given in his preface—to afford to others in love the relief which he derived from the conversation of friends—Boccaccio commenced his "Decamerone," which he finished and published at Florence three years after his return there. The plot of the work is known to every reader. Seven young ladies, wise, noble, beautiful, accomplished, and graceful, meet in the church of Santa Maria Novella, now left desolate from the plague. One proposes to the rest to leave the city, and sojourn in a neighbouring villa: the suggestion is approved of, and they are accompanied by three youths, who are related to some one or other of the ladies. One of the ten is the president, successively, for the ten days of their retirement, and each tells a tale daily, thus furnishing the hundred tales which compose the work. No sooner had the "Decamerone" made its appearance, than all Italy was moved by it. There was but one sentiment, that of admiration. Even the critics found nothing to fault: the defects in point of morality seemed to have troubled some of the religious only, and the work placed Boccaccio at once in the highest place of prose writers. It seemed till now as if the Tuscan tongue had never spoken with a clear articulation; that it had only lisped and stammered. Now, indeed, the language was fixed and finished; the true model of Italian eloquence was formed, and established for ever.
But while Boccaccio thus improved his native tongue, he applied himself with equal assiduity to the revival of the Greek, and the collection and preservation of the ancient classics. In this he spared neither money, time, nor labour. He sought out literary men everywhere to aid him; he bought whatever he found valuable, as long as his means enabled him, and when they failed he made copies with his own hand, to an extent that may well surprise those who live in the days of printing. Many of these he bestowed upon his friends, and upon Petrarch he conferred the great poem of Dante. This beautiful MS. is said to be still extant. In 1359 Boccaccio went to Milan, to visit Petrarch, and it was here that the latter mentioned his having met at Padua, Leonzio Pilato, a Calabrian, who had passed most of his life in Greece, and was thoroughly familiar with its language. Boccaccio at once returned to Florence, proposed to the senate to erect a chair of Greek literature, overcame all obstacles to his wishes, and, furished with the decree, he set out for Venice, and at last brought back with him Pilato, whom he lodged in his own house. With this man, repulsive in his manners and unamiable in his disposition, Boccaccio continued to work, enduring patiently all his caprices and habits, for three long years, and was paid for all by accomplishing a translation of Homer into Latin, a work of incredible labour, from the total want of lexicons and grammars. Other works followed; and he sought out in distant places every precious manuscript which he heard of, and purchased it. Such indeed was his zeal and munificence, that Manetti states, in the following century, that nearly every Greek manuscript which the republic possessed was due to Boccaccio. This may be considered the real revival in Italy of Greek literature, almost unknown there since the fall of the Greek empire. Now the example of Boccaccio animated other men of learning, and ere long the language was taught at the university and the schools. The life and writings of Boccaccio were still those of the gallant of Naples rather than the student of Florence, or the companion of the philosophic Petrarch. This last remonstrated with him in a manner though gentle yet authoritative, and the remonstrance was always received with respect, though often disregarded. What reason and the admonition of friendship could not effect, the terrors and superstition of religion accomplished.
There was at Siena a holy monk, whose great object through life was the conversion of sinners. On his deathbed he enjoined upon a brother religious, Giovacchino Ciani, to visit Boccaccio, and convey to him his dying words. Ciani accordingly obtained an interview with Boccaccio, and in the name of the dead Pietro conveyed the message, exhorting him to change his manner of life, admonishing and rebuking him for all the occasion of sin he had afforded to others by his writings. He set before him the sin of being the open foe to modesty, and the apologist for licentiousness; warned him that if he persisted in his present course a woeful and wretched death would speedily overtake him. All this the monk enforced by revealing to Boccaccio a secret which he believed was known only to himself, and then left him, confounded and conscience-stricken, to execute, as he said, similar missions in Naples, France, and England. The effect was immediate and complete. He thoroughly resolved an entire change of life: he renounced gallantry, and all light compositions, and even formed the idea of selling his library. Petrarch, however, to whom he had written an account of the whole matter, viewed it with more calmness and judgment. While commending his good resolutions, he neither approved of the abandonment of literature or the sale of his library; offering, at the same time, should he persist in his resolution, to purchase his books, that they might not be dispersed through the world. The advice of Petrarch was not without its effect. Boccaccio resumed his literary pursuits, while, at the same time, the reformation of his life was permanent, and henceforth he dressed as an ecclesiastic, though he abandoned the hastily-formed determination of studying theology alone.
It was about the year 1363 that he again visited Naples, led thither by the solicitations of the grand seneschal Nicholas Acciajuoli. Boccaccio was poor, for the little patrimony he possessed originally he had sacrificed to the purchase of books, and the patronage and support of a wealthy and powerful man was not to be lightly rejected, and the seneschal pretended to the reputation of being a munificent patron. But the treatment Boccaccio received from this mean, unfeeling, and arrogant man, commemorated to his infamy by every biographer, soon compelled him to remove from the squalid room and filthy truckle assigned to him, to the house of his friend Mainardo di Cavalcanti. Again the vanity of the seneschal made him seek to have Boccaccio a resident under his roof, and the friends of the latter persuaded him to a second trial. But the result was the same, and he finally left Naples for Venice, associating there with Petrarch, Pilato, and other learned men; whence, after three months, he returned to Florence; and ultimately retiring to his house at Certaldo, he gave himself up entirely to the prosecution of literature. Unfortunately he devoted himself principally to compositions in Latin, mistaking the true bent and power of his genius; and the "Genealogia Decorum," and the treatise "De Casibus Virorum et Feminarum Illustrium," which were the fruits of his study, however they may attest his learning, research, and morality, and though they gained him the respect of the learned of his day, are now read as little as the epistles or the epic of Petrarch, in the same language. Meantime he was not unhonoured by the republic as a citizen, and he was twice sent on embassies to Urban V., taking occasion to visit Venice, where he failed to meet Petrarch; and going to Naples, where he was received with great consideration by Queen Joanna, refusing all offers of patronage, and returning again to the sanctuary of his house at Certaldo. A severe and loathsome disease seized upon him in the midst of his studies, and reduced him to the last extremity; but he recovered after some months of suffering, and the first use he made of his renewed strength was to carry out a long-cherished project of establishing a professorship for the elucidation of the "Divina Commedia." This the republic endowed, and Boccaccio was himself the first to fill the chair, and his lectures form the valuable and elegant commentary on the first seventeen cantos which he has left. Boccaccio was now past 69, and beginning to feel the infirmities of age; and the death of Petrarch gave him a shock which accelerated his own end. He survived his friend and master little more than a year, dying at Certaldo on the 21st December, 1375, in the 73rd year of his age, mourned and honoured by the republic and all Italy.
It is a difficult thing for the readers of our times, especially if they are not Italians, to appreciate the position which Boccaccio occupied in his own; or to understand how, after so long a period, he still retains it. Assuredly it is not his poetry that perpetuates his renown, nor yet his Latin compositions. As a poet, he never took a hold of the public mind; and his verses, but little read in his own day, are now only familiar in name to the student, and not even known to exist by the ordinary reader. Indeed he is in this respect one of the numerous instances of men totally mistaking their own powers, and labouring from first to last under a delusion. "Studium fuit alma poesis," was the sentiment of his deathbed, and the epitaph which he wrote for his tomb; but the poet Boccaccio is as unknown as is the philosopher. It is the novelist whose reputation has survived, and spread over the world. We may well pause to ask how it is that tales written for the amusement of the gay and the idle have wrought such a
