Griselda, and the Pot of Basil (three stories made memorable by three of our greatest English poets), changes are rung on one tune, and I have already indicated to what that tune is set. We will not make any further investigation of its contents: if the reader will examine for himself the arguments merely prefixed to any half-dozen consecutive tales, he will find the above remarks fully corroborated in the words of the author himself. He is free to inspect the bill of fare; a true description of the feast prepared for him.
The Decameron was translated into English, about the year 1570, by William Paynter, who published it under the title of The Palace of Pleasure. How unlike in its pleasures to the ivory palaces stored with that myrrh and cassia with whose fragrance the garments of the Bridegroom are impregnated! I regret that such a work should have sullied the lustre of the great Elizabethan literature.
As there have been family editions of Shakespeare, of Massinger, of the Arabian Nights, so these judicious expurgators have tried their hands with the Decameron. Without entering into a minute examination of their labours, I think it will be quite safe to pronounce that, on the whole, they have failed, and must necessarily fail. Boccaccio's tales are exotics which cannot thrive in a foreign soil, unless they are "fed with careful dirt."
II.
Leaving Rabelais and Boccaccio, and passing by altogether Ariosto, Aretino, and Bandello—the first too well-known to be dwelt on here, and the others too little for it to be necessary to rake-up their forgotten indecencies—we will now turn to some of their followers in England and France. To the latter country let us first direct our attention.
Passing over Verville, whose Moyen de Parvenir, though Sterne has borrowed from it largely, is now almost forgotten, we come to Margaret of Navarre, who wrote, in early life, a
