I
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
AS MAN AND AUTHOR
BY
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
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LONDON
JOHN C. NIMMO
14 KING WILLIAM STREET STRAND
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114SS49
CONTENTS
I
Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, the three founders of Modern
Literature — They represent the three main elements of Flor-
entine Society — Boccaccio's influence on Italian literature
greater than that of Dante or Petrarch — Transition from
Middle Age to Renaissance— Petrarch and Boccaccio the
pioneers of the Revival of Learning . . . Pp. 1-12
II
Boccaccio's birth — Doubt as to his legitimacy — His father — His
early love for poetry — His education — He abandons Commerce
and Law — Life at Naples — Story of his visit to Virgil's tomb —
His acquaintance with Fiammetta — Is received into fashionable
Society — His relations with Fiammetta discussed — Treatment
of his passion in his literary work .... Pp. 13-28
III
Fusion of mediaevalism and classicalism in Boccaccio's first work,
"Filocopo" — Its originality in spite of its faults-0unction of
humanism and vernacular poetryA-Time spent on law and
commerce not really wasted — Recall to Florence — Troubled
condition of the city — Disagreement with his father — Painful
picture of the household in the " Ameto " — Composition of that
romance — Its form and nature — Its influence on Renaissance
fiction — The " Amorosa Visione " — Apotheosis of natural
instinct — Insincerity of allegorical chivalry — The "Ninfale
Fiesolano " — " La Teseide " — The story rehandled by Chaucer,
Shakspeare and Dryden — " Filostrato " — A versified novel of
CONTENTS
the passions — Strength of character drawing displayed — General
survey of the merits and faults of Boccaccio's poetical work —
Doubt as to authenticity of " La Fiammetta " — Difi&culty of attri-
buting it to Boccaccio — An extraordinary piece of writing — Its
wide and lasting influence Pp. 29-56
IV
Return to Naples— Friendship with Queen Joanna— The • 'Decameron* '
composed — Condition of Southern Italy — Boccaccio returns to
Florence — His father's death — His public missions — Meeting
with Petrarch — Their friendship — Boccaccio's encyclopaedic
works — He learns Greek and translates Homer — " II Corbaccio "
— Its violence — Vision and message of Pietro de Petroni —
Their effect upon Boccaccio— He is comforted by Petrarch— Is
invited to Naples by Acciaiuoli — His disappointment — Old age
— Appointment as lecturer on the •' Divine Comedy " — His
want of sympathy with Dante — Death at Certaldo in 1375
Pp. 57-77
V
The •• Decameron "—Boccaccios liking for Greek names— Search
as to sources of the •• Decameron " only indirectly interesting
— Charge of plagiarism dismissed — Realism of the ' ' Decameron ' *
— Charm of its style — Relation of the' "Decameron" to the
" Divine Comedy "-vMoral of the introduction of the plague
into the " Decameron "-^The plague a landmark in Italian
history — The framework of the Decameron — Satire of the
ideals of the age and of the Church— Conclusion . Pp. 78-92
Note on the Place and Manner of Boccaccio's Birth. — Tradi-
tion resting upon Italian version of Filippo Villani — The story
repeated by Domenico of Arezzo — Reasons for assuming
Boccaccio's legitimacy — Inferences from the " Ameto " — Result
of the inquiry Pp. 93-101
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
AS MAN AND AUTHOR
I
HE literature of modern as
distinguished from mediaeval
Europe began with three
Italian poets — Dante, Petrarch,
and Boccaccio. The common characteristic
which makes these men modern, and separates
them from their mediaeval predecessors, is
that three main types of imaginative writing
assumed with them the quality of monumental
art. If we wish to comprehend the theology,
the political ideas, the allegories, and the
mental temper of the Middle Ages, expressed
in a coherent work of the imagination, we must
go to the ** Divine Comedy." In Petrarch's
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
"Canzoniere" the love-mysticism and the
lyrics of Provence attain their ultimate per-
fection. Boccaccio's ** Decameron" elevates
the legends of a hundred generations, dimly
floating in the memories of men, to the rank
of clear self-conscious art, and inaugurates a
form of prose-narrative which in the novel
has superseded epic poetry.
^ Three things make the work of these great
Id writers monumental. One is their firm grasp
upon the forms they severally used, whereby
diffuse and vague materials of various sorts
were wrought into imperishable plastic shape.
The second is the keen emergence of their
personalities as men, that penetration of the
art-work with the artist's self which was con-
spicuously absent in mediaeval compositions.
The third is the vivacity of their sensations,
^ the awakened life, the resuscitated realism, the
fine analysis of motives, the nice discrimination
of physical and moral qualities ; all of which
transports us from a world of dreams and
abstractions into the world of fact and nature.
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
Dante takes for his province the drama of the
human soul in its widest scope ; Petrarch takes
the heart of an individual man, himself; Boc-
caccio takes the complex stuff^of daily life,
the quicquid agunt homines of common experi-
ence. These are their several subjects. Out
of them Dante creates the epic, Petrarch the
lyric, Boccaccio the novel. \
As their work was monumental so was it
final. There could not be a second " Divine
Comedy," a second " Canzoniere," a second
** Decameron," except in imitations of greater
or lesser literary merit. These three poets
closed and consummated a lengthy period of
thought and emotion. It was impossible to
repeat them, just as it was impossible to
repeat Rabelais, Cervantes, Shakespeare. At
the same time they opened a new era, by
exhibiting the freedom of the individual
artist's genius, which during the Middle Ages
had nowhere emerged into independent self-
sufficiency.
The three founders of modern literature
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GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
were Florentines by origin ; and their lives
followed at brief intervals, within a narrow
space of time. Dante was born in 1265,
Petrarch in 1304, Boccaccio in 1313. Between
132 1 (the date of Dante's death) and 1361
(the date of Boccaccio's conversion) the ** Divine
Comedy," the *' Canzoniere," and the '* De-
cameron " were secured as inalienable posses-
sions for posterity.
Dante belonged to the old nobility of
Florence, who fought the battles of Guelf
and Ghibelline upon the plains of Tuscany.
Petrarch sprang from Florentine parents of
the middle class, exiled in the same quarrels ;
growing up without a home or city, he
became a cosmopolitan by culture. Boccaccio
derived his doubtful blood from a merchant
of no birth or breeding, one of those men
whose immediate ancestors were villeins from
the country admitted to Florentine burgher-
ship in a moment of democratic expansive-
ness. Of such people Dante spoke in his
scornful aristocratic way as follows : ** In
4
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
adulterated with folk of Campi, and Certaldo,
and Figghine, was pure and unmixed down
to the least artisan. Oh ! how much better
would it have been to have kept those people
for our neighbours, and to have restricted
Florence to her ancient circuit of three miles
or four, than to clasp them with us now inside
our walls, suffering the stench of rustics from
Aguglion and Signa, whose eyes are grown
already sharp for dirty gain ! "
Thus Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio repre-
Isented the three main elements of Florentine
society in the last years of the Middle Ages —
the popolo vecchio, the popolo grasso, and the
popolo minutOy as these were severally called.
It is not trivial to notice that Boccaccio, with
whom we are principally concerned, issued
from the class which ultimately rose to power
in Florence ; the class which chose the Medici,
themselves of no high blood, for rulers; the
class which raised their city to literary and
artistic splendour in the first years of the
5
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
Renaissance ; the class which reduced that
city to moral and political impotence in its
decline. To this class, then, the class in the
ascendant, Boccaccio belonged ; and, of the
three founders of modern literature, he exer-
cised by far the most potent and far-reaching
influence over his immediate successors. Not
Dante in any department whatsoever, not
Petrarch in more than a limited sphere of
lyric poetry, but Boccaccio dominated Italian
taste for three successive centuries. I am
speaking of vernacular art, not of scholarship ;
and I hope to prove my assertion by showing
how many literary types, of great vogue in
the Renaissance, were due to Boccaccio's
creative instinct.
It seems paradoxical to say this. Every-
body can see for himself that, of these three
poets, Dante was first, Petrarch second, and
Boccaccio third in force of character and
quality of genius. Yet the fact that Boccaccio
did more than his superiors to mould and in-
fluence Italian literature admits of demonstra-
6
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
tion. The cause is obvious. While all three
held in a great measure by the past, Boccaccio
was the one whose temperament and favourite
forms of art anticipated the future. He alone
grew with the growing age, in his substitution
of sensual and concrete for mystical and ab-
stract ideals, in his joyous acceptance of nature
and the world, in his frank abandonment of
theological, scholastic, and political preoccu-
pations. The Italians of the Renaissance
turned their back on metaphysics, treated
allegory with cynical insolence, neglected the
burning questions of Church and Empire as
unpractical and antiquated. What then was
Dante for them but a grim and sphinx-like
symbol of the past, whose majesty inspired a
kind of irksome awe ? The Italians of the
Renaissance disbelieved in chivalry and Pla-
tonic love ; they wanted to enjoy plenty, and
to take their fill of carnal pleasure. What
then was Petrarch for them but a perfect
master in the art of writing compliments, and
veiling crude desire in artificial forms of
7
:ii
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
decent verse ? With Boccaccio they felt them-
selves at home. He knew life as they knew
it ; he wanted what they wanted ; he painted
men and women as they actually were, moving
about the streets and fields of their own native
land. His realism Was theirs; his insincerity
was theirs ; his easy-going acceptance of alle-
gorical forms which had lost their hold upon
his faith, but which were useful as a fig-leaf
for the nakedness of human appetites, suited
their temper and their sense of decorum ; his
toleration of the powers that be, his panegyric
of a Semiramis 'who had patronised him, his
disengagement from troublesome public affairs,
his devotion to art for art's sake, jumped pre-
cisely with their humour. And then he gave
them so much amusement, so many new spe-
cies of literature, agreeable and easy to deal
with — the novel in prose as sparkling as the
tights of Harlequin, the romance in long-drawn
octave stanzas, the idyll in mixed verse and
prose, the obscure satire, the pompous impas-
sioned chaunt of palpitating love. The
8
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
reasons, as I take it, are not far to seek why
Boccaccio eclipsed Dante and even Petrarch
with their immediate posterity.
From Dante through Petrarch to Boccaccio ;
from Beatrice through Laura to La Fiammetta
— from woman as an allegory of the noblest -
thoughts and purest stirrings of the soul,
through woman as the symbol of all beauty.,
worshipped at a distance, to woman as man's . ChoU
lover kindling and reciprocating passionate ' \
desire;, from the ** Divine Comedy," through
the " Canzoniere " to the " Decameron " —
from the eternal world of man's fixed self-
created destiny, through the transitory world
of trembling introspective sentiment to the.
positive world of fact and act in which we ^/Zq,
play our parts ; from mystic terza rima, through
stately stanzas, to Protean prose — from verse
built up into cathedral dignity with mathema-
tical precision, through lyrics light as ara-
besques and pointed with the steely touch of
polished style, to that free form of speech
which takes all moods and lends itself alike to
9
\fdt>c<:^
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
low and lofty themes : such was the rapid
movement of Italian genius within the brief
space of some fifty years. So quickly did the
Renaissance emerge from the Middle Ages ;
and when the voices of that august trio were
silenced in the grave, the echo of the last and
least of them widened and grew louder through
the spacious times to come.
In these observations upon Dante, Petrarch,
and Boccaccio, I have hitherto presented them
only as Italian poets who inaugurated modern
European literature. There is, however,
another point to be considered. They came at
the moment when our intellectual ancestors,
moulded by the Middle Ages, were destined
to repiece the broken chain which linked the
men of modern times with classical antiquity.
Dante had nothing to do with what is called
the Revival of Learning ; and this is one cause
why his sublime genius possessed little attrac-
tion for men who made that revival their
prime interest. But we who now look back
upon the Renaissance, are able to perceive how
lO
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
f
■strongly modern pulses throbbed in him.
^ While he dealt with the enduring problems of
mankind in the spirit of a mediaeval thinker,
Dante possessed, as an artist, what was most
vital and precious in the temper of the coming
age — concrete imagination, grasp on nature
through the senses, intuition into the specific
qualities of men and things. The vagueness,
the dreaminess, the generality of mediaevalism
disappeared in his work. He did not, how-
Iever, apply himself to the resuscitation of the
classics as the groundwork of a moral type of
culture. That task was reserved for Petrarch,
the cosmopolitan, the student freed by fate
from Dante's tyrannous preoccupations. It was
both the weakness and the strength of Petrarch
that circumstances left him open to a merely
literary impulse. It was Petrarch's weakness,
inasmuch as something was deducted from his
personality in action ; it was Petrarch's strength,
in so far as he divined in solitude what Europe
needed for the next inevitable step of evolu-
tion. Independently, therefore, of his poetical
II
0
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
achievement, Petrarch claims our veneration as
the initiator of humanism, of scholarship, of the
modern intellectual ideal. He started that
movement to which the occidental races owe
their common mental atmosphere, their ac-
cepted type of education, their independence of
scholastic and theological authority, their
science, their criticism. All this we designate
by such terms as the Revival of Learning or
the Renaissance, unmindful of the weighty
issues which were involved in that first rupture
with the mediaeval ways of thought. The
Zeit'geist needed Petrarch. He, or some one
like him, was demanded to effect a necessary
transition. In the accomplishment of that un-
avoidable process, Boccaccio rendered more
than yeoman's service. We have to estimate
him not only as the author of the ** Decameron,"
not only as the poet who controlled the course
of Italian literature in its main currents for
three hundred years, but also as the founder of
^j Greek studies and Petrarch's ablest lieutenant
\ in the pioneering work of the Revival.
12
II
/GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO was born in
^^ the year 13 13. We do not know for
certain where he was born, who his mother
was, and whether he was born in wedlock.
His father belonged to a humble family,
IKoriginally seated at Certaldo in Valdelsa,
about eighteen miles distant from Florence.
IjfcTheir ancestors had been admitted to the
burghership of the Sovereign State. Ac-
cordingly, Giovanni, although he called him-
self *' the son of Boccaccio of Certaldo," and
though he regarded Certaldo as his native
place or patria, enjoyed the privileges of a
Florentine citizen. He was never known by
any family name ; his full denomination being
Giovanni di Boccaccio di Chellino da Certaldo,
John the son of Boccaccio the son of Chellino
13
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
]
of Certaldo. Relegating the discussion of
questions regarding his birthplace and legiti-
macy to an appendix, this, I think, is all that
can be safely affirmed upon the subject of I
Boccaccio's origin.
Of his early life we know unfortunately
very little, and it is impossible to determine
its chronology with precision. Two schemes
have been suggested through which the scanty
data furnished by allusions in his own writings
and by the meagre information of contempo-
raries, may be reduced to order. These
depend respectively upon the views we take
regarding Boccaccio's first meeting with Fiam-
metta. The one receives support from the
Latin, the other from the Italian version of
Filippo Villani's panegyric. It does not
greatly signify which scheme we adopt ; each
presents special difficulties together with cer-
tain advantages. In the following sketch of
Boccaccio's biography I shall adhere to the
one which seems to me upon the whole pre-
ferable, after expressing my opinion that no
14
I
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
reliance can be placed upon the accuracy of
tes anterior to the year 1350. Yet, in spite
of this chronological uncertainty, the main
outlines of Boccaccio's boyhood and youth are
sufficiently distinct, and the growth of his
character may be described with some minute-
ness.
Giovanni Boccaccio's father was a man of
very different temper from the poet. Having
begun life as a merchant, he devoted his
whole energy and all his thoughts to money-
making. It does not appear that the elder
Boccaccio was eminently successful in trade ;
and though he held several offices of trust in
the republic, his name has left no trace in
history. We have reason to believe that
Giovanni remained for many years the only
son of this man, and the fact that his mother
has not once been mentioned by him leads
one to suppose that she died during his
infancy. His father's sole ambition was to
educate him as a man of business, in order
that the slender fortunes of the family, which
15
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
he had himself improved, might in the next
generation be raised still higher. This caused
a rooted disagreement between the two occu-
pants of the gloomy little house in S** Felicita
at Florence. Reviewing his own life upon the
threshold of old age, Boccaccio wrote as follows :
** Nature, as experience has proved, drew
me from my mother's womb with special apti-
tudes for poetry ; and in my opinion this was
the law for which I was created. Well enough
do I remember how my father used his best
endeavours, from^ mj^ earliest boyhood, to
make me a man of commerce. Before I
entered on the period of youth, but had ac-
quired some knowledge of arithmetic, he put
me to a merchant of great consequence, with
whom I did nothing for six years but waste
irrecoverable time. Being soon forced to
perceive that my bent was rather for study
than for trade, he next decided that I should
apply myself to canon law, with a view to
making money ; accordingly I laboured in
vain, for about the same space of time, under
i6
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
a very eminent professor. My mind, however,
revolted against both these industries to such
an extent that neither the learning of my
master nor the authority of my father, by
whose commands I was perpetually harassed,
nor yet the prayers, or rather the recrimi-
nations of my friends, could bend it in either
direction. It was wholly drawn by strong
affection towards poetry. Not a sudden im-
pulse, but the oldest and most deeply rooted
hstinct led me upon that path ; for I well
remember that before I reached the age of
seven, before I set eyes on any works of
tion, before I went to school, and when I
hardly knew the rudiments of letters, my
nature was already urging me to invent, and
I began to produce trifling poems. These
indeed possessed no value, since my intel-
lectual powers at that tender age were insuffi-
cient for such arduous performances. How-
ever, when I had well-nigh reached maturity,
and was become my own master, then, at no
man's bidding and through no man's teaching,
17 B
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
against the opposition of my father who con-
demned such studies vehemently, I resorted
spontaneously to the little which I knew of
the poetic art, and this art I have since
pursued with the greatest eagerness, studying
the works of its professors with incredible
delight, and straining all my ability to under-
stand them. And, wonderful to relate, while
yet I had no knowledge on what or on how
many feet a verse should run ; and though
I sturdily repelled the appellation, all my
acquaintances used to call me poet, which,
alas ! I am not yet. I doubt not that if my
father had been indulgent to my wishes while
my mind was pliable in youngest years, I
should have turned out one of the world's
famous poets. The fact, however, is that
through bending my abilities first to lucrative
business, and next to a lucrative branch of
study, I failed to become either a merchant
or a canonist, and missed the chance of being
an illustrious poet. To other departments of
learning I have paid little attention ; for
i8
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
lough they pleased me, they did not compel
le with the same attraction. The study of
le sacred volumes engaged my attention, but
abandoned it as unfit for my advanced years
and moderate abilities, judging it unbecoming
for an old man, as it were, to begin the rudi-
ments of a new science, and most indecent
for anybody to attempt that which he cannot
believe himself capable of performing. Con-
sequently, since I think God was pleased to
make literature my vocation, in this I am
determined to persevere."
This valuable fragment of autobiography
tells us all we really know about Boccaccio's
early years, and enables us to map them out
with some distinctness. At the age of seven -j
he learned the rudiments of grammar under
Giovanni da Strada, and at eleven began his n
training as a merchant. The six years wasted
in that fruitless labour brought him to seven- /^
teen, when his father changed his plan of
education. We cannot determine who was the
eminent jurist under whom he worked during
19
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
the next period of six years. Tradition, always
eager to unite the names of men illustrious
in past ages, identifies this teacher with
Cine da Pistoja. But we have reasons for
believing that Boccaccio went to reside at
Naples before 1330, in which case his legal
studies must have been carried on there. Two
points, however, are certain. It was at
Naples that he finally dedicated his life to
literature ; and at Naples he met the woman
who exercised decisive influence over his career
as poet.
Boccaccio's abandonment of lucrative profes-
sions may be illustrated by a charming story,
which has all the freshness in it of the morning
of the modern world. Filippo Villani, a con-
temporary writer of Florentine biographies,
clearly attached importance to the incident he
relates ; and it is possible that friends of Boc-
caccio may have heard it from his own lips.
" After wandering through many lands, now
here, now there, as his commercial engage-
ments prompted, he reached at length the age
of twenty-five, when his father's orders led him
20
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
to take up his abode in Naples. There it
chanced one day that he walked forth alone,
and came to the spot where Virgil's dust
lies buried. At the sight of this sepulchre
Giovanni fell into long musing admiration of
the man whose bones it covered, brooding
with meditative soul upon the poet's fame,
until he fell to lamenting his own fortune,
whereby he was compelled against his will to
give himself to irksome cares of business.
A sudden love of the Pierian Muses smote his
heart, and turning homeward he abandoned
trade, devoting himself with passionate ardour
to poetry ; wherein very shortly, aided alike
by his noble genius and his burning desire
for knowledge, he made marvellous progress.
This when his father noticed, and perceived
that Heaven-sent instinct had more power
with his son than the paternal will, he con-
sented to his studies, and helped him with
such assistance as lay within his means." Like
all tales of the sort, this story must not be taken
literally, but rather as a parable of what did
actually happen. Boccaccio has told us in the
21
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
passage I have quoted, that it was no sudden
impulse which made him devote himself to
literature ; and it is also incredible that he
should have studied canon law for six whole
years, without some opportunities of acquiring
the rudiments of scholarship for which he
thirsted. Indeed, we shall see, when we come
to speak of his earliest compositions, that he
must have pursued classical studies, if only in
a desultory way, for many years.
The lady so renowned in literature as
/ Fiammetta, received the name of Maria from
her parents. She was born in wedlock to a
Count of Aquino ; but her real father was
supposed to be Robert of Anjou, king of
Naples. Boccaccio first set eyes upon her in
the Church of_ San Lorenzo on the morning
of an Easter Eve — possibly in the year 1338.
If that date be correct, he was then aged
twenty-five, and she was in all probability
three years older. She had been married
some time to a gentleman whose name and
rank are alike unknown to us. It will be
22
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
remembered that Petrarch first saw his Laura
in a church at Avignon. Laura was also a
married woman, with whose domestic life we
are unacquainted. There is so much simi-/
larity in these two episodes as almost to
provoke a query whether Boccaccio was not
deliberately imitating his great predecessor
and master in the art of poetry. His subset
quent relations to Fiammetta are hardly less
vague and shadowy than those of Petrarch to
Laura. Dealing with this famous romance,
one is tempted to wonder whether the young
man who had now resolved on literature, did
not set up a mistress as part of his necessary
equipment. To do so would be, however,
inconsistent with sound criticism. A certain
element of ideality and indistinctness must be
acknowledged in Dante's Beatrice, in Petrarch's
Laura, and in Boccaccio's Fiammetta. Yet we
are bound to accept these heroines of fame
as real women, who powerfully influenced the
hearts and minds of their three poet-lovers.
It is impossible to transfer ourselves with full
23
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
intelligence and sympathy into the psycho-
logical conditions of those mediaeval love
affairs. But that does not justify our evading
the difficulties of the problem by curtly saying
there is nothing in it.
How Boccaccio, the simple merchant's son
from Florence, came to be received into the
Court-circle in which Fiammetta moved, admits
of some debate. As yet he was undistin-
guished either as a Latin scholar or as an
Italian poet. In all probability he owed his
introduction to Niccolo Acciaiuoli, a Florentine
of a wealthy and distinguished house, who
settled at Naples as a man of business in the
year 133 1, and afterwards rose by his abilities
to the rank of Grand Seneschal and feudatory
of the kingdom. However that may be, we
should bear in mind that one excellent feature
of Italian society was its almost democratic
readiness to place men of genius on an equal
footing with princes in their hours of relaxa-
tion. That Boccaccio, though he did not rank
as orator or poet or professor of the classics
24
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
at this period — any one of which distinctions
would have served as a sufficient passport —
must have been remarkable for his talents,
cannot indeed be questioned. The author of
the ** Decameron " was one of the most
brilliant story-tellers whom the world has
seen ; and telling stories formed a favourite
pastime with gentle men and women of the
fourteenth century. Having once obtained
the opportunity of displaying this gift, his
society was sure to have been sought after.
At any rate, his earliest essays in romance
prove incontestably that he had mixed with
fashionable people during the period of his
first residence at Naples.
What his actual relations to la Fiammetta
were, is dubious. He says that, on the occa-
sion of their second meeting, she requested
him to rehandle the old French romance of
"Florie et Blan&flor." Obedient to her com-
mands, he produced the prose-tale of ** Filo-
copo." Beyond this account of their second
meeting at a convent outside the walls of
25
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
Naples, we possess no definite record of their
intercourse. If we were to trust the autobio-
graphical passages of the *'Ameto" and
** Amorosa Visione," and to accept the novel
of ''Fiammetta" as anything approaching to
real history, we should have to infer that she
fully returned his passion. But all these works
are precisely of that kind which Goethe termed
" Truth and Fiction." It is clear in them that
the poet and romancer has given free rein to
his fancy. Fact is so embroidered and inter-
fused with poetry that no inferences can be
safely drawn from them. The case is different
with Boccaccio's sonnets, which more even
than Dante's and Petrarch's have the accent of
spontaneous veracit}^ Their artistic inferiority
secures for them a certain air of correspondence
with truth. Many of these poems which are
devoted to la Fiammetta, tell a very different
tale from the fictions above mentioned. In
them Boccaccio compares his mistress to a
block of marble which no beams of love can
warm, complains of her cruelty, disdain, and
26
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
icy coldness, and wonders, at the end of five
years spent in adoration, whether she has ever
cared to learn her lover's name. I think
that his passion for Fiammetta was genuine,
although he heightened and idealised its colour
for the purpose of his art. But I see no reason
to believe that it was reciprocated, or that he
lived on terms of intimacy with the lady whose
name was always on his lips. She certainly
inspired him to compose the principal Italian
works of his early manhood. For her he
wrote ** Filocopo." To her he dedicated the
** Teseide " and ** Filostrato." She is the
heroine of "Ameto" and **La Fiammetta."
She reappears in the **Amorosa Visione,"
and may be traced in "La Caccia di Diana" and
the ** Ninfale Fiesolano." Even in his master-
piece, the ** Decameron," composed when her
influence was clearly on the wane, he pays
her homage. In fact, he chose her for his
JMuse, as poets in those days were wont to
choose one lady around whose image they
allowed their thoughts and sentiments to crys-
27
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
tallize until the vision became for them some-
thing between a reality and an ideal. It is
necessary to form some conception of the
peculiar conditions under which the imagi-
nation worked in an age of allegory and
abstractions, in order to comprehend the
tenacity with which men like Dante, Petrarch,
Cino, Guido Cavalcanti, and Boccaccio clung
to the names and memories of worshipped
women, whose flesh-and-blood reality seems
doubtful to us while we read about them. If
Fiammetta emerges into more distinctness
than Beatrice or Laura or Selvaggia, it is not
perhaps because Boccaccio lived on terms of
close intimacy with the mistress of his heart
and Muse of his Parnassus, but because he
was a novelist and not a lyric poet. The
themes he handled under her inspiration
bordered upon realism. In the process of
working at them, he gave her a fictitious
personality, which has led his readers to sup-
pose that his relations to her were by no
means of a merely ideal kind.
28
I
III
A MONG the Italian works which I have
^ ^ recently enumerated as due to Fiam-
metta's inspiration, " Filocopo" takes the first
place. This is the earliest composition by
Boccaccio known to us, and it deserves to be
called the earliest monument of genuine Renais-
sance literature. In it appears for the first
time that fusion of mediaeval and classical
material under forms of a distinctly hybrid
modern art, that marriage of Faust and Helen,
with the bizarre resultant birth of a new genius,
which constitutes the real note of the transi-
tional period known to us as Renaissance.
Boccaccio adopted for his groundwork a
romance of possibly Byzantine origin, which
had already been popularised in several
languages of Europe, and was well known to
29
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
the Italians of his day. His originality did
not consist in the choice of subject — that was
given him by Fiammetta — but in its handling.
The main story became a framework for
slightly connected episodes, for descriptions of
landscape, for pictures of life, and for analyses
of passion, interwoven with extraordinary
luxuriance of fancy in a labyrinth of highly
coloured scenes. Together with this addition
of new motives and new sources of interest
to the fable, an entirely new form is given to
the manner of narration. The mythology of
Greece and Rome makes sudden and imperious
intrusion into the region of romance. Far-
fetched terms are invented in order to accom-
modate this scholarly Olympus to the elements
of Christian thought and the conditions of
mediaeval experience. We find ourselves, so
far as literary form goes, transported into a
conventional wonder-world of imagery, allusion,
and rhetorical periphrasis. This explanation
renders the reading of ** Filocopo " at the
present day well-nigh intolerable. Yet it was
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
precisely this which attracted contemporaries,
not only by its novelty, but also by its adapta-
tion to the taste of the Revival. Italian prose,
again, which had hitherto been practised with
the dove-like simplicity of the *' Fioretti di
S. Francesco," or with the grave parsimony of
the ** Vita Nuova," is now made to march in
sonorous periods. The language, no less than
the stuff and manner of " Filocopo," proclaims
the advent of Renaissance art. In Petrarch
the two streams of literature, which were
destined to coalesce, had flowed apart, jrtle
wrote Italian verse with exquisite purity ; and
he attempted to restore classical culture with
conscientious thoroughness. J Boccaccio in his
earliest experiment as author mixed the two
sources. But so vivid was the poet's natural
genius that, while accomplishing this revolution
in manner, while so rehandling matter, he intro-
duced at the same time a spiritual element,
partly sensuous, partly sentimental, partly scien-
tific, which was neither classical nor mediaeval,
but emphatically modern. J We must remember
31
i
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
that the people of Boccaccio's day were familiar
with the story of '* Filocopo." We must
remember that they delighted in those long-
drawn romances, and were accustomed to follow
their labyrinthine windings with facility.
We must also remember that what seems to
us rococo and affected in Boccaccio's mytho-
logical rhetoric and masquerade machinery,
had for them the charm of brilliant style and
learning genially displayed. What gives us
trouble and inflicts fatigue, was fascinating at
that epoch. Having then transported our-
selves, so far as this is possible, into their
atmosphere of thought and feeling, we shall be
able to comprehend the enthusiasm which that
glowing delineation of natural existence, those
ardent outpourings of passion, that pompous
and yet liquid diction, those finished landscapes,
that richly coloured tone conveyed by aptly
chosen words, inspired in men and women
accustomed to mediaeval directness or dreami-
ness. Boccaccio's originality in the '* Filocopo"
is incontestable. We may condemn his work
32
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
■as artificial and its form as meretricious. We
■ may deplore the direction which it gave to
literature. But we shall be uncritical if we
forget that such artificial work, such ornaments,
such mixed species of art, were what the age
of nascent humanism demanded, and that with-
out them the Italians could not have arrived at
the plastic perfection of Ariosto. The arras-
work of this embroiderer, we say, is glittering,
is splendid, is effective. But it is composed on
radically false principles. It is not classical, it
is not mediaeval, it is not modern. True ; but
its originality consists precisely in the fact that
it satisfied an age which was not classical, which
was not mediaeval, which was not modern. It
fulfilled the needs of a transition-age, which
had to reabsorb antiquity, to free itself from
mediaeval impediments, to appropriate the
modern liberty of sense and intellect on lines
of the least palpable resistance. To estimate
the immediate influence of the ** Filocopo " is
difficult ; to feel sure that it would have deter-
mined the course of Italian literature, if it had
33 c
0
w
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
stood alone, is impossible. But it was only the
first of many similar productions by the same
author ; and reviewing these in their totality,
we are justified in asserting that Boccaccio
created for his nation the style which cul-
minated in the " Cinque Cento." Men are more
imitative than one commonly allows. But for
this great writer's originality in perceiving that
a hybrid form of art was adapted to his age,
and expressive of its stirrings, but for the
attractive examples which he gave of the mixed
style, it is possible that Italian literature might
have taken a very different course. Boccaccio
intervened at a critical moment, and effected
that junction between humanism and vernacular
poetry which proved afterwards decisive for
one of the world's most brilliant and fruitful
epochs. Had he been suffered to pursue, his
own course of study unchecked in adolescence,
this same result would not have been attained.
We might have had a second Petrarch, of a
somewhat diverse kind and calibre. We
should certainly have had a more accomplished
34
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
scholar than Boccaccio became. He would
have left behind him eclogues and epistles
marked by purer Latinity, erudite treatises dis-
playing a more intimate acquaintance with the
spirit of the classics, and probably some ambi-
tious monument of Italian verse in the alle-
gorical or epic style. But we should not have
possessed the ** Filocopo," and many other
works of the same order, which were forma-
tive of modern literature. What is noticeable
in this first essay, is that its learning, though
scattered broadcast over every page, remains
that of a dilettante rather than a scientific
student. Boccaccio employs it for adornment
and stylistic purposes. He revels in it with
the gusto of an epicure, for whom its
antique flavour is delicious. Yet it has
not penetrated his heart, or remade his
intellect; nor has it moulded the inner
substance of his art. On the other hand,
the genial, the enduringly delightful elements
in this romance — its feeling for nature,
its experience of life, its keen apprecia-
35
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
tion of sensuous pleasure — could not have
been acquired in the study of a scholar.
Boccaccio owed these things to the fortune
he bewailed at Virgil's tomb, to the. Jiard
necessity of wandering through many cities
in, pursuit of trade. We may pause to reflect
upon the crooked ways whereby some men
of genius are fashioned for their proper work.
Had Boccaccio been free to follow his own
bent in youth, he would have lost all this,
which made him far more powerful in the
future than his idol, Petrarch. Had his father
succeeded in that cherished plan of shaping
him into a merchant, he would have accumu-
lated wealth, but the many aspects of the
world would have been wasted on him. As
it was, the idleness of those twelve years of
misdirected energy, which he bewailed in
middle life, and which was grief and sorrow
to his parent, endowed the man, when he
applied himself to literature, with special gifts
and peculiar aptitudes. This idleness, while
it precluded him from becoming a first-rate
36
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
Latin and Greek scholar, fitted him to found
the Italian style of the coming age, and
prepared him for his masterpiece, the
*' Decameron."
I have dwelt at some length upon " Filo-
copo," because it allowed me to say things
which are generally applicable to the writings
of Boccaccio's early manhood. In dealing with
the rest, it will not be needful to repeat these
observations.
While engaged upon the composition of
''Filocopo" at Naples, Boccaccio was recalled
by his father to Tuscany. That may have
happened at the end of 1339, or perhaps in
1340. So far as we can see through the
obscurity which involves his movements,
Boccaccio remained at Florence or Certaldo
until 1345, busily employed in literature.
Those five years must certainly have formed
the most productive period of his life. He
was not happy in his native land. Florence,
distracted by internal quarrels and enfeebled
by commercial failures, had placed herself
37
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
under the protection of the Duke of Athens.
Instead of being a wise dictator, Walter of
Brienne proved himself a rapacious tyrant, and
had to be expelled by force. The city was
plunged still deeper into trouble by these com-
motions. Though Boccaccio never allowed
himself to withdraw from study by public
events, yet the disturbance of society around
him must have been irksome to one who had
been basking in the ease and luxury of
Naples under King Robert's paternal govern-
ment. Deeper discomforts rendered his pre-
sent life distasteful. These arose from the
incompatibility of views and temper between
him and the elder Boccaccio. At the close of
** Ameto," which must have been written soon
after 1340, he draws a painful picture of their
household. After reverting in strains of fer-
vent enthusiasm to the delights which he had
left behind at Naples, he proceeds to speak of
his own Tuscan home : ^ " Here one laughs
but seldom. The dark silent melancholy
* " Ameto," p. 199.
38
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
house takes and retains me much against my
will ; for here the sour and horrible aspect of
an old man, frozen, uncouth, and avaricious,
adds continual affliction to my saddened
mood." Nothing but extreme irritation and
dejection of spirits can have justified this por-
trait of his father, who, if we may trust Villani,
was dealing with him generously. Again, in
the " Amorosa Visione," composed at the
same period, he describes the old Boccaccio
among the misers, employed perpetually in
scratching tiny morsels with his nails from a
huge mountain of gold, his whole heart being
set on money-making.^
It was in such circumstances, then, that the
poems and prose fictions, with which we have
now to deal, were composed. The ** Ameto "
may be described as an idyllic romance, written
pardy in verse and partly in prose. The
scene is laid in Italy, but the story carries us
to that ideal Arcadia, which fascinated the
imagination of the Renaissance. '* Ameto " is
* " Amorosa Visione," p. 59.
39
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
indeed the first of a long series of romantic
idylls which became fashionable throughout
Europe by the industry of Sannazzaro, Monte-
mayor and Sidney. Critics have suggested
that its form may have been derived from
Petronius, or Apuleius, or **Aucassin et
Nicolette." But such inquiries are to little
purpose. In his " Ameto " Boccaccio pro-
jected a new species of literature, the pedigree
of which can be traced in the imitations of
successors, but which owed little to any pre-
existing work. The romance was intended to
show in what way wild and rustic natures may
{/ be humanised by love — a theme which the
author rehandled in his novel of " Cimone."*
The main story served, however, also as a
framework for introducing a variety of episodes
and secondary tales. Boccaccio's genius
delighted in what the Italians call intrecciaturaf
that is, the interweaving of tale with tale upon
a large tapestry of invention^ Here, again, he
determined the course of Renaissance fiction,
* "Decameron."
40
I
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
the special feature of which, especially in its
finest poetry, is a luxuriant display of episodes,
combined into a splendid whole by slender
links of almost casual connection.
The " Amorosa Visione " was produced
under the same conditions as ** Ameto." It
shows that Boccaccio was still wandering,
uncertain of his destination, in the fields of
literature. Having created romance of a new
species in "Filocopo" and '* Ameto," he re-
verted in this poem to the allegories of his
predecessors. The " Am9rosa Visione " is
written in manifest rivalry ' with Dante, and
with the " Trionfi " of Petrarch. It leads
the soul through various contemplations of
learning, fame, wealth, love, and fortune, to
the supreme felicity of life. That, says the
poet, is the union of intelligence and moral
energy in an enthusiasm of the soul. Lower
ambitions, on which the activities of men are
usually spent, have to be abandoned in the
search for happiness. We pursue the quest
with some impatience to its long-deferred
41
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
conclusion. But when Boccaccio reveals his
secret, the conclusion is discovered to be
lame and impotent. The enthusiasm of the
soul, to which he brings us, turns out to be
the union of two beings in a mutual passion ;
and the '' Amorosa Visione " closes in a para-
dise of sensual beatitude. Unless Boccaccio
intended to satirise the mystical allegories of
a former age, which I do not believe, he
appears before us in this poem as a Balaam
who blesses what the Muse had summoned
him to curse. The fact is that he had no
other prophecy to utter, and what he did utter
he regarded as a prophecy. Like all his
compositions at this period, the " Amorosa
Visione " reveals the closing of one era and
the opening of another. The forms of ^giedi-
sev^l idealism are pressed into the service of
Renaissance realism. Natural instinct, against
which Dante strove with all his might, and
which Petrarch clothed in the subtlest drapery
of sentiment, is deified in an impassioned
apotheosis.
42
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
The future author of the '' Decameron "
betrays himself unconsciously and all against
his inclination in the *' Amorosa Visione."
The poem is furthermore remarkable, because
it first exhibits an insincerity which became
stereotyped in Renaissance literature. Time-
honoured phrases and forms of art are used,
which were adapted to obsolete modes of
thinking and feeling about love. Chivalrous^
mysticism is no longer intelligible ; but its
symbols are retained for the expression of
frank human appetite. This, at least, is how I
read the ** Amorosa Visione," and why I think
it has a special value for the understanding
of Boccaccio and his relation to the age which
followed. After innumerable modifications,
the doctrine of the *' Amorosa Visione" found
its ultimate expression in Marino's *'Adone."
Studying it, we are inclined to wonder how
far the allegories of chivalry, upon which
Boccaccio moulded his poem, had any corre-
spondence to the truth of human feeling. It
seems at first sight, if I may use two vulgar
43
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
metaphors, to knock the bottom out of them,
to let the cat out of their imposing bag. But
further consideration of the changes which
were being wrought at that time in society,
deHvers us from this apparent paradox.
Woman, in the Middle Ages, was not yet
known as the companion, but either as the
goddess or the slave of man. The Renais-
sance effected her emancipation from this
dilemma. She took a new position in the
scheme of life, which rendered the allegorical
language of metaphysical chivalry inapplicable.
Yet this language had to be retained through
the transition period which followed, because
it was respectful and was sanctioned by the
best associations of civility emergent from a
phase of semi-barbarism. The insincerities of
the " Amorosa Visione " and of Renaissance
lyric poetry conducted literature in this way to
modern freedom of expression, in which feel-
ing finds its own appropriate and natural
vent.
The ** Ninfale Fiesolano " is a tale in verse,
44
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
written certainly under Fiammetta's influence,
which connects itself to some extent with the
*'Ameto." Under the form of a pastoral, it
shows how gentle emotions lead to culture.
Affrico is a shepherd of the hill-region behind
Fiesole; Mensola is a nymph of Diana, dedi-
cated to chastity. They meet and love.
When Mensola has been changed into a
fountain by the virgin goddess, whose vows
she broke, the poem winds up with a myth
invented to explain the founding of Fiesole.
Civil society succeeds to the savagery of the
woodland, and love is treated as the vestibule
to refinement. The two parts of the poem,
the romantic and the mythological, are ill-
connected ; and except in the long episode of
Mensola's seduction, Boccaccio displays less
than his usual power of narration. That
episode might be separated from the rest. It
breaks the style adopted for the beginning and
conclusion of the poem, lapsing more than
once into obscenity but thinly veiled by
innuendoes in vogue among the Tuscans at
45
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
that period. It would not have been necessary
to dwell upon this composition, except that we
find in it another new species of art invented
by Boccaccio — the versified novella — which
afterwards proved so great a favourite with his
successors. In the ** Ninfale Fiesolano " he
employed ottava rima. Critics for a long time
believed that he was the creator of this stanza.
But we know now that he borrowed it from
the people and adapted it to the uses of polite
literature.
Boccaccio made further use of the octave
stanza in two epical poems of a more ambitious
flight. Both have special interest for English-
men, on account of their influence on our own
literature. They are called " La Teseide " and
" Filpstmto." From the dedications, without
dates, it appears that both poems were com-
posed in the neighbourhood of Fiammetta ;
the former at some time when her lover had
some reason to complain of her unkindness ;
the latter in the town of Naples, on some occa-
sion when Fiammetta had removed into the
46
{C-t-t. ^■
■1^
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
mountain region of the Abruzzi for change of
air or other business.
The ** Teseide " was founded on an ancient
love-tale, which Boccaccio translated for the
first time into modern language, decking it
with rhyme and metre. It owes its title to
the fact that the scene of the romance was
laid at Athens in the reign of Theseus.
The poem pretends to be an epic ; but it is
nothing really but an episode, capable of
novelistic or dramatic treatment. From this
point of view, the fable deserves our highest
approbation, and the man who brought it into
literary prominence must be acclaimed as an
inventor. Palamon and Arcite, old friends and
tried, are imprisoned in the same castle. Both
see and love Emilia. It is arranged between
them that they shall contend fairly with one
another for the prize. Arcite, however, having
been released from prison, treacherously em-
ploys his liberty in paying suit to Emilia.
Finally, the two friends meet in the lists of
chivalry. Arcite is wounded and dies ; Pala-
47
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
mon wins the hand of Emilia. That is the
bare outline of the story. Chaucer rehandled
it in the " Knighte's Tale." Shakespeare and
Fletcher dramatised it in ** The Two Noble
Kinsmen." Dryden retouched it in his in-
comparable poem of " Palamon and Arcite."
And so the story has gone sounding on
through the spacious times of English litera-
ture. But it was Boccaccio who first *' fished
the murex up," if I may use the metaphor of
Robert Browning.
English literature owes a similar debt to
" Filostrato." Chaucer founded his '* Troilus
and Creseide" upon this poem, while Shake-
speare dramatised it in " Troilus and Cressida,"
Under the form of an epic, " Filostratp *^ is
really a versified novel of the passions. In
spite of Greek names and incidents borrowed
from the tale of Troy, we feel ourselves to be
studying some contemporary love-tale, narrated
with the vigour of a master in the arts of
story-telling and of psychological analysis.
The dominant sentiments are as alien to the
48
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
heroism of the Homeric age, as they are con-
genial with the customs of a corrupt Italian
city. All interest centres upon the three chief
personages, Troilo, Pandaro, and Griseida.
In Troilo a feverish type of character, over-
mastered by passion which is rather a delirium
of the senses than a mood of feeling, has been
painted with a force and fulness that remind
us of the *' Fiammetta," where the same
disease of the soul is delineated in a woman.
Pandaro exhibits an utterly depraved nature,
revelling in seduction, glutting imagination
with the spectacle of satiated lust. The por-
trait is ugly ; but the execution is so masterly
that we do not wonder at the name of this
fictitious person having passed into common
language to indicate the vilest of his sex.
The frenzied appetite of Troilo, Pandaro's
ruffian arts, and the gradual yieldings of
Griseida to a voluptuous inclination reveal the
hand of a great literary draughtsman. The
second and third cantos of the poem are
remarkable for their dramatic movement and
49 »
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
wealth of sensuous fancy, not rising to sub-
limity, not refined with the poetry of senti-
ment, but welling copiously from a genuinely
ardent nature. The love described is nakedly
and unaffectedly luxurious ; it is an over-
mastering impulse, crowned at last with the
joy of carnal fruition. Being only interested
in the portrayal of his hero's love-languors,
ecstasies, and disappointment, Boccaccio hur-
ries the poem to a slovenly conclusion. In
fact, "Filostrato" may be best described as
the epic of the licentious and ephemeral
amour.
The poems I have been reviewing are all
of them distinguished by great qualities ; by ^
fecundity of invention, by originality of concep-
tion, by wealth of fancy and descriptive bril-
liance, by rapidity and vividness of narration.
Yet, judged as poems, they leave much to be
desired. The style is never choice, and often \
simply vulgar. In some parts the execution is
unpardonably slovenly. Proportion is neglected.
You feel that the author only sympathises
50
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
with certain aspects of his work, mainly the
emotional, and that he was indifferent to the
rest, because it did not stimulate his fancy.
He gives the expression of being always in a
hurry. There is a want of self-control, an
absence of loving care. In other words, Boc-
caccio fails to be an artist in these composi-
tions. When the verse is good, it sounds like
the outpouring of his own desires and passions
in self-indulgent improvisation. He does not,
in the spirit of a true poetic artist, view the
object from outside, and feel the paramount
necessity of giving every part its proper value.
To tell the tale with brief and hasty energy, to
dilate upon its voluptuous incidents and themes
of passionate emotion with burning rhetoric,
satisfied his sense of poetry. In fact, he was
working with inappropriate materials. Nature
had made him an artist; but verse was not
the vehicle his genius demanded; when he
quitted verse for prose, he became a poet.
It seems paradoxical to say this, when we
remember that he gave the octave stanza and
51
h
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
the style of narrative poetry to Italian litera-
ture. Yet the imperfections of his efforts
in verse composition cannot be otherwise
explained.
Before quitting the Italian works of fiction
which Boccaccio composed for Fiammetta, I
must speak of the novel which bears her
name. When, where, and whether Boccaccio
wrote this novel, remains a puzzle. How far
it is autobiographical, admits of grave doubt
Accepting "La Fiammetta" as a piece of
Boccaccio's writing, are we to take it as the
record of personal experience? It seems
almost impossible to do so. How could a
book of this sort about a married woman
have been given to the public by her titular
lover ? The story can be briefly told. Panfilo,
under which name Boccaccio used to indicate
himself, is compelled to leave Fiammetta at
Naples, while he goes, at his father's com-
mand, to Florence. She hears that he has
transferred his affections to another woman.
This throws her into an agony of despair
52
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GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
and longing. She recalls the days of their
past happiness together, upbraids him for his
infidelity, and closes with a passionate prayer
for his return. Panfilo is lost. But Panfilo
might come again, and save her from the
tomb. It is incredible that Boccaccio should
have insulted Fiammetta and her husband by
publishing these revelations, if they told the
truth. It is equally incredible that he should
have published confessions of that nature
in her name, if they were fictitious. The
brutality of the one course and the indelicacy
of the other are alike inconceivable. No
period of social corruption known to us, not
even that of Naples under Queen Joanna,
has been so abandoned as to accept scorching
satire in lieu of compliment. Boccaccio could
not have survived the husband's wrath, the
wife's resentment, for one day, in Fiammetta's
neighbourhood, after giving either this truth
or this fiction to the world. The dilemma
I have stated is so cogent that we are
almost forced to choose one of two hypotheses:
53
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
either that "La Fiammetta" did not see the
light till long after the time of its composition,
or else that its attribution to Boccaccio is
incorrect.^
After stating these critical difficulties, there
remains no doubt that " La Fiammetta " is a
very wonderful performance. It is the first
attempt in modern literature to portray subjec-
tive emotion exterior to the writer. Since
Virgil's " Dido," since the ** Heroidum Epis-
tolse" of Ovid, nothing had been essayed in
this region of psychological analysis. The
picture of an unholy and unhappy passion,
blessed with fruition for one brief moment,
then cursed through months of illness and
anxiety with the furies of vain desire, impotent
jealousy, and poignant recollection, is executed
* There are some reasons for thinking that " La Fiam-
metta " was not written by Boccaccio, but rhetorically for
Boccaccio by some writer acquainted with the legend of his
love for Fiammetta. The MSS. date only from the middle
of the fifteenth century. The style is not that of Boc-
caccio's early manhood ; nor is it that of the " Decameron."
Could Alberti have been the author of "La Fiammetta " ?
54
k
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
with incomparable fulness of detail and inex-
haustible wealth of fancy. The author of this
extraordinary piece proved himself not only a
consummate rhetorician by the skill with which
he developed each motive furnished by the
situation, but also a profound anatomist of
feeling by the subtlety with which he dissected
a woman's heart and laid bare the tortured
nerves of anguish well-nigh unendurable. At
the same time, *'La Fiammetta" is full of
poetry. The ** Vision of Venus," the invocation
to Sleep, and the description of summer on the
Bay of Baise relieve the sustained monologue
of passionate complaining, which might other-
wise have been monotonous. The romance
exercised a wide and lasting influence over
the narrative literature of the Renaissance. It
is so rich in material that it furnished the
motives of many tales, and the novelists of the
sixteenth century availed themselves freely of
its copious stores. If we are right in assigning
" La Fiammetta " to Boccaccio, it is clear that
he at last had found his proper instrument of
55
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
art. The prose is no longer laboured and
affected, as in " Filocopo " and " Ameto." Yet
it has not attained that sparkling variety, that
alternative of stately periods with brief but
pregnant touches, which reveals the perfect
master of style in the '' Decameron."
56
IV
T)OCCACCIO may have returned from
-*^ Florence to Naples in 1344 or 1345.
His father's second or third marriage probably
determined this change of residence. Joanna,
who had recently succeeded to the throne,
paid him marked attention. According to a
credible tradition, he began the " Decameron "
at her command. It was during his second
sojourn at Naples, therefore, that Boccaccio
composed a large part of those novels which
he afterwards combined into a masterpiece
of well-proportioned art. The poet returned
these favours of the Queen with devotion.
This, while it revealed his warmth of heart,
was hardly creditable to his character. In
spite of her licentious life, in spite of the
fact that he condemned her in a Latin
57
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
eclogue for the murder of her husband, he
wrote the following panegyric upon Joanna : *
'* I regard her not only as an illustrious
woman, conspicuous for brilliant qualities and
splendid fame, but also as the special glory
of Italy, the like of whom no other race
has seen." Meanwhile, the whole of southern
Italy was torn in pieces by the wars and
factions which followed the assassination of
Joanna's consort, Andrew of Hungary. Laid
waste by savage troops from the Danube,
pillaged by mercenaries gathered from the
scum of Italian cities, afflicted by famine and
pestilence, the kingdom of Naples must now
have lost that ideal charm which it pos-
sessed for Boccaccio's pleasure-loving nature
in the past. In 1349 we find him again at
Florence, which was slowly recovering from
the horrors of the preceding year. The Black
Death is said to have destroyed 100,000
inhabitants of the Florentine domain — a truly
frightful number when we remember how
* " De clar. muL," cap. 104.
58
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
narrow were its limits at that period. Society ^
was disorganised ; the moral sense of the '^
people brutified ; government reduced to an- ^
archy by this terrific blow. It is conjectured
that Boccaccio's father, who died about 1348,
perished of the plague. Probably the poet
hastened home in order to secure his inherit-
ance, and to take charge of his younger
brother Jacopo. The fact that he divided
the paternal estate with this brother, and that
he was appointed Jacopo's guardian, seems to
prove that his relations to the elder Boccaccio
remained satisfactory up to the latter's death. ^
Boccaccio had now reached the age of thirty-
six. His main work, as a poet, had been
accomplished, and he was about to enter on
fresh phases of activity. He must have ac-
quired considerable reputation as a man of
letters; for we find him employed by the
* Boccaccio is mentioned as Jacopo's guardian in a deed
dated Jan. 26, 1349 (Florentine style). In all probability
Jacopo was the son of Bice, daughter of Ubardino de'
Bostichi, whom the elder Boccaccio married about 1342-3.
If his father died of the plague, he may have made no will.
59
h
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
Commonwealth of Florence on various public
missions during the next sixteen years.
Scholars enjoyed special advantages in this
respect at the commencement of the Renais-
sance. Latin being the language of State-
documents and diplomacy, they were engaged
as secretaries, envoys, and orators on cere-
monial occasions. I shall not dwell in detail
upon Boccaccio's missions to Romagna and
Ravenna, to the Court of Tyrol and the Pope.
He does not appear to have been entrusted
with business of any great political import-
ance, and there are signs that he was not a
very skilful negotiator. But one embassy of
a more private character arrests attention,
since it brought the two most eminent men of
letters in Europe at that moment into relations
alike flattering and honourable. I allude to
a Commission from the Signoria of Florence
S(.^ given to Boccaccio in April 1351. He was
sent to Padua, in order to inform Petrarch
that the sentence of exile under which, as the
son of a banished citizen, he had hitherto
60
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
been living, and the sequestration of his
hereditary property, from which he had been
suffering, would be removed, provided he
returned to Florence and lent his powers of
scholarship and rhetoric to the government
of his native city.
There is some difficulty about deciding the
exact year in which Boccaccio first set eyes on
Petrarch. His biographers have conjectured
that he may have witnessed the celebrated
examination in poetry and rhetoric before
King Robert of Anjou, which qualified
Petrarch to receive the laurel crown at Rome.
This took place in the spring of 1341, and
the scheme I have adopted for determining
the chronology of Boccaccio's early manhood
renders his presence in Naples upon that
occasion improbable. We know, however, for
certain, that he entertained an enthusiastic
admiration for the leading scholar and poet of
his days from adolescence onward. In the
autumn of 1350, when Petrarch came for the
first time to Florence upon a journey to the
61
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
jubilee in Rome, Boccaccio entertained him in
his house. Then began a friendship fruitful
in results for Europe and glorious in the
annals of world-literature. Petrarch was the
elder by thirteen years. Boccaccio addressed
him, with the tact of true devotion, as master,
friend, philosopher, and guide. Petrarch's
sensitive and somewhat egoistic nature genially
expanded to the man in whom he recognised
his only intellectual equal. In his corre-
spondence with Boccaccio — a precious series
of documents for the biography of both illus-
trious poets — we detect a note of reality, which
is lacking in the letters addressed to Laelius,
Simonides, and other shadowy personages of
his inner circle. When they first met in 1350,
the character of both was formed. Nothing
could alter Petrarch, who pursued a singular
self-chosen course from boyhood to old age.
Boccaccio had learned to estimate his powers.
Regretting the untoward circumstances which
hindered him from becoming an accomplished
scholar or conspicuous poet, he broke, as we
62
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
have seen, a new path for himself in literature.
Step-mother fortune led him, almost against
his will, to create Italian prose and to invent
those many forms of art which mediated
between humanism and the culture of his
nation. The " Decameron " was already in
existence. Therefore Petrarch's influence could
not interfere with his disciple's development
But it strengthened his character, added
seriousness to his conception of literature,
raised him in his own esteem, and gave a
fresh direction to his intellectual energies.
After the formation of their friendship, which
continued unbroken until Petrarch's death one
year before his comrade's, Boccaccio devoted
himself with earnestness to scholarship. His
encyclopaedic works on mythology, geography,
and history, were compiled in the twenty
years which followed 1350. We do not know
their dates for certain. But the " Genealogia
Deorum," the treatise " De Mortibus," etc., the
biographical collections issued under the titles
of " De casibus virorum illustrium " and " De
63
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
Claris mulieribus," belong undoubtedly to this
period. In the evolution of humanism they
have a distinct value. Without being monu-
ments of scientific philology, betraying as they
do the talent of a dilettante rather than a
thorough student, these works of patient
industry performed a useful, nay, a necessary
service in the Revival of Learning. They were
the first attempts at what we should now
call Dictionaries of Mythology, Geography,
and Biography, compiled as introductions to
classical erudition. They placed text-books,
admirable for the state of knowledge at that
time, within the reach of men who were
destined to carry the Renaissance forward.
The acquaintance with antique authors, the
stores of digested knowledge revealed in
them, are alike remarkable. How many MSS.,
copied for the most part with his own hand,
must Boccaccio have studied and re-studied
before he attained to the result displayed
before us in those bulky volumes ! He knew
no royal roads to learning. He was making
64
I
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
them for others. And how genial, if often
incorrect and always rude in style, is their
manner of exposition ! Criticism was then in
its infancy ; and Boccaccio, by the temper of
his mind, was nothing less than critical. Con-
sequently, scholars of the present day can
afford to look down on them with con-
temptuous condescension. But the case was
very different with Boccaccio's contemporaries.
F. Villani and Domenico of Arezzo have no
word to say about his *' Decameron " and
Italian poems. They laud him to the skies
for these encyclopaedic compilations. Monu-
ments indeed are they of self-sacrificing labour
and passionate enthusiasm in the early dawn
and twilight of modern culture.
The composition of these books was by
no means the last or the greatest service
rendered by Boccaccio to the New Learning.
At Petrarch's suggestion, he undertook to
acquire Greek ; and Europe must be ever
grateful to him as the inaugurator of Greek
studies. A Calabrian, named Leontius Pilatus,
65 B
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
who called himself a Greek in Italy and an
Italian at Constantinople, came, perhaps at
Boccaccio's invitation, to Florence in 1360.
Though he was a man of repulsive exterior
and intolerable conversation, Boccaccio received
him into his own house, putting up with every
inconvenience, and incurring considerable ex-
pense in order to obtain the precious posses-
sion of the Greek language, which Leontius
was able to communicate. Under his roof at
Florence the two men began to translate
Homer into Latin. The version which Leon-
tius dictated and Boccaccio reduced to lite-
rary form is a very poor performance. Yet
Petrarch, who said that Homer in the original
was dumb to him while he was deaf to
Homer, welcomed it with reverence. It intro-
duced the Father of Poetry to his eager
admirers in the modern world, and stimu-
lated a curiosity which has not yet been
satiated.
Before quitting this period of Boccaccio's
life, it is needful to glance at one of its less
66
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
agreeable episodes. At some time when he
was well on in the forties, he paid his ad-
dresses to a Florentine widow. She repelled
them with contempt and insult. He indulged
his vengeance in a spiteful satire, entitled,
*' II Corbaccio," or the *' Laberinto d'Amore."
It is written in vigorous Italian, with a male-
volence and concentrated force of sarcasm
which must have bitten like vitriol into its
victim. Not only is the lady herself reviled,
but the whole sex is painted in revolting
colours. We could fancy that certain passages
had been penned by a disappointed monk.
They have the acrimony of jaundiced impo-
tence. Though the " Corbaccio " is in tone
unworthy of its author, it bore fruits in the
literature of the next century. Alberti's Satires
upon women are rhetorical amplifications of
themes suggested by its invectives. Turning
from this disgusting and profoundly immoral
composition, it is pleasant to find Boccaccio
sending a copy of the " Divine Comedy " to
Petrarch. He had transcribed the poem with
67
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
his own hand, and accompanied it with a
letter, recommending its perusal to his friend.
Petrarch was so sensitively vain that Boccaccio
ran no little risk of stirring his resentment.
Yet he contrived to humour the great man's
self-conceit with such delicate tact that
Petrarch graciously accepted the gift and
acknowledged it in a memorable epistle.
This happened in 1359.
Two years after that date, in the summer
of 1 36 1, a singular event happened, which
throws interesting light upon Boccaccio's
character. A Carthusian monk, named Pietro
de' Petroni, died in the preceding May at
Siena. He was eminent for piety, and on
his death-bed he claimed to have had special
intimations regarding some of his most illus-
trious contemporaries. Heaven and Hell were
opened to his eyes in vision. He saw the
bliss of saints, the torments of the damned.
When he awoke from this ecstasy, he com-
manded a brother of the order and his own
disciple to carry a message to certain persons,
68
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
whose sinful ways of life would bring them
to eternal ruin unless they repented in due
time. Among them was Boccaccio. Accord-
ingly, Gioachino Ciani — such was the name
of Pietro de' Petroni's ambassador — came to
him in Florence, and communicated the terri-
fying message. It produced a sudden and
overwhelming effect. In his first agitation
Boccaccio determined to abandon study, to
give up his library, to obliterate, so far as
in him lay, his light and amatorious works
of poetry and fiction, finally to make himself
a monk or enter into priest's orders. Fortu-
nately, before committing himself to all or
any of these steps, he wrote to consult
Petrarch. An answer, firm in tone and sound
in judgment, combining the truest wisdom
with the tenderest sympathy, arrived from
Padua. Petrarch, with the humane sense
which distinguished him in that age of super-
stition and credulity, argued against the
authority of death-bed intimations. He ad-
mitted that it would indeed be well for
69
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
Boccaccio to increase in piety and seriousness
with his advancing years. At the same time
he pointed out that the pursuits of poetry
and literature, in which his Hfe had been
employed, were by no means incompatible
with sincere religion. This advice, at once
consoling and admonitory, coming from a
man of Petrarch's known ascetic bent, acted
like a tonic on his friend. Boccaccio retained
his library and continued his studies in philo-
logy. So far as we have certain knowledge,
he did not take religious vows of any kind,
although a report was current among his
contemporaries that he had entered the
Carthusian Order. But from the date of this
so-called conversion, he became a sadder and
a wiser man. He besought his friends to
abstain from the reading of his own " De-
cameron," ^ and no doubt he bitterly deplored
the profligate and odious *' Corbaccio." Poetry
was over for him. But he preserved his
* See his letter to Maghinardo de' Cavalcanti, written
perhaps in the autumn of 1372.
70
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
interest in scholarship, and worked assiduously
at this branch of literature.
In the same year, 1361, Boccaccio received
an invitation to Naples from his old friend
and patron Niccolo Acciaiuoli, now one of the
most powerful princes of that realm. He
accepted it, and journeyed thither with
his brother Jacopo. But the entertainment
assigned him at Niccolo s orders, by no means
corresponded with his expectations. It appears
that the great man had begged him to com-
pose his life, and that Boccaccio refused the
office. This accounts for the frigid greeting
and the sordid hospitality he met with. We
possess a wonderful description of his misery
at Naples in the form of a letter addressed
to Niccolo's secretary, Francesco de Nelli.
This composition, like the '* Corbaccio," proves
that Boccaccio had the gifts of a great and for-
midable satirist. It paints the weaker sides of
the Grand Seneschal's character with trenchant
force and evident veracity. If half what the
writer says be true, regarding his scurvy treat-
71
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
ment in the Neapolitan hovel allotted to him,
his resentment was assuredly justified. Yet
there is a kind of ignobility in his complaining,
a something which reminds us of the inevitable
old bachelor, the self-important man of letters,
and the confirmed comedian, in its tone.
Dante tasting the salt of Can Grande's bread,
Johnson turned away from Lord Chesterfield's
door, both felt and spoke very differently.
Here, as in so many ways, Boccaccio showed
himself a true child of the Renaissance. He
was essentially bourgeois, occupied with little
things and and careful about trifles. His
personal pettishness enfeebled the masterly
strokes of his satire. Looking across the next
two hundred years, when the Renaissance was
well-nigh over, we find the same fretful tone,
the same whining, the same brooding over
pitiful affronts, in Tasso.
I shall not follow the events of Boccaccio's
career with minuteness through the next ten
years. We hear of missions to Urban V. at
Avignon and Rome, of a long delightful resi-
72
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
dence with Petrarch on the RIva degli Schiavoni
at Venice, and of another visit to Naples in
137 1. Niccolo Acciaiuoli was dead and buried
in his sumptuous certosa near the walls of
Florence. So Boccaccio had no insulting
patron and no vindicative enemy to fear.
Like a ghost, he wandered once more and for
the last time through those enchanting scenes
from which his inspiration had been drawn in
youth. We may perhaps refer to this occasion
a story of Boccaccio's visit to Monte Cassino,
told by his disciple Benvenuto da Imola in the
Commentary upon Dante.
With the advance of old age, Boccaccio
suffered severely from bodily afflictions. They
were as numerous and as tormenting as those
described by Browning in " The Grammarian's
Funeral." Yet, like Browning's Grammarian,
he continued to be brave and arduous in
study. When he had reached the age of
sixty, that is to say, in 1373, some Florentine
citizens received permission from the Govern-
ment to found a chair for the exposition of the
73
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
*' Divine Comedy." Boccaccio was appointed
the first Reader. He began to lecture in
the Church of San Stefano upon the 23rd
of October, and discharged the functions of
his chair until the spring of 1375. The
''Comento Sopra Dante," a voluminous work,
displaying a large amount of miscellaneous
learning, was the fruit of this activitiy. It
is divided into fifty-nine lectures, and is carried
down to ** Inferno," xvii. 17.
Having considered Boccaccio as poet,
novelist and scholar, we have now to regard
him from a different point of view. His
originality and openness of mind to all great
things in literature were no less conspicuous
in the enthusiasm he felt for Dante than in
his reverence for Petrarch and application to
Greek studies. This enthusiasm contributed
much to propagating an interest in the ** Divine
Comedy." We are even justified in surmising
that, but for Boccaccio's influence, the chair
which he filled so honourably might not have
been founded. He certainly professed a cult
74
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
for Dante long before that epoch. I have
already mentioned his gift of the " Divine
Comedy" to Petrarch ; and we must refer his
" Vita di Dante " to some comparatively early
period of his life — perhaps to the year 1350,
when the Florentines sent him to Ravenna
with a present of ten golden florins for the
poet's daughter. This Life, as he informs
us in the preface, was intended as a slight
amend to Dante's memory for his exile and
for the lack of any monument in Florence.
The honours which the Commonwealth refused
to her most noble son, he wished to supply
with his poor faculty of writing. He chose
Italian for the purpose, instead of Latin, in
order that his panegyric might reach the
ears of the unlettered vulgar. Such was
Boccaccio's inducement to compose the " Life
of Dante," a work which he doubtless did
not fail to circulate. The book has no critical
or historical value ; but it presents many
points of interest. Like everything written
by Boccaccio, it is eminently readable, in spite
75
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
of the heterogeneous learning with which the
narrative is weighted. It reveals the heartiest
veneration for all things noble and praise-
worthy in the realm of literature. Its authors
admiration for the divine poet is sincere and
ungrudging. Yet it betrays an astonishing
want of sympathy with Dante's character,
and transforms the sublime romance of the
" Vita Nuova " into a commonplace novel of
sentiment. Boccaccio is unable to comprehend
how even Dante could have fallen in love
with Beatrice at the age of nine. He con-
jectures that the sweet season of May, the
good wines and delicate meats of the Porti-
nari banquet, all the sensuous delights of a
Florentine festival, turned the boy into a
man. Dante spoke of Beatrice as the
'* youngest of the angels." Boccaccio draws
a lively picture of this angel in the flesh, as
he imagined her. In his portrait there is
less of the angelic than the carnal nature
visible. Beatrice becomes one of the beauties
of his own prose fictions. All this he does in
76
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
absolute good faith, with the honest desire to
exalt Dante above every poet, and to spread
abroad the fame of his illustrious life. But
the founder of Renaissance art was incapable
of comprehending the real temper of the man
he deified. Between him and the enthusiasms
of the Middle Ages a ninefold Styx already
rolled its waves.
The ** Commentary on the Divine Comedy"
was Boccaccio's last considerable work. In
1374 a severe blow depressed his spirits,
shaken by old age and illness. This was the
news of Petrarch's death. Perhaps he wrote
the " Urbano," a simple and harmless tale, to
distract his mind from grief. But the genuine-
ness of this work is subject to considerable
doubt. Anyhow it was not long before he
received the summons to follow his friend
upon the journey from which none return. He
died at Certaldo upon the 2 1 st of December,
1375, and was buried in the church there.
77
^ I AHE plan of this study made me defer all
-^ notices of the " Decameron " for its
conclusion ; nor do I intend to enter with par-
ticularity into antiquarian problems regarding
Boccaccio's masterpiece.
He was fond of giving his books clumsily
compounded Greek names. Thus we have
" Filostrato " {(piXeiv and (rrpaTog), ** Filocopo "
(^tXav and KoTToc), " Teseide " {Oricyrii^). It is
probable, therefore, that the title '' Decameron "
(^Ua vjuLipai) was invented by himself The
sub-title, " II Principe Galeotto," has been inter-
preted to mean, The Prince of Pandars, from
a famous line in Dante's episode of ** Francesca
da Rimini." * That Boccaccio did not invent
this sub-title, can be well imagined. Yet, in
♦ '• Inferno," v. 137.
78
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
his commentary on the line to which I have
alluded,
Galeotto fii il libro, e chi lo scisse,
A
he explained how ** Galeotto " came to be
synonymous with go-between or pandar ; ^ and
in a letter to Maghinardo de' Cavalcanti, cited
above, he avowed his belief that the ** De-
cameron " might lead women astray by its
seductions. J^
Great pains have been taken to investigate
the sources used by Boccaccio in the compo-
sition of his tales. Men like Landau in
Germany and Bartoli in Italy have ransacked
the stores of Indian, Arabic, Byzantine,
French, Provengal, Hebrew, and Spanish
fables, with the view of tracing resemblances
between the " Decameron " and pre-existing
literature of various sorts. It has been shown
by these researches that very few of Boc-
caccio's stories are original, in the sense of
having been invented by himself. Like
Shakespeare, he used materials ready to his
* " Montier," vol.xi. p. 6i.
79
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
hand, wherever he found something to the
purpose of his art. But scholarship of this
sort has introduced a somewhat false note
into our criticism of the subject. We are,
as it were, invited to believe that Boccaccio
possessed a polyglot library of fiction, which
he consulted in the course of composition.
The truth is that story-telling was a favourite
pastime in the Middle Ages, and that very few
good stories are new. From Hindostan,
from Baghdad, from Greek and Roman books
on history, from the folk-lore of Teutonic
and Celtic races, from a thousand-and-one
sources, anecdotes were freely taken up, which
passed into the common substance of the
mediaeval mind. They circulated from lip to
lip between the Ganges and the Seine. They
were the property of everybody. Thus the
learned investigations to which I have re-
ferred, are interesting, because they show how
large and various a stock of stories were
current in the days before Boccaccio wrote.
But such researches have small importance
80
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
for the criticism of the " Decameron " as a
work of art. They only prove his wide
acquaintance with the tales of many lands,
as these formed elements of social culture
common to his race.
The same line of treatment might be adopted
with regard to the charge of plagiarism from
North French tale-tellers, which has been
brought against Boccaccio by sensitive French
patriots. It is true that he borrowed largely
from the fabliaux ; and what is more to the
purpose, he adopted the style of narration
in use among Trouveres, Menestrels and
Jongleurs. Such professors of the arts of
entertainment pervaded Europe, and un-
doubtedly haunted the Angevine Court at
Naples. An artist of Boccaccio's stamp, born
to excellence, appreciative of the slightest
hints of mastery in the trade he had adopted,
certainly learned much from these men. He
learned from them in the same way as Mozart
learned from fashionable composers of Italian
opera. But when we compare their work with
8i p
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
his, the charge of plagiarism becomes almost
comic. Comic indeed is not the word for it.
I would rather say that the man who makes
such charges, writes himself down thereby a
dullard in the art of criticism. He is in-
capable of perceiving the bottomless gulf
which yawns between old French fabliaux,
humorous, obscene, disconnected, with blunt
native glimpses into human character, and
that stately art- work which we cal/'* Deca-
meron," completely finished, fair in all its
parts, appropriately framed, subordinated to
one principle of style, with the master's
Shakespearian grasp on all heights and depths,
on the kernel and the superficies, the pomp
and misery, the pleasures and the pangs of
mortal life. )
Where Boccaccio found his stories, matters
little. How he formed his style of narrative,
matters equally little. These questions have
their antiquarian interest indeed ; and at
leisure moments readers of the " Decameron "
would do well to consider them. But the critic
82
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
has to avoid such side-issues, after mastering
their points and giving them due weight. He
must remind people that the real question is,
not where Boccaccio found his stories, nor
how he acquired his style, but whether he
used those stories' and employed that style in
a way to distinguish him from all his prede-
cessors, and to make the '' Decameron " a
monumental work of modern art.
Comparing Boccaccio, not with previous
mediaeval story-tellers, who are nowhere in
the reckoning, but with himself as literary
craftsman, we pronounce that in the " Deca-
meron " he accomplished that to which his
earlier writings of every sort in Italian poetry
and prose had been but preludes. These
essays of his immaturity were marked by mis-
directed energy, by euphuism sprung from a
mixed literary impulse, by want of proportion,
by declamatory monologue directed towards
the author's self as audience. The '' Deca-
meron " emerges into the clear atmosphere of
perfected objective art. We do not feel the
^3
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
^author's subjectivity, his longings and his
d.isappointment^s. Ji He paints actual men and^
J\ women, dealing with them humorously or
\ sympathetically, exhibiting jheir nobleness,
bringing their foibles and deformities intOy
i-elief, even as light falling round an object
/does. He has ceased to declaim. There is
/ no haste, no disproportion in the work. Each
tale is told in its appropriate manner ; and all
the tales are built into a stately palace-house,
wherein the mind of man may walk for
solace or instruction through well-planned,
spacious chambers. The style, though arti-
ficial, has disengaged itself from pedantries
and hesitations. Handled as it is handled
here, Boccaccio's Italian prose proclaims its
fitness to be used for every purpose, serious
or gay, coarse or sentimental, elegiac or
satirical, descriptive or analytical, rhetorical or
epigrammatic. Changing, according to the
masters mood, within the bounds of equable
and polished diction, it is suited to every
whim or exigency of stylistic utterance.
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
^T
The " Decameron " has been called the
/ *' Commedia Umana." This title is appro-
priate, not merely because the book portrays
human life from a comic rather than a serious
point of view, but also because it forms
the direct antithesis of Dante's ** Commedia
Divina." The great poem and the great
prose fiction of the fourteenth century
are opposed to each other as Masque and
i Anti-masque. The world of the ** Decameron "
is not an inverted world, like that of Aristo-
phanes. It does not antithesisg^ Dante's world
by turning it upside down. Alt is simply the
same world surveyed frcftli^ another side,
unaltered, uninverted, but viewed in the
superficies, presented in the concretw Dante,
in the "Divine Comedy," attempt^ a revela-
tion of what underlies appearances and gives
them their eternal value. (He treated p^
human nature in relation to God, of life upon
this earth in relation to life beyond the grave.
Boccaccio deals with appearances, and does
not seek to penetrate below experience. He
6:
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
paints the world as world, the flesh as flesh,
nature as nature, without suggesting the
questioa whether there be a spiritual order.
Human life' is regarded by him as the play-
thmg of /^^ fortune, humour, appetite, caprice J
Dante saw the world in the mirror of his
soul. /Boccaccio looked upon it with his
naked eyes ; yet poet and novelist dealt with
the same stuff of humanity, and displayed
equal comprehensiveness in treating \X,J
^j^The description of the Plague at Florence
which introduces the '' Decameron," has more
than a merely artistic appropriateness. Boc-
caccio's taste might be questioned for bringing
that group of pleasure-seeking men and
maidens into contrast with the horrors of the
stricken city. Florence crowded with corpses,
echoing to the shrieks of delirium and the
hoarse cries of body-buriers, forms a back-
ground to the blooming garden, where birds
sing, and lovers sit by fountains in the shade,
laughing or weeping as the spirit of each tale
constrains their sympathy. Remembering that
86..
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
these glad people have shunned the miseries
which weigh upon their fellow-creatures, our
first impulse is to shrink with loathing from
their callousness. But the reflection follows,
that black Death is hovering near them too,
and may descend with sweeping scythe at any
moment on their paradise.* This introduction,
therefore, suggests a moral for Boccaccio's
** Human Comedy." ' The brilliant masquerade
of earthly life which he has painted with such
inexhaustible variety, has the grave behind it
and before it, and Death is ever passing to and
fro among the dancers. Meanwhile men eat
and drink, sing and play, sleep at nightfall and
rise refreshed in dewy morning, for new plea-
sures, unmindful of the hospital, the battle-
field, the charnel-house. Boccaccio was too
great an artist to point this moral in a work of
mirth and relaxation. There it is, however,
like the grinning skeleton who threads the
mazes of a Danse Macabre. j/
* Orcagna, or whoever else painted the " Triumph of
Death " in the Pisan Campo Santo, seems to have felt this.
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
The description of the Plague has another
undesigned significance. A Florentin(5_chroni-
cler of those times, Matteo^illajai dates th^
progressive deteriorationof manners and the
political anarchy which followed from the
Black Death of 1348. ^he Plague was, there-
in fore, an outward sign, if not the efficient cause,
of those moral and social changes which the
** Decameron "jmmortalised in literature.^ It
was the historical landmark between two ages,
dividing mediaeval from Renaissance Italy*
A The cynicism, liberated in that period of terror,
lawlessness and sudden death, assumed in
Boccaccio's romance a beautiful and graceful
aspect. His art softened its harsh and vulgar
outlines, giving it that air of genial indulgence
which distinguished Italian society throughout
the heyday of the Renaissance^
Boccaccio selects seven ladies of ages vary-
ing from eighteen to twenty-eight, and three
m^Dr-^he youngest of whom is twenty-five.
Having formed this company, he transports
them to a yilla two miles from the city, where
88
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
he provides them with a train of serving-men
and waiting-women, and surrounds them with
the delicacies of mediaeval luxury. Their'
daily doings form the framework in which
the stories of the " Decameron " are set. He^
is careful to remind us that, though there
were lovers in that band of friends, " no
stain defiled the honour of the company ; "
yet these unblemished maidens listen with
laughter and a passing blush to words and
things whidi outrage our present sense of
decency^/ Nothing is more striking in the*
*' Decameron " than the refinement of the
framework contrasted with the coarseness of
the pictures which it frames. \ I do not think
that Boccaccio violated the truth of fact for
the purpose of his art. Plenty of proof exists
that the best society of the period found en-
tertainment in discussing themes which would
now be scarcely tolerated in a barrack.
The light but remorseless/ satire ^of the
** Decameron " spares none oiS-thcr^deals of
the age. All the mediaeval enthusiasms are
89
xj
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
reviewed and criticised in the spirit of a
Florentine citizen. It is as though the bour-
geois, not content with having made nobility
a crime, were bent upon extinguishing its
essence. Indeed, the advent of the bourgeois
is the most significant note of the times to
, which Boccaccio belonged. Agilulf vulgarises 5 ^
the chivalrous conception of love ennobling
men of low estate, by showing how a groom,
whose heart is set upon a queen, avails him-
self of opportunity. Tancredi burlesques the '
knightly reverence for stainless scutcheons
by the extravagance of his revenge. The
sanctity of the ** Thebaid," that ascetic dream- '
of purity and self-renunciation, Js made
ridiculous by Alibech. Ser Ciapelletto casts i ,
contempt upon the canonisation of_ saints.
The confessional, the adoration of reliques,
the priesthood, the monastic ^^rders, are
derided with the deadliest persiflage. Christ
himself is scoffed at in a jest which points
the most indecent of these tales. Matrimony^ *
affords a never-ending theme for scorn ; and
90
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
when, by way of contrast, the noveHst paints
an ideal wife, he runs into such hyperboles
that the very patience of Griselda is a satire j \y^^
on the dignitj^of marriage. It must not be
thought that Boccaccio was a bad Churchman
because he unsparingly attacked the vices of
the clergy and the superstitions of his age.
The contrary is amply proved. In those
times, when there was no thought of schism
from the Mother Church of Christendom, a
man might speak his mind out freely without
being arraigned for heresy. Not until the
Reformation created a panic, and pushed
Rome to extremities in the Catholic reaction,
was the " Decameron " condemned to expur-
gation and placed upon the " Index."
This is not the place to discuss in detail
the stories of the " Decameron." ^he book
lies open to English readers, who ought to
take it as its author meant it to be taken —
to look upon it mainly as a source of pleasure
for all times. ^ It would be easy to fill many
learned pages with disquisitions on its potency
91
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
in modern literature, to show how imaginative
art of every sort in Italy was penetrated with
its spirit, how Chaucer felt its influence in
England, and how a princess of the House of
Valois reproduced it in the French Renaissance.
I am inclined to think that such disquisitions
impair the satisfaction which we have in find-
ing out those obvious relations for ourselves.
There is a certain charm in exploring rivulets
of literature, tracing them to their source in
some large lake like the " Decameron," noticing
their divergence, detecting their specific quality,
and testing as a final effort of analysis the
meeting of many old-world waters in the
reservoir itself.
92
NOTE ON THE PLACE AND MANNER
OF BOCCACCIO'S BIRTH
NOTE ON THE PLACE AND MANNER
OF BOCCACCIO'S BIRTH
\X ?"£ have good reason to believe that Boccaccio was
born in 13 13. But it is impossible to say for
certain where he was born, or whether he was born in
wedlock. Until recently his biographers accepted the
tradition that his father, whom we know to have been
resident in Paris during the year 13 13, formed an attach-
ment there with a Frenchwoman, and that Boccaccio
was the fruit of their love. This tradition rests upon
the Italian version of Filippo Villani's " Vite d' uomini
illustri Fiorentini." Filippo Villani, I may observe, was
Boccaccio's contemporary and his successor in the Chair
founded at Florence for the explanation of Dante. He
continued his father Matteo Villani's Chronicle in the
vulgar tongue, and composed short biographies of several
eminent Florentines. In this Life of Giovanni Boccaccio,
then, we read : " His father was Boccaccio of Certaldo,
a village of the Florentine domain, and was a man dis-
tinguished by excellence of manners. The course of his
95
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
commercial affairs brought him to Paris, where he resided
for a season, and being free and pleasant in the temper
of his mind, was no less gay and well-inclined to love
by the complexion of his constitution. Thus, then, it
fell out that he was inspired with love for a girl of Paris,
belonging to the class between nobility and bourgeoisie^
for whom he conceived the most violent passion ; and, as
the admirers of Giovanni assert, she became his wife, and
afterwards the mother of Giovanni " (p. 29). Domenico
of Arezzo, also a contemporary of the poet, and what is
more significant, a friend of Petrarch, wrote a Latin life
of Boccaccio, in which the same story is repeated, with
this difference, that doubt is now thrown upon his father's
marriage to the Frenchwoman : " His father Boccaccio
was a man of intelligence, and of sagacity in commerce,
who, while residing at Paris in the course of business, fell
violently in love with a girl of that city ; and this girl, as
Giovanni's admirers assert, although the other opinion is
more frequent, was afterwards married by him, and became
the mother of Giovanni" (p. 31). It will be noticed that
both the translator of Filippo Villani and Domenico of
Arezzo refer to admirers and friends of Boccaccio. Thus
stood the tradition of Boccaccio's birth until the Latin
version of Filippo Villani's biographies came to light.
Here we find : " He was born at Certaldo, from his
natural father Boccaccio, a man of industry." Tne
word natural ought, according to classical usage, to
96
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
signify his own as opposed to an adoptive parent. But
room is left for doubt whether Filippo Villani did not
imply that the father's connection with the mother was
illicit. Further obscurity is added to the whole ques-
tion by a sonnet, ascribed to Giovanni Acquettini, and
written to all appearances at the end of the fourteenth
century, in which Boccaccio is made to say : "I was
bom at Florence at Pozzo Toscanelli, and now lie
buried in Certaldo." This sonnet, however, is not very
trustworthy, since it asserts that Boccaccio received the
poet's crown in Rome from the Emperor Carl — an
honour of which his biographers affirm nothing. More-
over, the fact that Boccaccio's father possessed a house
in S^ Felicity the Quarter where Pozzo Toscanelli was
situated, proves little. Acquettini's assertion may indeed
have been deduced merely from his knowledge of this
fact. It is of more importance to examine what can
be gathered directly from Boccaccio himself upon these
topics. To begin with, we find that he never mentioned
his mother's name, nor did he refer in set terms to
his own birthplace. For signature, he commonly used
the forms " Joannes Boccaccius " and " Giovanni da
Certaldo " ; in his will he describes himself as " Joannes
olim Boccaccii de Certaldo," and in the epitaph written
by him for his tomb he spoke of " Patria Certaldum."
Certaldo is noticed in his work on mountains, woods etc.,
as the home of his ancestors before they were received
97 ^
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
into the burghership of Florence. There is, in fact, no
doubt, from the general tenor of his own writings, that
Boccaccio regarded himself as the son of a Florentine
citizen, whose ancestral and paternal seat was the village
of Certaldo. But he says nothing directly whereby we
can determine the rank and nationaUty of his mother, the
exact place where he was bom, and the truth about his
own Intimacy.
With r^ard to this last point, of legitimacy, I see
slender reason to doubt it, and strong reasons for assum-
ing it Boccaccio was always treated as a full Florentine
burgher, employed on embassies, and admitted to small
offices of public trust. He divided his father's estate with
his surviving brother, retaining the ancestral mansion at
Certaldo, which he afterwards, by his own will, settled
upon all male descendants, whether legitimate or illegiti-
mate, of the old Boccaccio. This, in the absence of his
father's will, justifies an assumption that he was regarded
as the eldest son. Upon the question of Intimacy, it
must, however, be added, that a deed for his legitimisation
by Papal authority is said to have been seen in the
seventeenth century by Suares, Bishop of Vaison, at
Avignon, while Cosimo della Rena, a writer of the
seventeenth century, calls him "Figho legittimato." The
deed in question was presumably intended to fit him
for taking orders in the Church. But this document,
though searched for, has not been brought to light yet :
98
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
and we have no sufficient evidence to show that he
ever availed himself of it. He held no benefice ; and the
circumstances which have been adduced to prove that he
took orders — the title of Venerabilis in his will, and his
bequest of a breviary and utensils for saying Mass — are
too slender to support an argument.
Two points have still to be brought forward. The first
is that Boccaccio's father was twice married, and lost
both of his wives during Boccaccio's lifetime ; the first
about 1339-40, the second before 1349. Neither of these
wives can be regarded as Boccaccio's mother. He must
therefore have been the son of a third and earlier woman,
whether wife or mistress, of whom we know absolutely
nothing. So far as this goes, it adds some probability to
the story of his birth by the French girl whom his father
loved in Paris.
The other point to be considered is of more importance.
In the " Ameto," which we know to contain the secret of
Boccaccio's love for Fiammetta, he says that Fiammetta's
parents were descended from French ancestors, that he
himself (named Caleone in the novel) was born not far
from the place whence Fiammetta's mother drew her origin,
that in his boyhood he explored the regions of Tuscany,
and that in his riper years he came to Naples. In
another part of the same book the story is related of a
young Italian merchant not distinguished by birth or
gentle breeding, who went to Paris and there seduced a
99
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
young French widow. The fruit of their intercourse was
a boy, who received the name of Ibrida. Now it is pretty
certain that, in the person of Caleone, Boccaccio is
speaking of himself; and this being so, he has asserted
that his mother, Hke Fiammetta's parents, was of French
blood. But there is some difficulty in identifying him also
with Ibrida, a secondary and quite independent person in
the story. At the same time, the way in which Ibrida's
history is told, raises the suspicion of autobigraphical
intention.
That Boccaccio ought to have refrained from exposing
his father's disloyalty to his mother, is no argument against
the attribution of Ibrida's history to his own life. Un-
fortunately, he was on very unsatisfactory terms with his
father precisely at the time when he composed "Ameto."
In the last poem of that romance, he describes Naples
in strains of glowing enthusiasm, and then turns to speak
of his own Tuscan home. " Here one laughs but seldom.
The dark silent melancholy house keeps and holds me
much against my will, where the sour and horrible aspect
of an old man, frigid, uncouth, and miserly, continually
adds affliction to my saddened mood." Again, in the
*' Amorosa Visione," composed at the same period, he
describes his father as one employed perpetually in
scratching tiny morsels from a huge mountain of gold, his
whole bent being set on money-making.
It is more to the purpose to remark that Boccaccio
100
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
cannot have wished the whole world to know his private
history, and that any allusions to Fiammetta's lover in the
"Ameto" were possibly intended to mislead the public.
In effect, an early misunderstanding of those passages
about Caleone and Ibrida may have been the origin of
the legend which we find in the Italian version of Filippo
Villani's life and in Domenico of Arezzo's short biography.
The total result of this inquiry to my mind is that we
do not know for certain where Boccaccio was bom, that
his mother has not been identified, and that his illegiti-
macy is, to say the least, not proven.
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