Giovanni Boccaccio, a Biographical Study

He was so much a man of the Renaissance that he does not seem to have felt it at all inappropriate to ask thus for God's aid in expounding the greatest of Christian poems, by addressing himself to Jupiter: he merely explains that as the work he is to explain is in verse it is proper to invoke God in verse also.

Having thus asked for God's blessing, he proceeds to open his lecture. He first examines the work he is to discuss as to its kind, then as to its causes, its title and school of philosophy. In doing so he shows us that he was aware of the doubtful letter of Dante to Can Grande della Scala,[614] for he quotes it, though he names it not. He does not approve of the title—The Comedy—for such is used for low subjects and common people; but Dante's poem is concerned with the greatest persons and deeds, with sin and penitence, the ways of angels and the secrets of God. The style too of comedy, he asserts, is humble and simple, while Dante's poem is lofty and ornate, although it is written in the vulgar tongue, and he is obliged to admit that in the Latin it would have had a finer dignity.

From this he proceeds to discuss Dante's name and its significance much as he had already done in the Vita, and having decided that the poem belongs to moral philosophy, proceeds, after formally submitting all he may say to the judgment of the Catholic Church, to deal with the Inferno. Yet even now he cannot come at the poem without discussing the Inferno itself, whether there be a Hell, or maybe more than one, where it is placed, how it is approached, what are its shape and size and its purpose, and lastly why it is called Infernus.[615] Then on the very brink of the poem he turns away again to discuss why Dante wrote in Tuscan instead of in Latin; and having given practically the same explanation as that we have already noted in the Vita,[616] he proceeds at long last to the Commentary proper.

And here we cannot but be astonished at the extraordinary mixture of simplicity and subtlety, of elementary knowledge and profound learning which are heaped together without any discrimination. There is something here of the endless leisure of the Middle Age in which Boccaccio seems determined to say everything. "One wonders," says Dr. Toynbee, "for what sort of audience Boccaccio's lectures were intended." In the terms of the petition the lecturer was to expound the Commedia for the benefit of "etiam non grammatici." But it is difficult to conceive that any audience of Florentines, even of Florentine children, however ignorant of Latin, let alone the "uomini d' alto intendemento e di mirabile perspicacità" to whom Boccaccio refers in such flattering terms in his opening lecture, could require to be informed, as Boccaccio carefully informs it, that an anchor is "an instrument of iron which has at one end several grapples, and at the other a ring by which it is attached to a rope whereby it is let down to the bottom of the sea,"[617] or that "every ship has three principal parts, of which one is called the bows, which is sharp and narrow, because it is in front and has to cut the water; the second is called the poop and is behind, where the steersman stands to work the tiller, by means of which, according as it is moved to one side or the other, the ship is made to go where the steersman wishes; while the third part is called the keel, which is the bottom of the ship, and lies between the bows and the stern,"[618] and so on.

Nor is this all, for even the Bible stories are retold at length,[619] and a whole discourse is given upon Æneas.[620] The elementary subjects dealt with at such length cheek by jowl with the most profound questions seems to us extraordinary, nor apparently are we the only readers to be surprised; for possibly on this account Boccaccio was bitterly reproached in his own day for lecturing on the Commedia to the vulgar. He replied, really admitting the offence, and pleading poverty as his excuse in two sonnets,[621] one of which I quote here:—[622]

So much for the vulgar. But, as I have already said, beside these elementary discourses we find a vast mass of learning and research that bears eloquent testimony not only to the extent of Boccaccio's reading, but also to his eager and careful study of the works of Dante.

Dr. Toynbee has suggested that it was probably owing to his failing health and energy that he introduced into the Comento so many and so copious extracts from his own previous works, the De Claris Mulieribus,[623] the De Casibus Virorum Illustrium,[624] the De Montibus, Sylvis, Lacubus, etc.,[625] and the De Genealogiis Deorum,[626] but I think probably Boccaccio never gave the matter a thought. His business was to expound, and he used his own previous works as works of reference—the best works of the sort, we must remember, that were to be had in his day. To have named these works—he never does refer to them—would have been useless in those days before the invention of the printing press; and then they were themselves mere collections for the most part, the vast notebooks of his enormous reading.

It is not, however, by any means on them alone he relies, for he uses and lays under contribution, as it might seem almost every writer with whose works he was acquainted.[627] Of these, two are especially notable, namely, Homer and Tacitus. He quotes the former six times in all, four times in the Iliad[628] and twice in the Odyssey;[629] the last quotation from the Iliad being verbatim from the Latin translation of Pilatus which Petrarch had copied, the MS., as we have already noted, being now preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris.[630] As for Tacitus—and Boccaccio is the first modern writer to show any acquaintance with his work—he uses the fifteenth book of the Annals[631] for his account of the death of Lucan, and names his source of information,[632] and books twelve to fifteen for his account of the death of Seneca.[633] The Comento is thus not only a most precious source of information with regard to the Divine Comedy, but a kind of Encyclopædia Dantesca into which the whole learning of the age, the whole reading of Boccaccio had been emptied.

We may perhaps gather something of its significance, its importance, and its extraordinary reputation if we consider for a moment the freedom with which it was exploited by the commentators who came after.[634] Beginning with the Anonimo Fiorentino, who wrote some thirty years after Boccaccio's death, perhaps the worst offender, for he never once mentions Boccaccio's name, while he copies from him page after page, there follow Benvenuto da Imola (1373), Francesco da Buti (1385), who make a very considerable use of his work, the latter especially, while Landino (1481), the best of the Renaissance commentators, freely quotes him,[635] calling him "huomo, et per dottrina, et per costumi, et per essere propinquo a' tempi di Dante, degno di fede." In the sixteenth century Gelli, who lectured before the Academy of Florence between 1541 and 1561, quotes Boccaccio sixty times, "oftener," says Dr. Toynbee, "than he quotes any other commentator save Landino." He more than once declares that Boccaccio has explained a passage so well that he can only repeat his words: "Non saprei io per me trovarci miglior esposizione che quella del Boccaccio." He at least and indeed for the first time appreciates the Comento truly.

Considering then this long chorus of praise, though it be more often the silent praise of imitation than the frank commendation of acknowledgment, it is strange that only four MSS. of the Comento have come down to us, three in the Magliabecchiana and one in the Riccardiana libraries in Florence;[636] while of these only three are complete.[637] Nor is it less surprising that the first printed edition of such a work should not have appeared till 1724.[638] This edition and that by Moutier,[639] which followed it nearly a hundred years later, founded on the same single MS., are of little critical value, and that of Fratticelli, published in 1844, is but a reprint of the Moutier text. It remained for Gaetano Milanesi, that man of herculean labour and vast learning, to produce the first critical text in 1863, three more MSS. of the Comento having been discovered in the meantime. He divided the book into lezioni, which are but doubtfully of any authority; but his text holds the field, and he was not slow or cold in his recognition of the value of the work of one who, almost a contemporary of Dante, had loved and honoured him, not only in writing his life and composing a commentary on his work, but in verse too, as in this inscription for his portrait:—

CHAPTER XVII

1373-1375

ILLNESS AND DEATH

That illness which brought those lectures on the Divine Comedy so swiftly to an end in the winter of 1373 was no new thing; for long, as we have seen, Boccaccio had had a troubled spirit. If he had recovered from his grief at the death of Fiammetta, he had never wholly been himself since his conversion. The disease which then declared itself was no new thing. In his versatile and athletic spirit there had always been a strain of melancholy that had shown itself even in his earliest childhood, when he imagined he was persecuted; on his arrival in Naples as a boy, when only a kiss could restore his confidence; in the long years of his troubled and unstable love and in the loneliness of his manhood; with old age at his elbow it needed but little for his spirit, so easily joyful, to be lost in a strange darkness.

Already before he had been appointed to that lectureship in Florence he had felt himself seriously ill. Writing at the end of August, 1373, to Messer Maghinardo de' Cavalcanti he had excused himself for his long delay in answering his letter, pleading the "long infirmity which prevented me from writing to you ... and which only in the last few days has given me a little respite. Since the last time I saw you ... every hour of my life has been very like death, afflicted, tedious, and full of weariness to myself.... First of all I was beset by a continuous and burning itching, and a dry scab, to scratch the dry scales and the flakes of which I had scarce nails enough day or night; then I was afflicted by a heaviness, a sluggishness of the bowels, a perpetual agony of the veins, swelling of the spleen, a burning bile, a suffocating cough and hoarseness, heaviness of head, and indeed more maladies than I know how to enumerate; all my body languished, and all its humours were at war. And so it happened that I looked on the sky without happiness; my body was weary, my steps vacillating, my hand trembled; I was deathly pale, cared nothing for food, but held it all in abhorrence. Letters were odious to me, my books, once so delightful to me, could not please me, the forces of the soul were relaxed, my memory almost gone, my energy seemed drugged, and my thoughts were all turned to the grave and to death."[641]

But this was not all. He had scarcely got so far in his letter, he writes, when on August 12 a new ill befell him. At sunset a burning fever attacked him so fiercely that he could not leave his bed. As the night advanced the fever increased, his head ached violently, and without respite he turned and turned again in his bed, wearily looking thus for some relief. He was alone with only an old servant, who could do nothing but weep. Day came and with it some friends, who would have sent for a physician; but Boccaccio, with less gentleness than Petrarch showed, refused, till at last, utterly worn out, he allowed himself to be persuaded. The doctor who came to him was "a country doctor, accustomed to attend the peasants," as he says, "but kind and thoughtful." He told Boccaccio that unless he could rid himself of the poison which was killing him he would be dead in a few days. He brought in a cautery, a furnace, and other terrible instruments used then in medical practice. He then proceeded to use them, burning the patient largely, in many places cutting him with a razor and slashing his skin. He suffered dreadfully, but the doctor told him he was healed. And, it might seem by a direct miracle of God, he was saved out of the hands of this criminal lunatic; he slept, and little by little recovered. He was, however, very feeble. Nothing he can say against doctors can seem absurd, or exaggerated, or less than just when we remember that he had the unhappiness to fall at last into their hands.[642]

It is possible that his friends in Florence heard of his miseries and his poverty—for he was very poor, and it was really on his behalf the Cathedra Dantesca was founded. However that may be, it might have seemed impossible that one in his case could have accepted it, yet in spite of his weakness he left Certaldo and went to Florence, where, as we have seen, in accordance with the decree of the Signoria he began to lecture in October. That he broke down is not surprising; it is only wonderful that he got as far as he did. But that brief burst of energy was his last; in the winter of 1373 he returned to Certaldo really to die.

From that moment all his melancholy seems to have returned to him with fourfold strength: he who had taken his fill of life, now could no more look happily on the sky, he was a dying man and he knew it. He groped about far from Petrarch looking for some appalling certainty. He seems to have thought he could find it in the monastic life, and his solitude must have been not less profound. Death and thoughts about death haunted him, as they are wont to do imaginative people. It must have been in some such darkness as that which then fell upon him that he wrote more than one of the sonnets in which he seems to have sought in verse the power to realise what it was that was about to befall him.

In the summer of 1374 a new blow fell upon him. Petrarch was dead.[644] He heard the news first as a rumour, and then, some three months after his friend had passed away, in a letter from Francesco da Brossano, the poet's son-in-law, whom he had met at Venice. That he had already heard of his loss when he got Franceschino's letter we gather from his reply, written in the beginning of November:—

"I received your sorrowful letter, most well beloved brother, on the 31st October,"[645] he writes, "and not knowing the writing I broke the seal and looked for the name of the writer, and as soon as I read your name I knew what news you had to tell me, that is to say, the happy passing of our illustrious father and master, Francesco Petrarch, from the earthly Babylon to the heavenly Jerusalem. Although none of my friends had written me save you, since every one spoke of it I had known it for some time—to my great sorrow—and during many days I wept almost without ceasing—not at his ascension, but for myself thus unhappy and abandoned. And that is not wonderful, for no one in the world loved him more than I. And so to acquit myself, my intention was to go at once to mix my tears with yours, to lament with you and to say a last farewell at the tomb of this illustrious father. But more than ten months ago now[646] a malady, rather long and wearying than dangerous, surprised me in my native city [patria], where I was publicly expounding the Comedy of Dante. And because for four months, at the request of my friends, I followed the advice, I will not say of the doctors, but of charlatans [fabulonum], my malady did nothing but increase. The potions and the diet so upset all nutrition that unless you saw me you would not believe how weak I am become, and my appearance only too well confirms it. Wretched man that I am, you would no longer recognise him whom you saw in Venice. My skin, lately well filled, is empty now, my colour is changed, my sight dulled, while my knees shake and my hands tremble. It follows that, far from crossing the proud summits of the Apennine, on the advice of some of my friends I have just been able to return from my native city into the country of my ancestors at Certaldo. It is there I am now, half dead and restless, utterly idle and uncertain of myself, waiting only on God, who is able to heal me. But enough about myself.

"The sight and the reading of your letter having renewed my sorrow, I wept anew almost all night long. It is not Petrarch for whom I weep, for in recalling his integrity, his way of life, his youth, his old age, his prayers, his innate piety, his love of God and of his neighbour, I am assured that, delivered from the anguish of this miserable life, he has flown away to the heavenly Father, where he joys in Christ and the glory everlasting; it is for myself I weep and for his friends left in this tempestuous world like ships without rudders, driven by the winds and the waves into the midst of rocks. And in considering thus the innumerable agitations of my soul, I can easily divine what are your feelings and those of Tullia, my dear sister and your wife, whom I will always honour. I am sure you must feel a still keener bitterness than I ... but this you know too if you are wise, as I believe you to be, that we are all born to die. Our Silvanus has done what we shall do too in a little while. He is dead who was full of years. What do I say? He is not dead, but he has gone before us. Seated among the just, he pities our miseries, praying the Father of Mercy that He will give us strength to combat our faults during our pilgrimage, that when death comes He will give us a perfect end pleasing to Him; and that notwithstanding the snares of our adversary, He will lead us to Himself. I will say no more, for, as you will think I am sure, those who love this great man ought not only to cease from weeping, but to think only of the joy and hope of their coming salvation. I pray you then, in the name of your fidelity and of our friendship, offer this consolation to Tullia. For women are less able to support such shocks as this than we, and have therefore need of the firmer stay of men. But you have without doubt already done so.

"You say that he has ended his days at the village of Arquà in the contado of Padua; that he wished his ashes to remain always in that village, and that, to commemorate him for ever, a rich and splendid tomb is there to be built. Alas, I admit my crime, if it can be called a crime. I who am a Florentine grudge Arquà this shining good fortune that has befallen her rather through his humility than through her merit: the guardianship of the body of the man whose soul has been the favourite dwelling-place of the Muses and of all Helicon, the sanctuary of philosophy, the splendid ornament of the liberal arts,—of the man who above all others was possessed of Ciceronian eloquence as his writings show, has been confided to her. It follows that not only Arquà, almost unknown even to the Paduans, will now be known by all foreign nations however far off, but that her name will be held in honour by the whole universe. One will honour thee, Arquà, as, without seeing them, we honour in our thoughts the hill of Posilipo, at the foot of which are placed the bones of Virgil; ... and Smyrna, where Homer sleeps, and other like places.... I do not doubt that the sailor returning laden with riches from the farthest shores of the sea, sailing the Adriatic and seeing afar the venerable summits of the Euganean Hills, will say to himself or to his friends: 'Those hills guard in their breast the glory of the universe, him who was once the triumph of all knowledge, Petrarch the poet of sweet words, who by the Consular Senate was crowned in the Mother City with the laurel of triumph, and whose many beautiful works still proclaim his inviolable renown.' The black Indian, the fierce Spaniard ... seized with admiration for this sacred name, will one day come and before the tomb of so great a man salute with respect and piety the ashes which it holds, complaining the while of their misfortune that they should not have seen him living whom dead they visit. Alas, my unhappy city, to whom it has not been given to guard the ashes of so illustrious a son, to whom so splendid a glory has been refused, it is true that thou art unworthy of such an honour, thou hast neglected to draw him to thee when he was alive and to give him that place in thy heart which he merited. Ah, had he been an artisan of crimes, a contriver of treasons, a past master in avarice, envy, and ingratitude, thou wouldst have called him to thee. Yet even as thou art I should prefer that this honour had been accorded thee rather than Arquà. But it is thus is justified the old saying, 'A prophet is not without honour save in his own country.' For he always knew how to avoid it, that he might imitate Christ his Master and Redeemer in humility, Who preferred to be born according to the flesh at Nazareth rather than at Jerusalem, and Who loved better to have for mother a poor virgin who was holy than the most proud and powerful queens of His time. And so, since God has wished it, let the name of Arquà live through the centuries and let her inhabitants preserve always an honour for which they should indeed be thankful.

"But I am glad that a tomb is to be erected, for the splendour of his name and the magnificence of his works render him worthy of it. It is very probable, however, that it will seem of little importance to the eyes of the learned, who consider rather the qualities of the dead than the honours done to their bodies, to whom he has manifested himself in many volumes, outshining the sun. But that tomb will be a means of impressing the ignorant, whose books are sculptures and paintings....

"As for his generosity towards his friends and to myself, I cannot briefly tell it over, and so I leave it for another time, should it offer, contenting myself for the moment with these words. I have known by his many benefits towards me in time past how much he loved me while he lived. I see now by his actions[647] that his friendship has followed me even in his death, and unless in a better life after this passage that we call death one loses one's friends, I think he will love me still. He will love me not because I have merited it, but because he is always faithful to him whom he has once adopted for his own, and I have been his during forty years and more.[648] And now, when he can no longer show his affection by words or by writings, he has wished to number me among his heirs, so you write me, leaving me a very ample portion of his wealth. How happy I am, and how I rejoice that he has acted as he has done, but I regret to be forced to come so soon into possession of his legacy that I shall accept with joy. I should like better to see him live and to be deprived of his gift; but this is a pious wish, and in thanking you for your affection I accept as the supreme gift and legacy of his kindness what you sent me some days ago.

"This letter should have finished there, but friendship constrains me to add something more. I should have learned with pleasure what has been done with the library—so very precious as it is—of this illustrious man, for with us opinion is divided. But what worries me most is to know what is become of the works he composed, and especially his Africa, which I consider as an inspired work. Does it still exist, and will it be preserved, or has it been burned, as when he was alive you know well this severe critic of his own work threatened? I learn that the examination of this work and of others has been confided, by I know not whom, to certain persons. I am astonished at the ignorance of him who has had the management of this affair, but still more do I wonder at the temerity and lightness of those who have undertaken the examination. Who would dare to criticise what our illustrious master has approved? Not Cicero himself, if he returned, nor Horace, nor Virgil, would dare to do so. Alas, I fear that this examination has been confided to the jurists, who because they know law, just those by which they impudently live, imagine they know everything. I pray God that He take notice of it, and that He protect the poems and other sacred inventions of our master. Let me hear if the cause is yet submitted to these judges, and if those who desire can approach these men. Tell me too what is become of the other works, and especially of the book of the Trionfi, which, according to some, has been burnt on the advice of the judges ... than whom learning has no more ignorant enemies. Besides, I know how many envies still attack the reputation of this most eminent man. Certainly, if they can, they will spoil his works, they will hide them, they will condemn them; they do not understand, and they will make every effort that they may be lost to us. Prevent this with all your vigilance, for the best men now and in the future of Italy will be deprived of a great advantage if all these works remain at the mercy of the ignorant and the envious....

"I have finished this letter at Certaldo, the 7th November,[649] and as you see, I cannot say I have written in haste, I have taken almost three whole days to write this short epistle, with a few intervals to allow me to rest my exhausted body.

"Your Giovanni Boccaccio, if he still exists."

That letter was in truth his swan song. In the previous August he had made his Will,[650] and lonely in the dark house in Certaldo,[651] he had little else to do than to pray "the Father of Mercy to lead him to Himself." In those last months, at any rate, he seems to have given himself up almost with passion to religious contemplation. He who had been so scornful of relics filled his house with them, eagerly collecting them whenever he could in spite of his poverty.[652] He seems too to have consoled himself, as many another has done, with the perfect beauty of the Divine Office, for a Breviary was among his books, and is named in his Will. That is almost all we know or may conjecture concerning those last days, which he passed, it seems, almost in solitude[653] on that hill of Certaldo—a magician, as was said of Virgil and Ovid by the folk of Naples and Sulmona, knowing all the secrets of Nature.

Infirm and ill as he was, he must often have looked from his room over the world that lay there as fair as any in Tuscany, a land of hills about a quiet valley where the olives are tossed to silver in the wind, and the grapes are kissed by the sun into gold and purple, where the corn whispers between the vines—till for him too at last the grasshopper was become a burden. There, on December 21, 1375, he died and was buried, as he had ordained in his testament, in the church of SS. Jacopo e Filippo, leaving, as it is said, the following verses for his epitaph:—

There beside the quiet waters of the Elsa, which puts all to sleep, lies the greatest story-teller in the world.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE DECAMERON

But we cannot leave him there. For he is not dead, but living; not only where, in the third heaven, he long since has found his own Fiammetta and been comforted, but in this our world also, where

And so for this cause, if for no other, it seemed well to leave our consideration of his greatest work till now; that we might take leave of him, when we must, in turning its ever-living pages.

The greatest story-teller in the world! Does that seem a hard saying? But by what other title shall we greet the author of the Decameron, who is as secure in his immortality and as great in his narrative power as the author of the Arabian Nights, and infinitely greater in his humanism and influence?

The greatest work of the fourteenth century, as the Divine Comedy had been of the thirteenth, the Decameron sums up and reflects its period altogether impersonally, while the Divine Comedy would scarcely hold us at all without the impassioned personality of Dante to inform it everywhere with his profound life, his hatred, his love, his judgment of this world and the next. It is strange that the work which best represents the genius of Boccaccio, his humour and wide tolerance and love of mankind, should in this be so opposite to all his other works in the vulgar tongue, which are inextricably involved with his own personal affairs, his view of things, his love, his contempt, his hatred. Yet you will scarcely find him in all the hundred tales of the Decameron.[654] He speaks to us there once or twice, as we shall see, but always outside the stories, and his whole treatment of the various and infinite plots, incidents, and characters of his great work is as impersonal as life itself.

The Decameron is an absolute work of art, as "detached" as a play by Shakespeare or a portrait by Velasquez. The scheme is formal and immutable, a miracle of design in which almost everything can be expressed. To compare it with the plan of the Arabian Nights is to demonstrate its superiority. There you have a sleepless king, to whom a woman tells a thousand and one stories in order to save her life which this same king would have taken. You have, then, but two protagonists and an anxiety which touches but one of them, the fear of death on the part of the woman, soon forgotten in the excitement of the stories. In the Decameron, on the other hand, you have ten protagonists, three youths and seven ladies, and the horror which is designed to set off the stories is an universal pestilence which has already half depopulated the city of Florence, from which they are fled away.

The mise en scène is so well known as scarcely to need describing, for the Prologue in which it is set forth is one of the most splendid pieces of descriptive narrative in all literature, impressionist too in our later manner, and absolutely convincing. Boccaccio evokes for us the city of Florence in the grip of the Black Death of 1348. We see the streets quite deserted or horrible with the dead, and over all a dreadful silence broken only by the more dreadful laughter of those whom the plague has freed from all human constraint. Fear has seized upon such of the living as death has not driven mad, "wherefore the sick of both sexes, whose number could not be estimated, were left without resource but in the charity of friends (and few such there were), or the interest of servants, who were hardly to be had at high rates and on unseemly terms, and being moreover men and women of gross understanding and for the most part unused to such offices, concerned themselves no further than to supply the immediate and expressed wants of the sick and to watch them die, in which service they themselves not seldom perished with their gains. In consequence of which dearth of servants and dereliction of the sick by neighbours, kinsfolk, and friends, it came to pass—a thing perhaps never before heard of—that no woman, however dainty, fair, or well born she might be, shrank, when stricken with the disease, from the attentions of a man, no matter whether he were young or no, or scrupled to expose to him every part of her body with no more shame than if he had been a woman, submitting of necessity to that which her malady required; wherefrom, perchance, there resulted in after time some loss of modesty in such as recovered.... What need we add, but that such and so grievous was the harshness of heaven, and perhaps in some degree of man, that, what with the fury of the pestilence, the panic of those whom it spared and their consequent neglect or desertion of not a few of the stricken in their need, it is believed without any manner of doubt, that between March and the ensuing July upwards of a hundred thousand human beings lost their lives within the walls of the city of Florence, which before the deadly visitation would not have been supposed to contain so many people! How many grand palaces, how many stately homes, how many splendid houses once full of retainers, of lords, of ladies, were now left desolate of all, even to the meanest servant!...

"Irksome it is to myself to rehearse in detail so mournful a history. Wherefore, being minded to pass over so much thereof as I fairly can, I say that our city being thus depopulated, it so happened, as I afterwards learned from one of credit, that on Tuesday morning after Divine service the venerable church of Santa Maria Novella was almost deserted save for the presence of seven young ladies, habited sadly, in keeping with the season.... The first, being the eldest of the seven, we will call Pampinea, the second Fiammetta, the third Filomena, the fourth Emilia, the fifth we will distinguish as Lauretta, the sixth as Neifile, and the last, not without reason, shall be named Elisa. 'Twas not of set purpose but by mere chance that these ladies met in the same part of the church, but at length, grouping themselves into a sort of circle, ... they gave up saying paternosters and began to converse (among other topics) on the times.... Here we tarry (said Pampinea) as if one thinks for no other purpose than to bear witness to the number of corpses that are brought hither for interment.... If we quit the church we see dead or sick folk carried about, or we see those who for their crimes were of late exiled, ... but who now in contempt of the law, well knowing its ministers are sick or dead, have returned.... Nor hear we aught but: Such and such are dead.... Such and such are dying.... Or go we home, what see we there? I know not if you are in like case with me; but there where once were servants in plenty I find none left but my maid and shudder with terror.... And turn or tarry where I may, I encounter only the ghosts of the departed, not with their wonted mien but with something horrible in their aspect that appals me.... So (she continues) I should deem it most wise in us, our case being what it is, if, as many others have done before us and are doing now, we were to quit the place, and shunning like death the evil example of others, betake ourselves to the country and there live as honourable women on one of the estates of which none of us has any lack, with all cheer of festal gathering and other delights so long as in no particular we overstep the bounds of reason. There we shall hear the chant of birds, have sight of green hills and plains, of cornfields undulating like the sea, of trees of a thousand sorts; there also we shall have a larger view of the heavens, which, however harsh to usward, yet deny not their eternal beauty; things fairer far for eyes to rest on than the desolate walls of our city.... For though the husbandmen die there even as here the citizens, they are dispersed in scattered homes, and so 'tis less painful to witness. Nor, so far as I can see, is there a soul here whom we shall desert; rather we may truly say that we are ourselves deserted.... No censure then can fall on us if we do as I propose; and otherwise grievous suffering, perhaps death, may ensue."

Pampinea's plan was received with eagerness, and while they were still discussing it there came into the church three young men, Pamfilo, Filostrato, and Dioneo, the youngest about twenty-five years of age. These seemed to the ladies to be sent by Providence, for their only fear till now had been in carrying out their plans alone. So Pampinea, who had a kinsman among them, approached them, and greeting them gaily, opened her plan, and besought them on behalf of herself and her friends to join their company. The young men as soon as they found she was in earnest answered with alacrity that they were ready, and promptly before leaving the church set matters in train for their departure, and the next day at dawn they set out. Arrived at the estate they entered a beautiful palace in the midst of a garden, and again it was Pampinea who proposed that one among them should be elected chief for a day so that each might be in turn in authority. They at once chose Pampinea, whom Filomena crowned with bay leaves. Later, towards evening, they "hied them to a meadow ... and at the queen's command ranged themselves in a circle on the grass and hearkened while she spoke thus: 'You mark that the sun is yet high, the heat intense, and the silence unbroken save by the cicale among the olives. It were therefore the height of folly to quit this spot at present. Here the air is cool, and the prospect fair, and here, observe, are dice and chess. Take then your pleasure as you will; but if you hear my advice you will find pastime for the hot hours before us, not in play in which the loser must needs be vexed, ... but in telling stories in which the invention of one may afford solace to all the company of his hearers.'"

This was found pleasing to all, and so Pampinea turned at last to Pamfilo, who sat at her right hand, and bade him lead off with one of his stories. So begins the series of immortal tales which compose the Decameron.[655]

Such, then, is the incomparable design which the Decameron fills, beside which the mere haphazard telling of The Hundred Merry Tales seems barbarous, the setting of The Thousand and One Nights inadequate. That Boccaccio's design has indeed ever been bettered might well be denied, but in The Canterbury Tales Chaucer certainly equalled it. If the occasion there is not so dramatic nor the surroundings at once so poignant and so beautiful, the pilgrimage progresses with the tales and allows of such a dramatic entry as that of the Canon and the Canon's yeoman at Boghton-under-Blee. That entry was most fitting and opportune, right in every way, and though there is no inherent reason why the Decameron itself should not have been similarly broken in upon, the very stillness of that garden in the sunshine would have made any such interruption less acceptable.[656]

The true weakness of the Decameron in comparison with that of the Canterbury Tales is not a weakness of design but of character. Each of Chaucer's pilgrims is a complete human being; they all live for us more vividly than any other folk, real or imagined, of the fourteenth century in England, and each is different from the rest, a perfect human character and personality. But in the protagonists of the Decameron it is not so. There is nothing, or almost nothing, to choose between them. Pampinea is not different from Filomena,[657] and may even be confused with Pamfilo or Filostrato. We know nothing of them; they are without any character or personality, and indeed the only one of them all who stands out in any way is Dioneo, and that merely because he may usually be depended upon for the most licentious tale of the day.[658] In Chaucer the tales often weary us, but the tellers never do; in Boccaccio the tales never weary us, but the tellers always do. Just there we come upon the fundamental difference between English and what I may call perhaps Latin art. It is the same to-day as yesterday. In the work of D' Annunzio, as in the work of the French novelists of our time, it is always an affair of situation, that is to say, the narrative or drama rises out of the situation, rather than out of the character of the actors, while even in the most worthless English work there is, as there has always been, an attempt at least to realise character, to make it the fundamental thing in the book, from which the narrative proceeds and by which it lives and is governed.

In dealing with the Decameron, then, we must, more or less, leave the narrators themselves out of the question; they are not to be judged; they are but an excuse for the stories, and are really puppets who can in no way be held responsible for them, so that if now and then an especially licentious tale is told by one of those "virtuous" ladies, it is of no account, for the tales are altogether independent of those who tell them. But if these young and fair protagonists soon pass from our remembrance in the infinitely vivid and living stories they tell, yes, almost like a phonograph, the setting, the background of a plague-stricken and deserted city, the beauty and languorous peace of the delicious gardens in which we listen, always remain with us, so much so that tradition has identified the two palaces which are the setting of the whole Decameron with two of those villas which are the glory of the Florentine contado.

The first of these palaces—that to which they came on that Wednesday morning—was, Boccaccio tells us, not more than "two short miles from the city" There "on the brow of the hill was a palace, with a fine and spacious courtyard in the midst, and with loggias and halls and rooms, all and each one in itself beautiful and ornamented tastefully with jocund paintings. It was surrounded too with grass plots and marvellous gardens, and with wells of coldest water, and there were cellars of rare wines, a thing perhaps more suited to curious topers than to quiet and virtuous ladies. And the palace was clean and in good order, the beds prepared and made, and everything decorated with spring flowers, and the floors covered with rushes, all much to their satisfaction." This "estate" has always been identified with Poggio Gherardo,[659] which now stands above the road to Settignano, about a mile from that village and some two miles from the Porta alle Croce of Florence. In the fourteenth century certainly it must have been equi-distant on all sides from the roads, the nearest being the Via Aretina Nuova by the Arno and the road to Fiesole or the Via Faentina, for the way from Florence to Settignano was a mule-track.