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

"Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme."

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.

_From a miniature in the French version of the "Decameron," made in 1414 by Laurent le Premierfait. MS. late XV century. (Brit. Mus. Rothschild Bequest. MS. XIV.)_]

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.

_(The scene of the first two days of the "Decameron.")_

_By permission of Mrs. Ross_]

Poggio Gherardo is but a stone's throw from Corbignano, the country house--half farm, half villa--which Margherita brought to Boccaccino as part of her dowry, and where, as we have seen, it appears likely that Boccaccio spent his first youth. But Poggio Gherardo is not the only palace of the _Decameron_. At the close of the second day Madonna Filomena took the laurel crown from her head and crowned Neifile queen, and it was she who then proposed that they should change their residence.

"To-morrow, as you know," said she, "is Friday, and the next day is Saturday, and both are days which are apt to be tedious to most of us on account of the kind of food we take on them; and then Friday was the day on which He who died that we might live suffered His Passion, and it is therefore worthy of reverence, and ought, as I think, to be spent rather in prayer than in telling tales. And on Saturday it is the custom for women to wash the powder out of their hair, and make themselves generally sweet and neat; also they use to fast out of reverence for the Virgin Mother of God, and in honour of the coming rest from any and every work. Therefore, since we cannot, on that day either, carry out our established order of life, I think it would be well to refrain from reciting tales also. And as by then we shall have been here already four days, I think we might seek a new place if we would avoid visitors; and indeed I have already a spot in my mind."

And it happened as she said, for they all praised her words and looked forward longingly to Sunday.

On that very day the sun was already high when, "with slow steps, the queen with her friends and the three gentlemen, led by the songs of some twenty nightingales, took her way westward by an unfrequented lane full of green herbs and flowers just opening after the dawn. So, gossiping and playing and laughing with her company, she led them ... to a beautiful and splendid palace before half of the third hour was gone." It is by this "unfrequented lane" that we too may pass to the Villa Palmieri,[660] which tradition assures us is the very place. "When they had entered and inspected everything, and seen that the halls and rooms had been cleaned and decorated and plentifully supplied with all that was needed for sweet living, they praised its beauty and good order, and admired the owner's magnificence. And on descending, even more delighted were they with the pleasant and spacious courts, the cellars filled with choice wines, and the beautifully fresh water which was everywhere round about. Then they went into the garden, which was on one side of the palace, and was surrounded by a wall, and the beauty and magnificence of it at first sight made them eager to examine it more closely. It was crossed in all directions by long, broad, and straight walks, over which the vines, which that year made a great show of giving many grapes, hung gracefully in arched festoons, and being then in full blossom, filled the whole garden with their sweet smell, and this, mingled with the odours of the other flowers, made so sweet a perfume that they seemed to be in the spicy gardens of the East. The sides of the walks were almost closed with red and white roses and with jessamine, so that they gave sweet odours and shade not only in the morning, but when the sun was high, and one might walk there all day without fear. What flowers there were there, how various and how ordered, it would take too long to tell, but there was not one which in our climate is to be praised that was not found there abundantly. Perhaps the most delightful thing therein was a meadow in the midst, of the finest grass, and all so green that it seemed almost black, all sprinkled with a thousand various flowers, shut in by oranges and cedars, the which bore the ripe fruit and the young fruit too and the blossom, offering a shade most grateful to the eyes and also a delicious perfume. In the midst of this meadow there was a fountain of the whitest marble, marvellously carved and within--I do not know whether artificially or from a natural spring--threw so much water and so high towards the sky through a statue which stood there on a pedestal that it would not have needed more to turn a mill. The water fell back again with a delicious sound into the clear waters of the basin, and the surplus was carried off through a subterranean way into little water channels, most beautifully and artfully made about the meadow, and afterwards it ran into others round about, and so watered every part of the garden, and collected at length in one place, whence it had entered the beautiful garden, it turned two mills, much to the profit, as you may suppose, of the _signore_, pouring down at last in a stream clear and sweet into the valley."

If this should seem a mere pleasaunce of delight, the vision of a poet, the garden of a dream, we have only to remember how realistically and simply Boccaccio has described for us that plague-stricken city, scarcely more than a mile away, to be assured of its truthfulness. And then, Villa Palmieri is nearly as beautiful to-day as it was so long ago; only while the gardens with their pergolas of vines, their hedges of jasmine and crimson roses, their carved marble fountains remain, the two mills he speaks of are gone, having been destroyed in a flood of the Mugnone in 1409, less than sixty years after he wrote of them.

_(The scene of the third and following days of the "Decameron.")_

_Alinari_]

Nor are the two palaces the only places mentioned in the _Decameron_, set as it is in the country about Florence, that we may identify. It was a summer afternoon, six days had almost passed, Dioneo had just been crowned king by Madonna Elisa: the tales had been short that day, and the sun was yet high, so that Madonna, seeing the gentlemen were set down to play at dice (and "such is the custom of men"), called her friends to her and said: "'Ever since we have been here I have wished to show you a place not far off where, I believe, none of you has ever been; it is called La Valle delle Donne, and till to-day I have not had a chance to speak of it. It is yet early; if you choose to come with me, I promise you that you will be pleased with your walk.' And they answered they were all willing: so without saying a word to the gentlemen, they called one of their women to attend them, and after a walk of nearly a mile they came to the place which they entered by a strait path where there burst forth a fair crystal stream, and they found it so beautiful and so pleasant, especially in those hot still hours of afternoon, that nothing could excel it; and as some of them told me later, the little plain in the valley was an exact circle, as though it had been described by a pair of compasses, yet it was indeed rather the work of Nature than of man. It was about half a mile in circumference, surrounded by six hills of moderate height, on each of which was a palace built in the form of a little castle.... And then what gave them the greatest delight was the rivulet that came through a valley which divided two hills, and running through the rocks fell suddenly and sweetly in a waterfall seeming, as it was dashed and sprinkled in drops all about, like so much quicksilver. Coming into the little plain beneath this fall, the stream was received in a fine canal, and running swiftly to the midst of the plain formed itself in a pool not deeper than a man's breast and so clear that you might see the gravelly bottom and the pebbles intermixed, which indeed you might count; and there were fishes there also swimming up and down in great plenty; and the water that overflowed was received into another little canal which carried it out of the valley. There the ladies all came together, and ... finding it commendable ... did, as 'twas very hot and they deemed themselves secure from observation, resolve to take a bath. So having bidden their maid wait and keep watch over the access to the vale, and give them warning if haply any should approach it, they all seven undressed and got into the water, which to the whiteness of their flesh was even such a veil as fine glass is to the vermeil of the rose.[661] They being then in the water, the clearness of which was thereby in no wise affected, did presently begin to go hither and thither after the fish, which had much ado where to bestow themselves so as to escape out of their hands.... 'Twas quite early when they returned to the palace, so that they found the gallants still at play."

This delicious spot, called to this day the Valle delle Donne,[662] may be reached from the "unfrequented lane" by which they all passed from Poggio Gherardo to Villa Palmieri; as Landor, who lived close by, tells us:--

"Where the hewn rocks of Fiesole impend
O'er Doccia's dell, and fig and olive blend,
There the twin streams of Affrico unite,
One dimly seen, the other out of sight,
But ever playing in his swollen bed
Of polisht stone and willing to be led
Where clustering vines protect him from the sun--
Here by the lake Boccaccio's fair brigade
Bathed in the stream and tale for tale repaid."

The hundred tales that were thus told in the shade of those two beautiful gardens may doubtless be traced to an infinite number of sources--Egyptian, Arabian, Persian, and French;[663] but these origins matter little. Boccaccio was almost certainly unaware of them, for the most part at any rate, gathering his material as he did from the tales he had heard, up and down Italy. Certainly to the Contes and Fabliaux of Northern France a third part of the _Decameron_ may be traced, much too to Indian and Persian sources, and a little to the _Gesta Romanorum_. But one might as well accuse Chaucer or Shakespeare of a want of originality because they took what they wanted where they found it, as arraign Boccaccio for a dependence he was quite unaware of on sources such as these.[664] He has made the tales his own. The _Decameron_ is a work of art, a world in itself, and its effect upon us who read it is the effect of life which includes, for its own good, things moral and immoral. The book has the variety of the world, and is full of an infinity of people, who represent for us the fourteenth century in Italy, in all its fullness, almost.[665] It deals with man as life does, never taking him very seriously, or without a certain indifference, a certain irony and laughter. Yet it is full too of a love of courtesy, of luck, of all sorts of adventures, both gallant and sad. In details, at any rate, it is true and even realistic, crammed with observation of those customs and types which made up the life of the time. It is dramatic, ironic, comic, tragic, philosophic, and even lyrical; full of indulgence for human error, an absolutely human book beyond any work of Dante's or Petrarch's or Froissart's. Even Chaucer is not so complete in his humanism, his love of all sorts and conditions of men. Perfect in organism, in construction, and in freedom, each of these tales is in some sort a living part of life and a criticism of it. Almost any one could be treated by a modern writer in his own way, and remain fundamentally the same and fundamentally true. What immorality there is, might seem owing rather to the French sources of some of the tales than to any invention on the part of Boccaccio, who, as we have seen, later came to deplore it. But we must remember that the book was written to give delight to "amorous" women, and women have always delighted in "immoral literature," and in fact write most of it to-day.[666] Yet only a Puritan, and he foul-minded, could call the _Decameron_ vicious, for it is purified with an immortal laughter and joy.

But it is in its extraordinary variety of contents and character that the _Decameron_ is chiefly remarkable. We are involved in a multitude of adventures, are introduced to innumerable people of every class, and each class shows us its most characteristic qualities. Such is Boccaccio's art, for the stories were not originally, or even as they are, ostensibly studies of character at all, but rather anecdotes, tales of adventure, stories of illicit love, good stories about the friars and the clergy and women, told for amusement because they are full of laughter and are witty, or contain a brief and ready reply with which one has rebuked another or saved himself from danger. But I have given the subjects of the stories of the _Decameron_ elsewhere.[667] Whatever they may be, and they are often of the best, of the most universal, they are not, for the real lover of the _Decameron_, the true reason why he goes to it always with the certainty of a new joy. The book is full of people, of living people, that is the secret of its immortality. Fra Cipolla, whom I especially love, Calandrino, whom I seem always to have known, poor Monna Tezza, his wife, whom at last he so outrageously gives away, Griselda, Cisti, the Florentine baker, the joyous Madonna Filippa, or Monna Belcolore should be as dear to us as any character in any book not by Shakespeare himself. They live for ever.

And yet it must be confessed that while the book is a mirror of the world, and doubtless as true to the life of its time as any book that was ever written, it lacks a certain idealism, a certain moral sense which is never absent from English work, and which, even from a purely æsthetic point of view, would have given a sort of balance or sense of proportion to the book, which, I confess, in my weaker moments, it has sometimes seemed to me it lacks.

_From a print of the XVIII century in Baldelli's "Vita di Gio: Boccaccio."_]

It is true that Boccaccio deals with life and with life alone. It is true that life then as now made little of sexual morality. But with Boccaccio, as with almost all Latin art, sexual immorality usurps, or seems to us to usurp, a place out of all proportion to its importance in life. One is not always thinking of one's neighbour's wife, even though one should have the misfortune to affect her. Yet it is just there that Boccaccio's comic genius is seen at its best; it is his most frequent theme. And just there too we come upon the unreality of this most real book. His _spose_ are all beautiful young women who live in the arms of beautiful youths; they are nearly all adulteresses; Griselda, indeed, might seem to be the only faithful wife among them. Consider, then, the wife of Pietro di Vincolo,[668] who sells herself fresh and lovely as she is. Consider the pretty Prunella the Neapolitan, who abandons herself voluptuously in her husband's presence to Gianello Galeone.[669] She, like the rest, is not only without regret, but without scruple. They all have this extraordinary astuteness, this readiness of the devil. There is Sismonda, the wife of the rich merchant Arriguccio Berlinghieri.[670] There is Isabella, who loved Leonetto, and Monna Beatrice, who to her adultery adds contempt of her husband, when, victorious at last, trembling with voluptuousness, she kisses and re-kisses "the sweet mouth" of the happy and delighted Lodovico.[671] Nor is she by any means alone, they are all her sisters. Lydia[672] is even more wily, Bartolommea more shameless.[673]

And if the women are thus joyful, lustful, and cunning, the husbands are fools. Yet Boccaccio knows well how to draw the honest peasant, the hard-working artisan, the persistent and adventurous merchant, and a harder thing--the man of good society, such as Federigo degli Alberighi,[674] when he will.

What he cannot do is to compose a tragedy; he has not a sufficiently virile moral sense for it, and so just there he fails with the rest of his Latin brethren. But as a writer of comedy he is one of the greatest masters; and as a master of comedy he was in some degree at the mercy both of it and of his audience. This may excuse him perhaps for his too persistent stories about adulteries. The deceived husband was always a comic figure; he probably always will be. This being granted, we shall not judge the women of Boccaccio's time by his tales, and it might seem that we should discount in the same way his stories about the clergy. Like every other comic master, he naturally finds some of his choicest material among them, who always have been, are now, and ever will be a never-failing source of amusement. But here we must go warily, for Boccaccio's treatment of the clergy might almost be said to exhaust what little moral indignation he was possessed of. "I have spoken the truth about the friars," he tells us with an immense relief in the conclusion to his work, and if he had not time, courage, or opportunity to tell us the truth about the monks, the nuns, and the secular clergy, he has left us, it must be confessed, some very remarkable evidence. His whole attitude of attack is different when he exposes the clergy; moreover, while we have no evidence at all in support of his supposed representation of the married woman as universally adulterous--and it may be questioned whether it was his intention to leave us with any such impression--we have ample evidence from the best possible sources of the frightful wickedness, immorality, and general rottenness of the clergy, both religious and secular, monks, friars, nuns, and priests. We have only to consult the pages of S. Catherine of Siena[675] to find every separate accusation of Boccaccio's confirmed ten times over, with a hundred others added to them which he has failed to bring forward. Nor is it only in the mouth of S. Catherine that Boccaccio is justified. Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, had long ago informed Innocent IV that the Curia was the source of all that vileness which rendered the priesthood a reproach to Christianity. Alexander IV himself described the corruption of the people as proceeding from the clergy. What this had become after the Black Death we know not only from Boccaccio, Petrarch, and S. Catherine, but from every writer of the time. The Church was rotten to the core, she seemed about to sink for ever into the pit of her abominations. Consider, then, what such a beast as the priest of Varlungo must have been in a village; consider the rector of Fiesole. Is Boccaccio's irony too bitter? Is it any wonder that Monna Belcolore answers the wolf of Varlungo, "There is never a one of you priests but would overreach the very devil."

As for the friars, we should not recognise in any one of them the brother of S. Francis or S. Dominic. Consider them then: Fra Cipolla[676] is a lovely rogue of the best; who more cunning than Fra Alberto da Imola;[677] who more eagerly wily than Fra Rinaldo;[678] who more goat-like and concupiscent than Fra Rustico? The only son of S. Francis illumined with light and piety is the confessor of Ser Ciappelletto,[679] and he has no name, and is, I fear, quickly forgotten.

Nor have we better news of the nuns[680] or the monks,[681] and indeed, so far as the clergy are concerned, the _Decameron_ is as eager in its attack on wickedness as the _Divine Comedy_ itself, though its justice is tempered with kindness and its scorn with a sort of pity, a sort of understanding.

And indeed, if we compare the book with that of Dante, a much greater man, it holds its own because of its humanity. Dante puts the centre of gravity into the next world. He hates this world almost without ceasing, and has dared to arraign it before his hatred. His satire is cruel, unjust, intolerant, and vindictive. Of course we are wont to excuse all this on account of the genius which it expressed, of its sincerity and beauty of form. Boccaccio, however, with less than half Dante's genius, was not subject to his madness. He was content to satirise what is bad, the bad customs of ecclesiastics and of fools; but he excuses and pardons all too because of the "misfortunes of the time," and above all he understands.

But if we may not compare the _Decameron_, the Human Comedy, with the _Divine Comedy_ of Dante as a work of art, we may claim for it that it was the greatest though not quite the first prose work in the Tuscan tongue. But Italian prose maybe said to consist of the _Decameron_ alone for a hundred years after Boccaccio's death. It is written in a very beautiful but very complicated style, a sort of poetical prose--exquisite, it is true, but often without simplicity. Yet who will dare to attack it? It has justified itself, if need be, as every great work has done, by its appeal to mankind, its utter indifference to criticism.

That the _Decameron_, though widely read and enthusiastically received, was censured very strongly in its own day we gather from the Proem to the Fourth Day and from the Conclusion to the work; while later the book did not escape the knife of the Church, though it was never suppressed.[682] That it was enthusiastically received in its day we know from contemporary documents,[683] and though Petrarch failed to understand it, he praised it in certain places, which were those, it seems, that were the most rhetorical. He translated the last tale of Griselda into Latin, however, but as he tells us, he had known this for many years. Petrarch, however, stood alone; from the day the _Decameron_ was finished its influence both in Italy and abroad was very great.

The original manuscript has disappeared, and the oldest we possess seems to be that written in 1368 by Francesco Mannelli, though the later Hamilton MS. now in Berlin is the better of the two.[684] More than ten editions were, however, printed in the fifteenth century, and some seventy-seven in the sixteenth; while there is not a _Novelliere_ in Italian literature for many centuries who has not inspired himself with the _Decameron_. Its fortune abroad was almost equally good. Hans Sachs, Molière, La Fontaine,[685] Lope de Vega, to mention only European names, were in its debt; and in England our greatest poets have drawn from it, once the form and often the substance of their work. One has only to name Chaucer, Sir Philip Sidney, Shakespeare, Dryden,[686] Keats,[687] and Tennyson[688] to suggest England's debt to Boccaccio. And although our prose literature, strangely enough, produced no great original example of this school of fiction, its influence was shown by the number of translations and imitations of the "mery bookes of Italy," when, according to Ascham, "a tale of Bocace was made more account of than a story out of the Bible."[689]

In his _Praise of Poets_, Thomas Churchyard, referring to Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, says--

"In Italy of yore did dwell
Three men of special spreete,
Whose gallant stiles did sure excell,
Their verses were so sweet"

Of these three great Italians Dante was by far the least known, and William Thomas, in his _Dictionarie_ (1550) defines "Dante Aldighieri" as "the name of a famous poet in the Italian tongue," while he does not think it necessary to explain who Petrarch and Boccaccio are.[690] Sir Philip Sidney, it is true, refers to Dante several times, with the other two, and even mentions Beatrice in his _Defence of Poesie_, yet there is no trace of Dante's influence in his work. The only writer after Chaucer who shows internal evidence of knowing Dante fairly well is Sir John Harrington, the translator of _Orlando Furioso_. In his _Apology of Poetry_ he refers to Dante's relations to Virgil, and in the _Allegorie_ of the fourth book of his translation he translates the first five lines of the _Inferno_:--

"While yet my life was in the middle race
I found I wandered in a darksome wood,
The right way lost with mine unsteadie pace ..."[691]

Spenser does not mention Dante though he used him; but in the Epistle to Gabriel Harvey prefixed to the _Shepherd's Calendar_ he speaks of Boccaccio as well as of Petrarch and others.

That Boccaccio was well known in England, at least by name, in the fourteenth century, seems certain. Sacchetti (1335-1400) in the Proemio to his _Novelle_ writes as follows: "... and taking into consideration the excellent Florentine poet Messer Giovanni Boccaccio, who wrote the Book of the Hundred Tales in one material effort of his great intellect, ... that (book) is so generally published and sought after, that even in France and England they have translated it into their language ... and I, Franco Sacchetti, though only a rude and unrefined man, have made up my mind to write the present work." All trace of any such translation, if indeed it was ever made, has been lost.[692] In fact, it might seem that the only man in England at that time really capable of carrying out such a task, worthily at least, was Geoffrey Chaucer, who, though for some reason we can never know he refused to mention Boccaccio's name, adapted and translated the _Teseide_, the _Filostrato_, and it seems, three tales from the _Decameron_--the first of the Eighth Day, the fifth of the Tenth Day, and the tenth of the Tenth Day.[693] May it not have been Chaucer's work to which Sacchetti referred? It was not until 1566 that any translation even of isolated stories from the _Decameron_ appeared; in that year and the following Painter's _Palace of Pleasure_ was published, which contained sixteen stories translated from the _Decameron_. Then in 1579 came the _Forest of Fancy_, by H. C., in which two more appeared, while Tarlton's _News out of Purgatorie_ (1590) contained four more, and the _Cobler of Caunterburie_, published in the same year, two more. These and other translations of isolated stories will best be shown by a table.[694] Such were the stories from the _Decameron_ that had been translated in English when in 1620 the first practically complete edition appeared, translated inaccurately, but very splendidly, apparently from the French version of Antoine Le Macon. Isaac Jaggard published it, in folio in two parts, with woodcuts, and the title bore no translator's name. In 1625 this edition was reprinted, the title bearing the legend "Isaac Jaggard for M. Lownes":[695] other editions appeared in 1655 and 1657 and 1684, making five editions in all during the seventeenth century. In 1700 Dryden's translations appeared of the _Three Tales: Decameron_, IV 1, V 1, and V 8. A new translation, practically complete, appeared in 1702, and was, I think, twice reprinted in 1722 and 1741. Certainly eight editions were published in the nineteenth century[696] and two have appeared already in the twentieth.[697] The first really complete translation to appear in English, however, was that of Mr. John Payne, printed for the Villon Society (1886), but the first complete translation to pass into general circulation was that of Mr. J. M. Rigg, 1896-1905, which is rendered with a careful accuracy and much spirit.

"The ordinary recreations which we have in Winter," says Burton in the _Anatomy of Melancholy_, "and in most solitary times busy our minds with, are Cards, Tables and Dice, Shovel-board, Chess-play, the Philosopher's game, Small Trunks, Shuttle-cock, Billiards, Musick, Masks, Singing, Dancing, Yulegames, Frolicks, Jests, Riddles, Catches, Purposes, Questions and Commands, Merry Tales of Errant Knights, Queens, Lovers, Lords, Ladies, Giants, Dwarfs, Thieves, Cheaters, Witches, Fairies, Goblins, Friars, etc., such as the old women told [of] Psyche in Apuleius, Boccaccio's Novels and the rest, _quarum auditione pueri delectantur, senes narratione_, which some delight to hear, some to tell, all are well pleased with."

Well, after all, we are our fathers' sons, and (God be thanked) there are still winter evenings in which, while the rest are occupied with Burton's frolicks and jests, dancing and singing and card-play, we, in some cosy place, may still turn the old immortal pages.

FOOTNOTES:

[654] The title _Il Decameron_ is badly composed from two Greek words, δέκα, ten, and ἡμέρα, day--ten days. Cf. TEZA, _La parola Decameron_ in _Propugnatore_ (1889), II, p. 311 _et seq._, and RAJNA, _op. cit._, who shows that the proper form is Decameron, not Decamerone. Later some one added the sub-title "cognominato il Principe Galeotto"; cf. _Inferno_, V, 137.

[655] Cf. ALBERTAZZI, _I novellatori e le novellatrici del Dec._ in _Parvenze e Sembianze_ (Bologna, 1892); GEBHART, _Le prologue du Dec. et la Renaissance_ in _Conteurs Florentins_ (Hachette, 1901), p. 65 _et seq._; MORINI, _Il prologo del Dec._ in _Rivista Pol. e Lett._, xvi. 3.

[656] The only interruption of the _Decameron_, if so it can be called, is the introduction of Tindaro and Licisca at the beginning of the sixth day. The diversion, however, has very little consequence.

[657] A few things we may gather, however. Pampinea was the eldest (Proem), and by inference Elisa the youngest. Some of the ladies were of Ghibelline stock (X, 8). For what life ingenuity can find in them, see HAUVETTE, _Les Ballades du Décaméron_ in _Journal des Savants_ (Paris, September, 1905), p. 489 _et seq._

[658] He also tells two of the best tales in the book, that of Fra Cipolla and the Relics (VI, 10), and of the Patient Griselda (X, 10). These are the only stories he tells which are not licentious.

[659] See MANCINI, _Poggio Gherardo, primo ricetto alle novellatrici del B., frammento di R. Gherardo_, etc. (Firenze, 1858); and _Florentine Villas_ (Dent, 1901), by JANET ROSS, p. 131. Mrs. Ross owns Poggio Gherardo to-day. Mr. J. M. Rigg denies that Poggio Gherardo is the place, but gives no reasons save that it does not tally with the description, which is both true and untrue. It tallies as well as it could do after more than five hundred years; and perfectly as regards situation and distance from the city and the old roads. Cf. my _Country Walks about Florence_ (Methuen, 1908), cap. i.

[660] See my _Country Walks about Florence_ (Methuen, 1908), pp. 23 and 26 _et seq._ Mr. J. M. Rigg, in the introduction to his translation of the _Decameron_ (Routledge, 1905), here again denies the identity of Villa Palmieri with the second palace of the _Decameron_. He says it does not stand "on a low hill" amid a plain, but on "the lower Fiesolan slope." But Boccaccio even in Mr. Rigg's excellent translation does not say that, but "they arrived at a palace ... which stood _somewhat from the plain_, being situate upon a low eminence." This exactly describes Villa Palmieri, as even a casual glance at a big map will assure us.

[661] No doubt a vivid reminiscence of Madonna Fiammetta at Baia.

[662] See my _Country Walks about Florence_ (Methuen, 1908), p. 23 _et seq._ The place has been drained to-day, and is now a garden of vines and olives in the _podere_ of Villa Ciliegio belonging to A. W. Benn, Esq., whose kindness and courtesy in permitting me to see the place I wish here to acknowledge.

[663] Cf. MANNI, _Istoria del Decamerone_ (Firenze, 1742); BARTOLI, _I precursi del B._ (Firenze, 1876); LANDAU, _Die Quellen des Dekam_. (Stuttgart, 1884); CAPPELLETTI, _Osserv. e notiz. sulle fonti del Decam._ (Livorno, 1891).

[664] No doubt most of these stories were current up and down Italy.

[665] As with Shakespeare so with Boccaccio, the religious temperament is not represented.

[666] PINELLI, _La moralità nel Decam._ in _Propugnatore_ (1882), xv and xvi; also DEJOB, _A propos de la partie honnête du Décam._ in _Revue Universitaire_ (July 15, 1900).

[667] See Appendix VIII, p. 367 _et seq._

[668] _Decameron_, V, 10.

[669] _Ibid._, VII, 2.

[670] _Ibid._, VII, 8.

[671] _Ibid._, VII, 7.

[672] _Ibid._, VII, 9.

[673] _Ibid._, II, 10.

[674] _Ibid._, V, 9.

[675] But we must be careful of our edition if we read her only in English. Some time since Mr. Algar Thorold published a fine translation of _The Dialogue of S. Catherine of Siena_ (Kegan Paul), and here all the evidence needed can be found. But of late a "new edition" (1907) has appeared with the respectable "imprimatur" of the Catholic authorities, but all the evidence against the clergy has been omitted, probably to obtain the "imprimatur." See _infra_ p. 310, n. 1. S. Catherine's impeachment of the clergy will be found in the section of her book called _Il Trattato delle Lagrime_. A summary of the evidence will be found in Mr. E. G. GARDNER'S excellent _S. Catherine of Siena_ (Dent, 1907), p. 361 _et seq._ Mr. Gardner adds that "the student ... is compelled to face the fact that the testimony of Boccaccio's _Decameron_ is confirmed by the burning words of a great saint."

[676] _Decameron_, VI, 10.

[677] _Ibid._, VI, 2.

[678] _Ibid._, VII, 3

[679] _Ibid._, I, 1.

[680] _Ibid._, III, 1; IX, 2.

[681] _Ibid._, III, 4.

[682] Cf. BIAGI, _La Rassettatura del Decamerone_ in _Aneddoti Letterari_ (Milan, 1887), p. 262 _et seq._, and FOSCOLO, _Disc. sul testo del D._ in _Opere_ (Firenze, 1850), III. The facts seem quite clear about the action of the Church with regard to the _Decameron_. It was condemned by the Council of Trent. The earliest edition of the _Index Librorum Prohibitorum_ in which I have found it, is that published in Rome in 1559. Since then it has figured in every Roman edition of the Index (as far as I have tested them), the entry against it being "Donec expurg. Ind. Trent," which means, "Until expurgated, indexed by the Council of Trent." It appears to have remained thus provisionally condemned and prohibited until the last years of the nineteenth century. I find it still in the Index of 1881; but it no longer figures in that of 1900. The amusing point is that the Church does not seem to have minded the licentiousness of the tales as such; but to have objected to them being told of Monks, Friars, Nuns, and the Clergy, in regard to whom, as we have seen, they were merely the truth. Editions with a clerical "imprimatur" have been always published where laymen have been substituted for these. For instance, the edition printed in Florence, 1587, "con permissione de' superiori," etc., substitutes the avarice of magistrates for the hypocrisy of the clergy in _Dec._, I, 6.

[683] Cf. BIAGI, _Il Decameron giudicato da un contemporaneo_ in _op. cit._, p. 377 _et seq._

[684] Cf. HAUVETTE, _Della parentela esistente fra il MS. berlinese del Dec. e il codice Mannelli_ in _Giorn. St. d. Lett. It._ (1895), XXXI, p. 162 _et seq._

[685] In _Sylvia_, Alfred de Musset says very happily, "La Fontaine a ri dans Boccace où Shakespeare fondait en pleurs."

[686] In his _Cimon_, _Sigismonda_, and _Theodore_ he used Nov. v. 1, iv. 1, and v. 8 respectively.

[687] In his _Isabella_ (iv. 5).

[688] In his _Falcon_ (v. 9) and _Golden Supper_ (x. 4).

[689] Nevertheless I think it probable that the reason the _Decameron_ had, as a work of art, so little influence on our prose literature may have been the publication of King James's Bible in 1611, nine years before the complete translation of the _Decameron_ (1620).

[690] On the other hand, though Chaucer was considerably in Boccaccio's debt, he never mentions his name, but, as we know, he speaks of Dante and Petrarch.

[691] Cf. KUHNS, _Dante and the English Poets_ (New York, 1904), and PAGET TOYNBEE, _Dante in English Literature_ (Methuen, 1909).

[692] Cf. H. C. COOTE in _Athenæum_, 7th June, 1884, No. 2954.

[693] If Dante moved Chaucer most, it is from Boccaccio he borrows most. _Troilus and Criseyde_ is to a great extent a translation of the _Filostrato_. Cf. ROSSETTI, W. M., _Chaucer's "Troylus and Criseyde" compared with Boccaccio's "Filostrato"_ (Chaucer Society, 1875 and 1883). The _Knightes Tale_ is a free rendering of the _Teseide_. The design of the _Canterbury Tales_ was in some sort modelled on the design of the _Decameron_. As we have seen, _The Reeves Tale_, _The Frankeleynes Tale_, _The Schipmannes Tale_ are all found in the _Decameron_, though it is doubtful perhaps whether Chaucer got them thence. _The Monks Tale_ is from _De Casibus Virorum_.

Did Chaucer meet Petrarch and Boccaccio in Italy? He seems to wish to suggest that he had met the former at Padua, but, as I have said, of the latter he says not a word, but gives "Lollius" as his authority when he uses Boccaccio's work. Cf. Dr. KOCH'S paper in _Chaucer Society Essays_, Pt. IV. JUSSERAND in _Nineteenth Century_, June, 1896, and in reply BELLEZZA in _Eng. Stud._, 23 (1897), p. 335.

[694] Cf. KOEPPEL, _Studien zur Geschichte der Italienischen Novelle in der Englischen Litteratur des sechszehnten Jahrhunderts_ in _Quellen und Forschungen zur Sprach und Culturgeschichte der germanischen Volkes_ (Strassburg, 1892), Vol. LXX.

DECAMERON,
DAY I. Nov. 3 Painter's _Palace of Pleasure_, I. 30 (1566).
" I. " 5 " " " II. 16 (1567).
" I. " 8 " " " I. 31.
" I. " 10 " " " I. 32.
" II. " 2 " " " I. 33.
" II. " 3 " " " I. 34.
" II. " 4 " " " I. 35.
" II. " 5 " " " I. 36.
" II. " 6 Greene's _Perimedes the Blacksmith_ (1588).
" II. " 8 Painter's _Palace of Pleasure_, I. 37.
" II. " 9 _Westward for Smelts_, by Kind Kit of Kingston,
II. (1620).
" III. " 5 H. C.'s _Forest of Fancy_, I. (1579).
" III. " 9 Painter's _Palace of Pleasure_, I. 38.
" IV. " 1 " " " I. 39 and others.
" IV. " 2 Tarlton's _News out of Purgatorie_, 2 (1590).
" IV. " 4 Turbeville's _Tragical Tales_, 6 (ca. 1576).
" IV. " 5 " " " 7.
" IV. " 7 " " " 9.
" IV. " 8 " " " 10.
" IV. " 9 " " " 4.
" V. " 1 _A Pleasant and Delightful History of
Galesus, Cymon and Iphigenia_, etc. by
T. C. gent. _Ca._ 1584.
" V. " 2 Greene's _Perimedes the Blacksmith_.
" V. " 7 H. C.'s _Forest of Fancy_, II.
" V. " 8 _A notable History of Nastagio and Traversari_,
etc., trs. in English verse by C. T.
(1569), and Turbeville, I., and _Forest of
Fancy_.
" VI. " 4 Tarlton's _News_, No. 4.
" VI. " 10 " No. 5.
" VII. " 1 _The Cobler of Caunterburie_, No. 2.
" VII. " 4 _Westward for Smelts_, No. 3.
" VII. " 5 Cf. Thomas Twyne's _Schoolmaster_ (1576).
" VII. " 6 Tarton's _News_, No. 7.
" VII. " 7 _Hundred Mery Talys_, No. 3 (1526).
" VII. " 8 _The Cobler of Caunterburie._
" VIII. " 4 _Nachgeahunt_ of Whetstone (1583).
" VIII. " 7 Painter's _Palace of Pleasure_, II. 31.
" IX. " 2 Thomas Twyne's _Schoolmaster_.
William Warner's _Albion's England_ (1586-1592).
" IX. " 6 Cf. _A Right Pleasant Historie of the Mylner of
Abingdon_ (?).
" X. " 3 Painter's _Palace of Pleasure_, II. 18.
" X. " 4 " " " II. 19.
" X. " 5 " " " II. 17.
" X. " 8 _The History of Tryton and Gesyppustrs_,
out of the Latin by William Wallis (?),
and _The Boke of the Governours_ by Sir
Thomas Elyot, lib. II. cap. xii. (1531).
" X. " 9 Painter's _Palace of Pleasure_,{*} II. 20.
" X. " 10 _The Pleasant and Sweet History of Patient
Grissel_ (?) and another (1619).

{*} Painter's _Palace of Pleasure_ is almost certainly the source of the Tales of Boccaccio which Shakespeare used.

[695] This first translation has been reprinted by Mr. Charles Whibley in _The Tudor Translations_ (4 vols., David Nutt, 1909), with an introduction by Edward Hutton. In it the story of Fra Rustico (III, 10) has been omitted by the anonymous translator, and a harmless Scandinavian tale substituted for it.

[696] In 1804, 1820, 1822, 1846 (1875), 1884, 1886, 1896.

[697] A reprint of the 1896 edition of the _Decameron_ translated by J. M. Rigg, with J. A. Symonds's essay as Introduction (Routledge, 1905), and the edition spoken of _supra_, n. 2.

APPENDICES