Chapter II: The Triumvirate (3)

It remains to speak about Boccaccio's prose, and the relation of his style to that of other _trecentisti_. If we seek the origins of Italian prose, we find them first in the Franco-Italian romances of the Lombard period, which underwent the process of _toscaneggiamento_ at Florence, next in books of morality and devotion, and also in the earlier chronicles. Among the Tuscanized tales of chivalry belonging to the first age of Italian literature are the _Conti di antichi cavalieri_ and the _Tavola Ritonda_, both of which bear traces of translation from Provencal sources.[119] The _Novellino_, of which mention has already been made, betrays the same origin. The style of these works offers a pretty close parallel to the English of Sir Thomas Mallory. At the same time that the literature of France was assuming an Italian garb, many versions of Roman classics appeared. Orosius, Vegetius, Sallust, with parts of Cicero, Livy and Boethius were adapted to popular reading. But the taste of the time, as we have already seen in the preceding chapter, inclined the authors of these works to make selections with a view to moral edification. Their object was, not to present the ancients in a modern garb, but to cull notable examples of conduct and ethical sentences from the works that found most favor with the medieval intellect. Passing under the general titles of _Fiori_, _Giardini_, _Tesori_ and _Conviti_--_Fiori di filosofi e molto savi_, _Giardino di Consolazione_, _Fiore di Rettorica_, _Fiore del parlar gentile_--these collections supplied the laity with extracts from Latin authors, and extended culture to the people. The _Libro di Cato_ might be chosen as a fair example of their scope.[120] The number of such books, ascribed to Bono Giamboni, Brunetto Latini, and Guidotto of Bologna, proves that an extensive public was eager for instruction of this sort; and it is reasonable to believe that they were studied by the artisans of central Italy. The bass-reliefs and frescoes of incipient Italian art, the pavement of the Sienese Cathedral, the Palazzo della Ragione at Padua, bear traces of the percolation through all social strata of this literature. A more important work of style was the _De Regimine Principum_, of Egidio Colonna, translated from the French version by an unknown Tuscan hand; while Giamboni's Florentine version of Latini's _Tesoro_ introduced the erudition of the most learned grammarian of his age to the Italians. Contemporaneously with this growth of vernacular treatises on rhetorical and ethical subjects, we may assume that memoirs and chronicles began to be written in the vulgar tongue. But so much doubt has recently been thrown upon the earliest monuments of Italian historiography that it must here suffice to indicate the change which was undoubtedly taking place in this branch also of composition toward the close of the thirteenth century.[121] Literature of all kinds yielded to the first strong impact of the native idiom. Epistles, for example, whether of private or of public import, were now occasionally written in Italian, as can be proved by reference to the published letters of Guittone d'Arezzo.[122]

The works hitherto mentioned belong to the latter half of the thirteenth century. Their style, speaking generally, is dry and tentative. Except in the versions of French romances, which borrow grace from their originals, we do not find in them artistic charm of diction. The _Fiori_ and _Giardini_ are little better than commonplace books, in which the author's personality is lost beneath a mass of extracts and citations. The beginning of the fourteenth century witnessed the growth of a new Italian prose. Of this second stage, the masterpieces are Villani's Chronicle, Dante's _Vita Nuova_, the _Fioretti di S. Francesco_, the _Leggende dei Santi Padri_ of Domenico Cavalca, and Jacopo Passavanti's _Specchio della vera Penitenza_.[123] These writers have no lack of individuality. Their mind moves in their style, and gives a personal complexion to their utterance. The chief charm of their manner, so far as it is common to characters so diverse, is its grave and childlike spontaneity. For vividness of description, for natural simplicity of phrase, and for that amiable garrulity which rounds a picture by innumerable details and unconscious touches of graphic force, not one of the books of this period surpasses the _Fioretti_. Nor are the _Leggende_ of Cavalca less admirable. Modern, especially Northern, students may discover too much suavity and unction in the writer's tone--a superfluity of sweetness which fatigues, a caressing tenderness that clogs. After reading a few pages, we lay the book down, and wonder whether it could really have been a grown man, and not a cherub flown from Fra Angelico's Paradise, who composed it. This infantine note belongs to the cloister and the pulpit. It matches the simple credulity of the narrator, and well befits the miracles he loves to record. We seem to hear a good old monk gossiping to a party of rosy-cheeked novices, like those whom Sodoma painted in his frescoes of S. Benedict at Monte Oliveto. It need hardly be observed that neither in Villani's nor in Dante's prose do we find the same puerility. But all the _trecentisti_ have a common character of limpidity, simplicity, and unaffected grace.

The difficulties under which even the best Italian authors labor while using their own language, incline them to an exaggerated admiration for these pearls of the _trecento_. They look back with envy to an age when men could write exactly as they thought and felt and spoke, without the tyranny of the _Vocabolario_ or the fear of an Academy before their eyes. We, with whom the literary has always closely followed the spoken language, and who have, practically speaking, no dialects, while we recognize the purity of that incomparably transparent manner, cannot comprehend that it should be held up for imitation in the present age. To paint like Giotto would be easier than to write like Passavanti. The conditions of life and the modes of thought are so altered that the style of the _trecento_ will not lend itself to modern requirements.

Among the prosaists of the fourteenth century--Cavalca, Villani, the author of the _Fioretti_, and Passavanti--Boccaccio meets us with a sudden surprise. They aimed at finding the readiest and most appropriate words to convey their meaning in the simplest, most effective manner. Without artistic purpose, without premeditation, without side-glances at the classics, they wrote straightforward from their heart. There is little composition or connection in their work, no molding of paragraphs or rounding of phrases, no oratorical development, no gradation of tone. Boccaccio, on the contrary, sought to give the fullness and sonority of Latin to the periods of Italian prose. He had the Ciceronian cadence and the labyrinthine sentences of Livy in view. By art of style he was bent on rendering the vulgar language a fit vehicle for learning, rhetoric, and history. In order to make it clear what sorts of changes he introduced, it will be necessary to compare his prose with that of his contemporaries. Dante used the following words to describe his first meeting with Beatrice[124]:

Nove fiate gia, appresso al mio nascimento, era tornato lo
cielo della luce quasi ad un medesimo punto, quanto alla sua
propria girazione, quando alli miei occhi apparve prima la
gloriosa Donna della mia mente, la quale fu chiamata da molti
Beatrice, i quali non sapeano che si chiamare. Ella era gia in
questa vita stata tanto che nel suo tempo lo cielo stellato
era mosso verso la parte d'oriente delle dodici parti l'una
d'un grado: si che quasi dal principio del suo anno nono
apparve a me, ed io la vidi quasi alla fine del mio nono anno.

Boccaccio, relating his first glimpse of Fiammetta on April 17, 1341, spins the following cocoon of verbiage:[125]

Avvenne che un giorno, la cui prima ora Saturno avea
signoreggiata, essendo gia Febo co' suoi cavalli al sedecimo
grado del celestiale Montone pervenuto, e nel quale il
glorioso partimento del figliuiolo di Giove dagli spogliati
regni di Plutone si celebrava, io, della presente opera
componitore, mi trovai in un grazioso e bel tempio in
Partenope, nominato da colui che per deificarsi sostenne che
fosse fatto di lui sacrificio sopra la grata, e quivi con
canto pieno di dolce melodia ascoltava l'uficio che in tale
giorno si canta, celebrato da' sacerdoti successori di colui
che prima la corda cinse umilmente esaltando la povertade
quella seguendo.

Dante's style is analytic and direct. The sentences follow each other naturally; and though the language is stiff, from scrupulous precision, and in one place intentionally obscure, it is free from affectation. Boccaccio aims at a synthetic presentation of all he means to say; and he calls nothing by its right name, if he can devise a periphrasis. The breathless period pants its labored clauses out, and dwindles to a lame conclusion. The _Filocopo_ was, however, an immature production. In order to do its author justice, and at the same time to compare his style with a graceful piece of fourteenth-century composition, I will select a passage from the _Fioretti di S. Francesco_, and place it beside one taken from the first novel of the Decameron. This is the episode of S. Anthony preaching to the fishes[126]:

E detto ch'egli ebbe cosi, subitamente venne alla riva a lui
tanta moltitudine di pesci, grandi, piccoli e mezzani, che mai
in quel mare ne in quel fiume non ne fu veduta si grande
moltitudine: e tutti teneano i capi fuori dell'acqua, e tutti
stavano attenti verso la faccia di santo Antonio, e tutti in
grandissima pace e mansuetudine e ordine: imperocche dinanzi e
piu presso alla riva stavano i pesciolini minori, e dopo loro
stavano i pesci mezzani, poi di dietro, dov'era l'acqua piu
profonda, stavano i pesci maggiori. Essendo dunque in cotale
ordine e disposizione allogati i pesci, santo Antonio comincio
a predicare solennemente, e disse cosi: Fratelli miei pesci,
molto siete tenuti, secondo la vostra possibilitade, di
ringraziare il nostro Creatore, che v'ha dato cosi nobile
elemento per vostra abitazione; sicche, come vi piace, avete
l'acque dolci e salse; e havvi dati molti rifugii a schifare
le tempeste; havvi ancora dato elemento chiaro e transparente,
e cibo, per lo quale voi possiate vivere, etc., etc.... A
queste e simiglianti parole e ammaestramenti di santo Antonio,
cominciarono li pesci ad aprire la bocca, inchinaronli i capi,
e con questi ed altri segnali di riverenza, secondo li modi a
loro possibili, laudarono Iddio.

This is a portion of the character of Ser Ciapelletto:

Era questo Ciapelletto di questa vita. Egli essendo notajo,
avea grandissima vergogna quando uno de' suoi strumenti (come
che pochi ne facesse) fosse altro che falso trovato; de' quali
tanti avrebbe fatti, di quanti fosse stato richesto, e quelli
piu volentieri in dono, che alcun altro grandemente salariato.
Testimonianze false con sommo diletto diceva richesto e non
richesto; e dandosi a' que' tempi in Francia a' saramenti
grandissima fede, non curandosi fargli falsi, tante quistioni
malvagiamente vincea, a quante a giurare di dire il vero sopra
la sua fede era chiamato. Aveva oltre modo piacere, e forte vi
studiava, in commettere tra amici e parenti e qualunque altra
persona mali et inimicizie e scandali; de' quali quanto
maggiori mali vedeva seguire, tanto piu d'allegrezza prendea.
Invitato ad uno omicidio o a qualunque altra rea cosa, senza
negarlo mai, volenterosamente v'andava; e piu volte a fedire
et ad uccidere uomini colle proprie mani si trovo volentieri.

These examples will suffice to show how Boccaccio distinguished himself from the _trecentisti_ in general. When his style attained perfection in the Decameron, it had lost the pedantry of his first manner, and combined the brevity of the best contemporary writers with rhetorical smoothness and intricacy. The artful structure of the period, and the cadences of what afterwards came to be known as "numerous prose," were carried to perfection. Still, though he was the earliest writer of a scientific style, Boccaccio failed to exercise a paramount influence over the language until the age of the Academies.[127] The writers of the fifteenth century, partly no doubt because these were chiefly men of the people, appear to have developed their manner out of the material of the _trecento_ in general, modified by contemporary usage. This is manifest in the _Reali di Francia_, a work of considerable stylistic power, which cannot probably be dated earlier than the middle of the fifteenth century. The novelist Masuccio modeled his diction, so far as he was able, on the type of the Decameron, and Alberti owed much to the study of such works as the _Fiammetta_. Yet, speaking broadly, neither the excellences nor the defects of Boccaccio found devoted imitators until the epoch when the nation at large turned their attention to the formation of a common Italian style. It was then, in the days of Bembo and Sperone, that Boccaccio took rank with Petrarch as an infallible authority on points of language. The homage rendered at that period to the Decameron decided the destinies of Italian prose, and has since been deplored by critics who believe Boccaccio to have established a false standard of taste.[128] This is a question which must be left to the Italians to decide. One thing, however, is clear; that a nation schooled by humanistic studies of a Latin type, divided by their dialects, and removed by the advance of culture beyond the influences of the purer _trecentisti_, found in the rhetorical diction of the Decameron a common model better suited to their taste and capacity than the simple style of the Villani could have furnished.

Boccaccio died in 1375, seventeen months after the death at Arqua of his master, Petrarch. The painter Andrea Orcagna died about the same period. With these three great artists the genius of medieval Florence sank to sleep. A temporary torpor fell upon the people, who during the next half century produced nothing of marked originality in literature and art. The Middle Age had passed away. The Renaissance was still in preparation. When Boccaccio breathed his last, men felt that the elder sources of inspiration had failed, and that no more could be expected from the spirit of the previous centuries. Heaven and hell, the sanctuaries of the soul, the garden of this earth, had been traversed. The tentative essays and scattered preludings, the dreams and visions, the preparatory efforts of all previous modern literatures, had been completed, harmonized and presented to the world in the master-works of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. What remained but to make a new start? This step forward or aside was now to be taken in the Classical Revival. Well might Sacchetti exclaim in that _canzone_[129] which is at once Boccaccio's funeral dirge and also the farewell of Florence to the fourteenth century:

Sonati sono i corni
D'ogni parte a ricolta;
La stagione e rivolta:
Se tornera non so, ma credo tardi.

FOOTNOTES:

[62] _Rime di Guido Cavalcanti, edite ed inedite_, etc., Firenze, 1813. See p. 29 for the Canzone, and p. 73 for a translation into Italian of Dino's Latin commentary.

[63] _Op. cit._ pp. 21-27. Two in particular, _Era in pensier_ and _Gli occhi di quella gentil forosetta_, may be singled out. A _pastourelle_, _In un boschetto_, anticipates the manner of Sacchetti. As for the May song, its opening lines, _Ben venga Maggio_, etc., are referred by Carducci to Guido Cavalcanti.

[64] See _Vita e Poesie di Messer Cino da Pistoja_, Pisa, Capurro, 1813. Also Barbera's diamond edition of Cino da Pistoja and other poets, edited by Carducci.

[65] The tomb of Cino in the Duomo at Pistoja, with its Gothic canopies and the bass-reliefs which represent a Doctor of Laws lecturing to men of all ranks and ages at their desks beneath his professorial chair, is a fine contemporary monument. The great jurist is here commemorated, not the master of Petrarch in the art of song.

[66] Cp. Dante _De Vulg. Eloq._ i. 17, upon Cino's purification of Italian from vulgarisms, with Lorenzo de' Medici, who calls Cino "tutto delicato e veramente amoroso, il quale primo, al mio parere, comincio l'antico rozzore in tutto a schifare." _Lettera all'illustr. Sig. Federigo_, Poesie (ed. Barbera, 1858), p. 33.

[67] _Il Canzoniere_ (Fraticelli's edition), p. 199.

[68] _Voi che portate_; _Donna pietosa_; _Deh peregrini_.

[69] See Rossetti's translation of the _Vita Nuova_.

[70] Rossetti's translation of the _Vita Nuova_.

[71] _Donna del cielo_; _O benigna, o dolce_; _O bon Gesu_. See _Rime di Fra Guittone d'Arezzo_ (Firenze, Morandi, 1828), vol. ii. pp. 212, 3; vol. i. p. 61.

[72] Not only the sixth _AEneid_, but the _Dream of Scipio_ also, influenced the medieval imagination. The Biblical visions, whether allegorical like those of Ezekiel and Paul, or apocalyptic, like S. John's, exercised a similar control.

[73] See the little book of curious learning by Alessandro d'Ancona, entitled _I Precursori di Dante_, Firenze, Sansoni, 1874.

[74] See De Sanctis, _Storia della Letteratura Italiana_, vol. i. chap. 5. Of the _Commedia Spirituale dell'Anima_ I have seen a Sienese copy of the date 1608, a reprint from some earlier Florentine edition. The Comedy is introduced by two boys, good and bad. The piece itself brings God as the Creator, the soul He has made, its guardian angel, the devil, the powers of Memory, Reason, Will, and all the virtues in succession, with corresponding vices, on the scene. It ends with the soul's judgment after death and final marriage to Christ. Dramatically, it is almost devoid of merit.

[75] See _Revival of Learning_, chapter ii.

[76] See above, _Revival of Learning_, chapter ii. I may also refer to an article by me in the _Quarterly Review_ for October, 1878, from which I shall have occasion to draw largely in the following pages.

[77] _Par._ xvi.

[78] Carducci, "Dello Svolgimento della Letteratura Nazionale:" _Studi Letterari_ (Livorno, 1874), p. 60.

[79] The _Divine Comedy_ was probably begun in earnest about 1303, and the _Decameron_ was published in 1353.

[80] Boccaccio was called Giovanni della Tranquillita partly in scorn. He resented it, as appears from a letter to Zanobi della Strada (_Op. Volg._ vol. xvii. p. 101), because it implied a love of Court delights and parasitical idleness. In that letter he amply defends himself from such imputations, showing that he led the life of a poor and contented student. Yet the nickname was true in a deeper sense, as is proved by the very arguments of his apology, and confirmed by the description of his life at Certaldo remote from civic duties (Letter to Pino de' Rossi, _ibid._ p. 35), as well as by the tragi-comic narrative of his discomfort at Naples (Letter to Messer Francesco, _ibid._ pp. 37-87). Not only in these passages, but in all his works he paints himself a comfort-loving _bourgeois_, whose heart was set on his books, whose ideal of enjoyment was a satisfied passion of a sensual kind.

[81] See above, vol. ii. _Revival of Learning_, chap. ii. pp. 87-98.

[82] Boccaccio, _Opere Volgari_ (Firenze, 1833), vol. xv. p. 18.

[83] _Revival of Learning_, p. 88.

[84] I may specially refer to the passages of the _Amorosa Visione_ (cap. v. vi.) where he meets with Dante, "gloria delle muse mentre visse," "il maestro dal qual'io tengo ogni ben," "il Signor d'ogni savere;" also to the sonnets on Dante, and that most beautiful sonnet addressed to Petrarch after death at peace in heaven with Cino and Dante. See the _Rime_ (_Op. Volg._ vol. xvi.), sonnets 8, 60, 97, 108.

[85] De Sanctis, _Storia della Letteratura Italiana_, vol. i. cap. 9.

[86] "Che la ragion sommettono al talento:" _Inferno_ v. Compare these phrases:

Le genti dolorose
Che hanno perduto il ben dell'intelletto.

--_Inferno_ iii.

And Semiramis:

Che libito fe lecito in sua legge.

--_Inferno_ v.

[87] In all his earlier works, especially in the _Fiammetta_, the _Filostrato_, the _Ninfale Fiesolano_, the _Amorosa Visione_, he sings the hymn of _Il Talento_, triumphant over medieval discipline. They form the proper prelude to what is sometimes called the Paganism of the Renaissance, but what is really a resurgence of the natural man. It was this _talento_ which Valla philosophized, and Beccadelli and Pontano sang.

[88] One instance will suffice to illustrate the different methods of Boccaccio and Dante in dealing with the same material. We all know in what murk and filth Dante beheld Ciacco, the glutton, and what torments awaited Filippo Argenti, the _fiorentino spirito bizzarro_, upon the marsh of Styx (_Inferno_ vi. and viii.). These persons play the chief parts in Giorn. ix. nov. 8, of the _Decameron_. They are still the spendthrift parasite, and the brutally capricious bully. But while Dante points the sternest moral by their examples, Boccaccio makes their vices serve his end of comic humor. The inexorableness of Dante is nowhere more dreadful than in the eighth Canto of the _Inferno_. The levity of Boccaccio is nowhere more superficial than in that Novella.

[89] See the little work, full of critical learning, by Adolfo Bartoli, _I Precursori del Boccaccio_, Firenze, Sansoni.

[90] See _Le Novelle Antiche_ (another name for _Il Novellino_), per cura di Guido Biagi, Firenze, Sansoni, 1880. It is a curious agglomeration of anecdotes drawn from the history of the Suabian princes, Roman sources, the Arthurian legends, the Bible, Oriental apologues, fables, and a few ancient myths. That of _Narcis_, p. 66, is very prettily told. Only one tale is decidedly cynical. We find in the book selections made from the _debris_ of a vast and various medieval library. French influence is frequently perceptible in the style.

[91] _Precursori del Boccaccio_, p. 57 to end.

[92] See _Carmina Burana_ (Stuttgart, 1847), pp. 1-112; _Poems of Walter Mapes_, by Thomas Wright (for Camden Society, 1841), pp. 1-257, for examples of these satiric poems. The _Propter Syon non tacebo_, _Flete Sion filiae_, _Utar contra vitia_, should be specially noticed. Many other curious satires, notably one against marriage and the female sex, can also be found in Du Meril's three great collections, _Poesies Populaires Latines anterieures au douzieme Siecle_, _Poesies Populaires Latines du Moyen Age_, and _Poesies Inedites du Moyen Age_, Paris, 1843-1847. Those to whom these works are not accessible, may find an excellent selection of the serious and jocular popular Latin medieval poetry in a little volume _Gaudeamus! Carmina Vagorum selecta_, Lipsiae, Teubner, 1877. The question of their authorship has been fairly well discussed by Hubatsch, _Die lateinischen Vagantenlieder_, Goerlitz, 1870.

[93] The erotic and drinking songs of the Vagi deserve to be carefully studied by all who wish to understand the germs of the Renaissance in the middle ages. They express a simple naturalism, not of necessity Pagan, though much is borrowed from the language of classical mythology. I would call attention in particular to _AEstuans interius_, _Omittamus studia_, _O admirabile Veneris idolum_, _Ludo cum Caecilia_, _Si puer cum puellula_, and four _Pastoralia_, all of which may be found in the little book _Gaudeamus_ cited above. In spontaneity and truth of feeling they correspond to the Latin hymns. But their spirit is the exact antithesis of that which produced the _Dies Irae_ and the _Stabat Mater_. The absence of erudition and classical imitation separates them from the poems of Beccadelli, Pontano, Poliziano, or Bembo. They present the natural material of neo-pagan Latin verse without its imitative form. It is youth rejoicing in its strength and lustihood, enjoying the delights of spring, laughing at death, taking the pleasures of the moment, deriding the _rumores senum severiorum_, unmasking hypocrisy in high places, at wanton war with constituted social shams. These songs were written by wandering students of all nations, who traversed Germany, France, Italy, Spain, England, seeking special knowledge at the great centers of learning, following love-adventures, poor and careless, coldly greeted by the feudal nobility and the clergy, attached to the people by their habits but separated from them by their science. In point of faith these poets are orthodox. There is no questioning of ecclesiastical dogma, no anticipation of Luther, in their verses. This blending of theological conformity with satire on the Church and moral laxity is eminently characteristic of the Renaissance in Italy.

[94] See the last sentence of Giorn. iii. Nov. 1.

[95] _Op. Volg._ vol. xiv.

[96] Cap. xlix.

[97] Letter to Leigh Hunt, September 8, 1819.

[98] _Op. Volg._ vol. vii. p. 230. I am loth to attempt a translation of this passage, which owes its charm to the melody and rhythm of chosen words:--

"With ears intent upon the music, he began to go in the direction whence he heard it; and when he drew nigh to the fountain, he beheld the two maidens. They were of countenance exceeding white, and this whiteness was blent in seemly wise with ruddy hues. Their eyes seemed to be stars of morning, and their little mouths, of the color of a vermeil rose, became of pleasanter aspect as they moved them to the music of their song. Their tresses, like threads of gold, were very fair, and slightly curled went wandering through the green leaves of their garlands. By reason of the great heat their tender and delicate limbs, as hath been saaid above, were clad in robes of the thinnest texture, the which, made very tight above the waist, revealed the form of their fair bosoms, which like two round apples pushed the opposing raiment outward, and therewith in divers places the white flesh appeared through graceful openings. Their stature was of fitting size, and each limb well-proportioned."

[99] The description of the nymph Lia in the _Ameto_ (_Op. Volg._ xv. 30-33) carries Boccaccio's manner into tedious prolixity.

[100] Boccaccio was a great painter of female beauty and idyllic landscape; but he had not the pictorial faculty in a wider sense. The frescoes of the _Amorosa Visione_, when compared with Poliziano's descriptions in _La Giostra_, are but meager notes of form. Possibly the progress of the arts from Giotto to Benozzo Gozzoli and Botticelli may explain this picturesque inferiority of the elder poet; but in reading Boccaccio we feel that the defect lay not so much in his artistic faculty as in the limitation of his sympathy to certain kinds of beauty.

[101] Dante (_De Vulg. Eloq._ ii. 2) observed that while there were three subjects of great poetry--War, Love, Morality--no modern had chosen the first of these themes. Boccaccio in the last Canto of the _Teseide_ seems to allude to this:

Poiche le muse nude cominciaro
Nel cospetto degli uomini ad andare,
Gia fur di quelli che le esercitaro
Con bello stile _in onesto parlare_,
Ed altri in _amoroso_ le operaro;
Ma tu, o libro, primo a lor cantare
_Di Marte_ fai gli affanni sostenuti,
_Nel volgar Lazio mai piu non veduti_.

[102] How far Boccaccio actually created the tale can be questioned. In the dedication to Fiammetta (_Op. Volg._ ix. 3), he says he found a very ancient version of his story, and translated it into rhyme and the _latino volgare_ for the first time. Again, in the exordium to the first Book (_ib._ p. 10), he calls it:

una storia antica
Tanto negli anni riposta e nascosa
Che latino autor non par ne dica
Per quel ch'i' senta in libro alcuna cosa.

We might perhaps conjecture that he had discovered the legend in a Byzantine MS.

[103] Carducci, "Cantilene, etc.," _Op. cit._ pp. 168, 170, 171, 173.

[104] _Op. cit._ p. 160.

[105] See above, p. 114.

[106] This appears from the conclusion (_Op. Volg._ viii. 376). Fiammetta was the natural daughter of Petrarch's friend and patron, King Robert. Boccaccio first saw her in the church of S. Lawrence at Naples, April 7, 1341.

[107] The history of this widely popular medieval romance has been traced by Du Meril in his edition of the thirteenth-century French version (Paris, 1856). He is of opinion that Boccaccio may have derived it from some Byzantine source. But this seems hardly probable, since Boccaccio gained his knowledge of Greek later in life. Certain indications in the _Filocopo_ point to a Spanish original.

[108] See _Op. Volg._ vii. 6-11. Compare with these phrases those selected from the humanistic writings of a later date, _Revival of Learning_, p. 397.

[109] This is the climax (Parte Terza, stanza xxxii.):

A cui Troilo disse; anima mia,
I' te ne prego, si ch'io t'abbia in braccio
Ignuda si come il mio cor disia.
Ed ella allora: ve' che me ne spaccio;
E la camicia sua gittata via,
Nelle sue braccia si raccolse avvaccio;
E stringnendo l'un l'altro con fervore,
D'amor sentiron l'ultimo valore.

[110] The _Amorosa Visione_ ends with these words, _Sir di tutta pace_; their meaning is explained in previous passages of the same poem. At the end of cap. xlvi. the lady says:

Io volli ora al presente far quieto
Il tuo disio con amorosa pace,
Dandoti l'arra che finira il fleto.

Again in cap. l. we read:

E quel disio che or piu ti tormenta
Porro in pace, con quella bellezza
Che l'alma al cor tuttora ti presenta.

The context reveals the nature of the peace to be attained. It is the satisfaction of an orgasm. We may compare the invocation to Venus and her promise at the end of the _Caccia di Diana_, canto xvii. (_Op. Volg._ xiv.). The time-honored language about "expelling all base thoughts" is here combined with the anticipation of sensual possession.

[111] _Op. Volg._ vi. 21, 89, 91.

[112] Bonucci in his edition of Alberti's works, conscious of that author's debt to Boccaccio, advances the wild theory that he wrote the _Fiammetta_. See _Opere Volgari di L.B. Alberti_, vol. iii. p. 353.

[113] _Laberinto d'Amore_ (Firenze, Caselli), p. 153, and p. 127.

[114] _Ibid._ p. 174.

[115] See _Age of the Despots_, p. 186, note.

[116] See Sonnets vii. and viii. of the _Rime_.

[117] The same motive occurs in the _Ameto_, where the power of love to refine a rustic nature is treated both in the prose romance and in the interpolated _terza rima_ poems. See especially the song of Teogapen (_Op. Volg._ xv. 34).

[118] Boccaccio breaks the style and becomes obscenely vulgar at times. See Parte Quarta, xxxvi. xxxvii., Parte Quinta, xlv. xlvi. The innuendoes of the _Ugellino_ and the _Nicchio_ are here repeated in figures which anticipate the novels and _capitoli_ of the _cinque cento_.

[119] Students may consult the valuable work of Vincenzo Nannucci, _Manuale della Letteratura del primo secolo della Lingua Italiana_, Firenze, Barbera, 1874. The second volume contains copious specimens of thirteenth-century prose.

[120] Nannucci, _op. cit._ vol. ii. p. 95.

[121] The journals of Matteo Spinelli, ascribed to an Apulian of the thirteenth century, were long accepted as the earliest vernacular attempt at history in prose. It has lately been suggested, with good show of argument, that they are fabrications of the sixteenth century. With regard to the similar doubts affecting the Malespini Chronicles and Dino Compagni, I may refer to my discussion of this question in the first volume of this work, _Age of the Despots_, pp. 251, 262-273.

[122] Nannucci, _op. cit._ p. 137.

[123] Of Villani's Chronicle I have already spoken sufficiently in the _Age of the Despots_, chap. 5, and of the _Vita Nuova_ in this chapter (above, pp. 67-70).

[124] _Vita Nuova_, cap. 2.

[125] _Filocopo_, _Op. Volg._ vii. 4.

[126] _Fioretti di S. Francesco_ (Venezia, 1853), p. 104.

[127] See below, the chapter on the Purists.

[128] See Capponi's _Storia della Repubblica di Firenze_, lib. iii. cap. 9, for a very energetic statement of this view.

[129] See _Rime di M. Cino da Pistoja e d'altri del Secolo xiv._ (Firenze, Barbera, 1862), p. 528. It begins:

Ora e mancata ogni poesia
E vote son le case di Parnaso.

It contains the famous lines:

Come deggio sperar che surga Dante
Che gia chi il sappia legger non si trova?
E Giovanni che e morto ne fe scola.

Not less interesting is Sacchetti's funeral Ode for Petrarch (_ibid._ p. 517). Both show a keen sense of the situation with respect to the decline of literature.