pro

consciousness of her own excellence, and the spect of unclouded security, she might easily forgive her lover for having evinced that the idol of his heart was fully deserving of his adoration. Gautier, on the contrary, is neither blinded by love, nor tormented by jealousy: he merely wishes to gratify a childish curiosity, by discovering how far conjugal obedience can be carried; and the recompence of unexampled patience is a mere permission to wear a coronet without farther molestation. Nor, as in the ballad, is security obtained by a momentary uneasiness, but by long years of suffering. It may be doubted, whether the emotions to which the story of Boccaccio gives rise, I are at all different from those which would be excited by an execution on the rack. The merit, too, of resignation, depends much on its motive, and the cause of morality is not greatly promoted by bestowing, on a passive submission to capricious tyranny, the commendation which is only due to an humble acquiescence in the just dispensations of Providence."

The budget of stories being exhausted with the tale of Griselda, the party of pleasure return to Florence and the pestilence.

There are few works which have had an equal in

fluence on literature with the Decameron of Boccaccio. Even in England its effects were powerful. From it Chaucer adopted the notion of the frame in which he has enclosed his tales, and the general manner of his stories, while in some instances, as we have seen, he has merely versified the novels of the Italian. In 1566, William Paynter printed a part of Boccaccio's stories in English, under the name of the Palace of Pleasure. This first translation contained sixty novels, and it was soon followed by another volume, comprehending thirtyfour additional tales. These are the pages of which Shakspeare made so much use. In Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, we find that one of the great amusements of our ancestors was reading Boccaccio aloud, an entertainment of which the effects were speedily visible in the literature of the country. The first English translation, however, of the whole Decameron, did not appear till 1620. In France, Boccaccio found early and illustrious imitators. In his own country he brought his native language to perfection, and gave stability to a mode of composition, which before his time had only exised in a rude state in Italy; he collected the common tales of his own and other countries, which he decorated with new

circumstances, and delivered in the purest style; his popularity was unbounded, and his imitators more numerous than those of any author recorded in the annals of literature.

CHAPTER VIII.

Italian Imitators of Boccaccio.-Sacchetti-Ser

Giovanni.-Massuccio.-Sabadino.-Giral

di Cinthio.-Straparola.-Bandello.-Malespini, &c.-French Imitators.

Of the Italian imitators of Boccaccio, the earli

est was

FRANCO SACCHETTI,

a Florentine, who was born in 1335, and died about the year 1410. He was a poet in his youth, and travelled to Sclavonia and other countries, to atTM tend to some mercantile concerns. As he advanced in years he was raised to a distinguished rank in the magistracy of Florence; he became podestà of Faenza and other places, and at length governor of a Florentine province in the Romagna. Not

withstanding his honours he lived and died poor, but is said to have been a good-humoured facetious man; he left an immense collection of sonnets and canzone, some of which have been lost, and others are still in MS. Of the tales there were a great variety of MS. copies, which is a proof of the popularity of the author, but all of them had originally been very incomplete, or became so before any one thought of printing the works of this novelist. At length, in 1724, about 250 of the 300 stories, originally written by Sacchetti, were edited by Giovanni Bottari, from two MSS. in the Laurentian library, which were the most ancient, and at the same time the most perfect at that time extant. This edition was printed at Naples, though with the date of Florence, in two vols. 8vo, and was followed by two impressions, which are fac similes of the former, and can hardly be distinguished from it.

Crescimbeni places Sacchetti next to Boccaccio in merit as well as in time. Warton affirms that his tales were composed earlier than the Decameron; but this must be a mistake, as from the historical incidents mentioned they could not have been written before 1376. Indeed, the novelist himself, in his prooemium, says he was induced to undertake the work from the example of Boccaccio. “ Ri