This remark is, I think, also applicable to the

DECAMERON OF BOCCACCIO;

those tales derived from the Fabliaux being invariably the most ingenious and graceful. This celebrated work succeeds, in chronological order, to the Cento Novelle, and is by far the most renowned production in this species of composition. It is styled Decameron, from ten days having been occupied in the relation of the tales, and is also entitled Principe Galeotto,-an appellation which the deputies appointed for correction of the Decameron consider as derived from the 5th canto of Dante's Inferno, Galeotto being the name of that seductive book, which was read by Paulo and Francesca :

"Galeotto fu il libro e chi lo scrisse," &c.

The Decameron is supposed to have been commenced about the year 1348, when Florence was visited by the plague, and finished about 1358. Thus only a period of half a century had intervened from the appearance of the Cento Novelle, and the infinite superiority of the Decameron over

its predecessor, marks in the strongest manner the improvement which, during that interval, had taken place in taste and literature.

Still, however, the Decameron must be chiefly considered as the product of the distinguished mental attainments of its author. Boccaccio was admirably fitted to excel in this sort of composition, both from natural genius,' and the species of education he had received. His father apprenticed him in early youth to a merchant, with whom he continued many years, and in whose service he visited different parts of Italy, and, according to some authorities, the capital of France. During these excursions he must have become intimately acquainted with the manners of his native country; and at Paris he would acquire the French language, and, perhaps, study the French authors. Tired with his mercantile employments, Boccaccio next applied himself to canon law, and, in the prosecution of this study, he had occasion to peruse many works, from which, as shall be afterwards shown, he has extracted materials for

"I well remember," says he, in his Genealogy of the Gods, "that before seven years of age, when as yet I had seen no fictions, and had applied to no masters, I had a natural turn for fiction, and produced some trifling tales."Lib. XV.

the Decameron Disgusted with law, he finally devoted himself to literature, and was instructed by various masters in all the learning of the age. The greater part of the Decameron, it is true, was written before he had made proficiency in the Greek language; but it cannot be doubted, that, previous to its public appearance, he embellished this work by interweaving fables, which he met with among Greek authors, or which were imparted to him by his master Leontius Pilatus, whom he styles, in the Genealogy of the Gods, a repository of Grecian history and fable.

An investigation of the sources whence the stories in the Decameron have been derived, has long exercised the learning of Italian critics, and has formed the subject of a keen and lasting controversy. The light hitherto thrown on the dispute is such as might be expected, where erudition has been employed for the establishment of a theory, instead of the discovery of truth. Many of the commentators on Boccaccio have been anxious to prove, that his stories are for the most part borrowed from the earlier tales of his own country, and those of the French Trouveurs ; others have argued, that the great proportion is of his own invention; while Domenico Manni, in his History of the Decameron, has attempted to

establish that they have been mostly derived from the ancient chronicles and annals of Italy, or have had their foundation on incidents that actually occurred during the age of Boccaccio. There is one fallacy, however, by which this author seems misled, and of which he does not appear to have been aware. This is assuming that a story is true, merely because the characters themselves are not fictitious. Manni seems to have thought, that if he could discover that a merchant of a certain name existed at a certain period, the tale related concerning him must have had a historical foundation. Nothing need be said to expose the absurdity of such conclusions, which would at once transform the greater number of the Arabian tales into historic relations concerning Haroun Alraschid. The adoption of real characters or real places, on which to found a system of romantic incident, is one of the most common, and must have been one of the earliest artifices in fictitious narrative.

To the sources whence they have flowed may be partly ascribed the immorality of the tales of Boccaccio, and the introduction of numerous stories where our disapprobation of the crime is overlooked, in the delight we experience from the description of the ingenuity by which it was accom

plished. This may also be in some degree accounted for by the character of the author, and manners of the time. But that the relation of such stories should be assigned to ladies, or represented as told in their presence,' and that the work, immediately on its appearance, should have become avowedly popular among all classes of readers, is not so much to be imputed to popular rudeness, as to a particular event of the author's age. Just before Boccaccio wrote, the customs and manners of his fellow-citizens underwent a total alteration, owing to the plague which had prevailed in Florence, in the same way as the surviving inhabitants of Lisbon became more dissolute after their earthquake, and the Athenians after the plague by which their city was afflicted. (Thucydides, book 2d.) "Such," says Boccaccio himself in his introduction, "was the public distress, that laws divine and human were no longer regarded."

It is evident that Boccaccio afterwards became ashamed of the licentiousness of the Decameron, and uneasy at the bad moral tendency of some of its stories. In a letter to Maghinardo de Cavalcanti, marshal of Sicily, which is quoted by Tiraboschi, Boccaccio, speaking of his Decameron, says, sane quod inclitas mulieres tuas domesticas, nugas meas legere permiseris non laudo; quin immo quæso, per fidem tuam, ne feceris."

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