PETRARCH AND BOCCACCIO—THE LATIN WORKS

Those ten years from 1363 to 1372 had not only been given by Boccaccio to the study of Greek and the service of his country, they had also been devoted to a vast and general accumulation of learning such as was possessed by only one other man of his time, his master and friend Petrarch. It might seem that ever since Boccaccio had met Petrarch he had come under his influence, and in intellectual matters, at any rate, had been very largely swayed by him. In accordance with the unfortunate doctrine of his master, we see him, after 1355, giving up all work in the vulgar, and setting all his energy on work in the Latin tongue, in the study of antiquity and the acquirement of knowledge. From a creative writer of splendid genius he gradually became a scholar of vast reading but of mediocre achievement. He seems to have read without ceasing the works of antiquity, annotating as he read. His learning, such as it was, became prodigious, immense, and, in a sense, universal, and little by little he seems to have gathered his notes into the volumes we know as De Montibus, Sylvis, Fontibus, Lacubus, Fluminibus, Stagnis seu Paludibus, De Nominibus Maris Liber, a sort of dictionary of Geography;[504] the De Casibus Virorum Illustrium, in nine books, which deals with the vanity of human affairs from Adam to Petrarch;[505] the De Claris Mulieribus, which he dedicated to Acciaiuoli's sister, and which begins with Eve and comes down to Giovanna, Queen of Naples;[506] and the De Genealogiis Deorum, in fifteen books, dedicated to Ugo, King of Cyprus and Jerusalem, who had begged him to write this work, which is a marvellous cyclopÆdia of learning concerning mythology[507] and a defence of poetry and poets.[508] In all these works it must be admitted that we see Boccaccio as Petrarch's disciple, a pupil who lagged very far behind his master.

As a creative artist, as the author, to name only the best, of the Fiammetta and the Decameron, Boccaccio is the master of a world Petrarch could not enter; he takes his place with Dante and Chaucer and Shakespeare, and indeed save Dante no other writer in the Italian tongue can be compared with him.

It is seldom, however, that a great creative artist is also a great scholar, for the very energy and virility and restless impatience which have in some sort enabled him to create living men and women prevent him in his work as a student, as an historian pure and simple, in short, as a scholar. So it was with Boccaccio. The author of the Latin works is not only inferior to the author of the Fiammetta and the Decameron, he is the follower and somewhat disappointing pupil of Petrarch, who contrives to show us at every step his inferiority to his master, his feebler sense of proportion, of philosophy, of the reality of history, above all his feebler judgment. The consideration of these works then would seem to demand of us the consideration of his relations with Petrarch, and it will be convenient at this point to undertake it as briefly as possible.

Even in his youth Boccaccio had regarded Petrarch with an enthusiasm and an unenvying modesty that, lasting as it did his whole life long, ripening as it did into one of the greatest friendships in the history of Letters, was perhaps the most beautiful trait in his character. It always seemed to him an unmerited grace that one who was sought out by princes and popes, whose fame filled the universe, should care to be his friend, and this wonder, this admiration, remained with him till death; he never writes Petrarch's name without, in his enthusiasm, adding to it some flattering epithet. He calls him his "illustrious and sublime master," his "father and lord," "a poet who is rather of the company of the ancients than of this modern world," "a man descended from heaven to restore to Poetry her throne," the "marvel and glory" of his time.[509] He had known and loved his work, as he says, for forty years or more,[510] but he had never dared to approach him, though opportunities had not been altogether lacking,[511] till Petrarch came to Florence in the autumn of 1350 on his way to win the indulgence of the Jubilee in Rome.[512] This was the beginning of that friendship[513] which is almost without precedent or imitation in the history of literature. In the following spring, as we have seen, Boccaccio, in the name of Florence, went to Padua to recall Petrarch from exile, to offer him a chair in the new university of his native city, and to restore him the goods confiscated from his father. In Padua he had been Petrarch's guest for some days; he was a witness of Petrarch's enthusiasm for "sacred studies," but apparently was not personally much interested in them, though he calls them sacred, for he employed himself with no less enthusiasm in copying some of Petrarch's works; by which I at least understand some of his poems in the vulgar. The evenings were spent in the garden, talking, on Boccaccio's part of politics, on Petrarch's, as we may suppose, of learning, often till dawn.[514]

Boccaccio did not see Petrarch again for eight years, till in 1359 he visited him in Milan, and in that year sent him the Divine Comedy, which he had had copied for him; four years later, after his "conversion," his hysterical adventure with the messenger of the Blessed Pietro, he went to meet his master in Venice for the last time,[515] as it proved, for in 1367 he missed him, Petrarch being then in Pavia.[516] In all these meetings it is Boccaccio who seeks out Petrarch; his visits are never returned. It is indeed almost touching to see with what ardour and with what abnegation Boccaccio cultivates this friendship which was in fact his greatest pride. He makes Petrarch presents, poor as he is; he sends him the Divine Comedy, S. Augustine's Commentary on the Psalms, and with his own hand copies for him a book of extracts from Cicero and Varro.[517] We do not hear of Petrarch giving him anything in return. It is true he lent him the MS. of Homer and another of Plato, but he borrowed the translation of the former made at Boccaccio's expense in order to have it copied for his library. It is ill, however, reckoning up benefits. Petrarch was not small-minded, as the noble letter in which he offers to buy his friend's library proves. He procured for him the offer of the office of Apostolic Secretary, which Boccaccio had the strength and independence to refuse, and in his will left him, since he knew him to be poor, a cloak to keep him warm on winter nights in his study. If we find his praise of Boccaccio's work, especially of the Decameron, a little cold and lacking in spontaneity—in fact he admits he has not read the Decameron, but only "run through it"[518]—we must remember his absurd and pedantic contempt for work in the vulgar which came upon him in his middle life, so that he was at last really incapable of judging and was in fact hostile to Italian literature,[519] and would have destroyed if he could all his own work in that kind.Boccaccio, on the other hand, was always eager on Petrarch's behalf and in his defence. He composed an Elogium[520] on him and his poetry, in which he defended him from certain reproaches which had been brought against him, and when, as it is said in 1372, a French cardinal attacked his venerated master in the presence of the Pope and denied him the title of "Phoenix of Poets" that was ordinarily given him, Boccaccio replied with an apology in his favour.[521] Nor was this all, for it was mainly by Boccaccio's efforts that that very disappointing poem the Africa was preserved to us; and indeed, such was his delight in Petrarch, that he arranged in order in a book the letters he had received from him, for he thought himself assured of immortality rather by them than by his own works.[522]

It is indeed strange and lovely to come upon Boccaccio's extraordinary modesty: the greatest prose-writer in the Italian language, the greatest story-teller in the world, considered himself of no account at all beside the pedantic lover of Laura, the author of the Africa which he had not seen. The very thought of comparing himself with Petrarch seemed to him a crime. He considered him as not altogether of this world; he dwelt, according to his friend, in a superior region; and as for his work, his writings, his style, they are marvellous and ornate, abounding in sublime thoughts and exquisite expressions, for he only wrote after long reflection, and he drew his thoughts from the depths of his spirit.[523] And when Petrarch honoured him with the title of Poet, he declined it;[524] his ideal was "to follow very modestly the footsteps of his Silvanus."

"The illustrious Francesco Petrarca," he writes in another place,[525] "neglecting the precepts of certain writers who scarcely attain to the threshold of poetry, began to take the way of antiquity with so much force of character, with such enthusiasm and perspicacity, that no obstacle would arrest him, nor could ridicule turn him from his way. Far from that, breaking through and tearing away the brambles and bushes with which by the negligence of men the road was covered, and remaking a solid road of the rocks heaped up and made impassable by inundations, he opened a passage for himself and for those who would come after him. Then, cleansing the fountain of Helicon from slime and rushes, he restored to the waters their first chastity and sweetness. He opened the fount of Castalia, hidden by wild branches, and cleared the grove of laurels of thorns. Having established Apollo on his throne, and restored to the Muses, disfigured by neglect and rusticity, their ancient beauty, he climbed the highest summits of Parnassus. And having been crowned with a leafy garland by Daphne, he showed himself to the Roman people, with the applause of the Senate, a thing which had not been seen perhaps for more than a thousand years. He forced the gates of the ancient Capitol, creaking on their rusty hinges, and to the great joy of the Romans he made their annals famous by an unaccustomed triumph. O glorious spectacle! O unforgettable act! This man by his prodigious effort, by his work everywhere famous, as though he commanded through the universe the trumpet of Fame, sounded the name of Poetry, brought back again by him from darkness into light. He re-awakened in all generous spirits a hope almost lost till then, and he made it to be seen—what most of us had not believed—that Parnassus was still to be won, that her summit was still to be dared...."

The enthusiasm, the unselfishness of that! But he does not stop there. Petrarch is as admirable morally as he is as an artist or as a scholar. "Petrarch," he tells us,[526] "living from his youth up as a celibate, had such a horror of the impurities of the excess of love that for those who know him he is the best example of honesty. A mortal enemy of liars, he detests all vices. For he is a venerable sanctuary of truth, and honours and joys in virtue, the model of Catholic holiness. Pious, gentle, and full of devotion, he is so modest that one might name him a second Parthenias [i.e. Virgil]. He is too the glory of the poetic art. An agreeable and eloquent orator, philosophy has for him no secrets. His spirit is of a superhuman perspicacity; his mind is tenacious and full of all knowledge that man may have. It is for this reason that his writings, both in prose and in verse, numerous as they are, shine so brilliantly, breathe so much charm, are adorned with so many flowers, enclosing in their words so sweet a harmony, and in their thoughts an essence so marvellous that one believes them the work of a divine genius rather than the work of a man. In short he is assuredly more than a man and far surpasses human powers. I am not singing the praises of some ancient, long since dead. On the contrary, I am speaking of the merits of a living man.... If you do not believe these words, you can go and see him with your eyes. I do not fear that it will happen to him as to so many famous men, as Claudius says, 'Their presence diminishes their reputation.' Rather I affirm boldly that he surpasses his reputation. He is distinguished by such dignity of character, by an eloquence so charming, by an urbanity and old age so well ordered, that one can say of him what Seneca said of Socrates, that 'one learns more from his manners than from his discourse.'"

In this enormous praise, in this humility, Petrarch does not seem to have seen anything extraordinary; in fact he seems to have taken it as the most natural thing in the world. We gather that he considered it was to have much regard for Boccaccio to let him hope for some little glory after him.[527] And we may suspect that he found in him a friend after his own heart. He showed his gratitude by addressing a number of letters to him and by leaving him in his Will fifty florins of gold to buy a mantle to protect him against the cold during the long and studious nights of winter.[528] Boccaccio was ill when he heard of that benefaction and the death of his beloved master. The letter he then wrote in praise of the dead, his hand trembling with emotion and weakness, his eyes full of tears, is perhaps the most beautiful, if not the most touching, document of their friendship.[529]

And then, as we have already seen, the love of Boccaccio for his master, his solicitude for his memory, did not cease with Petrarch's death. His first thought was for the Africa of which his master had made, in imitation of Virgil perhaps, so great a mystery, and, as it was said, had wished to burn it. Though he was as ignorant as others of its contents, believing as he did in Petrarch, he was altogether convinced that it was a great and marvellous poem, worthy of Homer and full of a divine inspiration.[530] While some said Petrarch had left instructions to burn it, others declared that he had appointed a commission to decide whether it should live or die. Boccaccio does not seem to have thought that he himself would necessarily have been on any such commission; but immediately addressed a supplication in verse to the tribunal, which he feared would be composed of lawyers, demanding in the name of the Muses, of kings, of peoples, of cities that this masterpiece should not be allowed to perish.

So Boccaccio loved Petrarch. And that Petrarch was good for him, as we might say, who can doubt after reading that noble letter on the vision of the Blessed Pietro? But that Boccaccio was intellectually altogether at his mercy unhappily we cannot doubt either after reading his Latin works. He follows Petrarch so far as he can, but nearly always blindly, exaggerating the predilections or prejudices of his master even in little things. In all his works in Latin he makes no allusion to his works in the vulgar: Petrarch often mentions his, but always with an affected disdain. Yet Boccaccio was by no means destitute of a passion for literary glory. He desired it as eagerly as Petrarch, but more modestly; and following the precept of his master to the letter, he does not believe he can attain to it by any other means than by classical studies. Like his master too, he regretted the writings of his youth, and would have destroyed them if they had not been spread through all Italy and well out of his reach. In all these things Boccaccio is but the follower of Petrarch, and nothing can be more to the point than to compare them, not indeed as artists, but as students, as scholars, as philosophers.

And here let us admit, to begin with, that as a student, as a man of culture, in a sense of the reality of history and in a due sense of the proportion of things, Petrarch is as much Boccaccio's superior as Boccaccio is Petrarch's as a creative artist. For Petrarch antiquity was a practical school of life. Convinced of the superiority of his spirit, he possessed himself of what he read and assimilated what he wanted.[531] Boccaccio, on the other hand, remained entirely outside, and can claim no merit as a scholar but that of industry. As a student he is a mere compiler. His continual ambition is to extend his knowledge, but Petrarch dreams only of making his more profound. He too in reading the ancients has collected an incalculable number of extracts, but after putting them in order from various points of view he has only begun; he proceeds to draw from them his own works.

Nor is Petrarch deceived in his own superiority. He was by far the most cultured man of his time; as a critic he had already for himself disposed of the much-abused claims of the Church and the Empire. For instance, with what assurance he recognises as pure invention, with what certainty he annihilates with his criticism the privileges the Austrians claimed to hold from CÆsar and Nero.[532] And even face to face with antiquity he is not afraid; he is sure of the integrity of his mind; he analyses and weighs, yes, already in a just balance, the opinions of the writers of antiquity; while Boccaccio mixes up in the most extraordinary way the various antiquities of all sorts of epochs. Nor has Boccaccio the courage of his opinions; all seems to him worthy of faith, of acceptance. He cannot, even in an elementary way, discern the false from the true; and even when he seems on the point of doing so he has not the courage to express himself. When he reads in Vincent de Beauvais that the Franks came from Franc the son of Hector, he does not accept it altogether, it is true, but, on the other hand, he dare not deny it, "because nothing is impossible to the omnipotence of God."[533] He accepts the gods and heroes of antiquity; the characters in Homer and the writers of Greece, of Rome, are equally real, equally authentic, equally worthy of faith, and we might add equally unintelligible. They are as wonderful, as delightful, as impossible to judge as the saints. What they do or say he accepts with the same credulity as that with which he accepted the visions of Blessed Pietro. Petrarch only had to look Blessed Pietro in the eye, and he shrivelled up into lies and absurdities. But to dispose of a charlatan and a rascal of one's own day is comparatively easy: the true superiority of Petrarch is shown when he is face to face with the realities of antiquity—when, for instance, venerating Cicero as he did, he does not hesitate to blame him on a question of morals. But Boccaccio speaks of Cicero as though he scarcely knew him;[534] he praises him as though he were a mere abstraction, calls him "a divine spirit," a "luminous star whose light still waxes."[535] He does not know him. He goes to him for certain details because Petrarch has told him to do so.

The truth seems to be that as soon as Boccaccio was separated from life he became a nonentity. If this is not so, how are we to explain the fact that he who was utterly incapable of criticism, of any sense of difference or proportion in regard to the ancients, could appreciate Petrarch so exquisitely, not only as a writer, where he is often at sea, but as a man? He has a philosophy of life, but he cannot apply it to antiquity because he cannot realise antiquity. Nor does he perceive that Petrarch is continually opposing the philosophy of life to the philosophy of the schools. It is true he defends Petrarch against the more obvious absurdities of scholastic philosophy; but, like his opponents, philosophy for him is nothing but the trick, we cannot say the art, of reasoning, of dialectic.[536] While Petrarch with an immense and admirable courage bravely dares to attack the tyranny of Aristotle in the world of thought, he remains for Boccaccio "the most worthy authority in all things of importance."[537] And so, for example, when Aristotle affirms that the founders of religion were the poets, Boccaccio does not hesitate to oppose this theory to the theologians of his time.[538] Where in fact Petrarch shows himself really superior to the vulgar prejudices of his time his disciple cannot follow him. For instance, in regard to astrology: Boccaccio attributed an immense importance to it, but Petrarch never misses a chance of ridiculing it even in his letters to Boccaccio.[539] Nevertheless Boccaccio remains persuaded that the art of astrology combines in itself much truth, and at any rate rests on a solid basis. If it sometimes deceives us, we must seek the cause in the greatness of the heavens, so difficult to explore, and in the imperfect knowledge we have of the movements and conjunctions of the planets.[540]

In all these things and in many others Boccaccio is little more than Petrarch's disciple, following him without discrimination, more violent in his abuse, more extreme in his advocacy of those things or professions or ideas or people whom his master had come to consider bad or good, reasonable or unreasonable. And it is in the Latin works that we find him most a disciple, really obeying orders that he has by no means understood, compiling with an immense and heroic labour a vast collection of facts or supposed facts which have no relation to one another, and reformed and revivified by no composing or commanding idea, are for the most part just a heap of dead and grotesque extravagances that for us at least can have no meaning.

Let me confess it at once: after labouring with an immense weariness through the whole of these works in Latin, I have found but one complete work and two fragments which seem to have been written with any personal conviction: the Eclogues, parts of the De Montibus, and the fourteenth book of the De Genealogiis Deorum. The rest are vast compilations, made, one cannot say without enthusiasm, for nothing but an immense enthusiasm could have carried him through such a labour, but without any unifying idea, without personal conviction or art or delight. They are the notebooks of an omnivorous but indiscreet and undiscerning reader.[541]

The earliest among them, as we may think,[542] the De Claris Mulieribus, constitutes as it were the transition from the writings full of imagination and life in the vulgar tongue to the works of erudition. Its chief purpose would seem to be rather to entertain and to amuse women than to write history or biography, and though now and then a more serious idea might seem to discover itself, it remains for the most part a wretched and awkward piece of work, in which virtue and vice are dealt with and distinguished, if at all, to hide the droll pleasantries which are intended to divert the reader. In this Boccaccio was successful, and the book had a great vogue in spite of its absurdity.[543]

The idea of the work was, as he confesses in the proem suggested to him by Petrarch's De Viris Illustribus. Ordered chronologically, beginning with Eve, much space is given to women of antiquity—Greek, Roman, and Barbarian, little to Jewesses and Christians, saints and martyrs, because, says Boccaccio, "I wish to spare them the neighbourhood of Pagans." He has little to say either, of the women of his own and the preceding age. He mentions, however, Pope Joan, the virtuous Gualdrada,[544] the Empress Constance, mother of Frederic II, and Queen Giovanna of Naples, whom he praises for her personality and character as one of the most remarkable women of his time.

But it is in dealing with the more modern characters that he dates his work for us. We find there the same contempt for, the same aversion from women in general as have already come upon in the Corbaccio and the Vita di Dante. It is possible that his contempt in some sort excuses, or at least explains, the wretchedness of this work. For if it was written for women, we know that he considered that culture and learning were not only useless to women, but even harmful, since they helped them to evil. And he himself tells us with the most amazing humour or effrontery that he has composed this work "less with a view to general usefulness than for the greater honour of the sex,"[545] yet, as we shall see, he abuses women roundly on almost every possible occasion, and introduces a tale like that of Paolina, which would not be out of place in the Decameron.

"Paolina, the Roman lady," says Boccaccio, "lived in the reign of Tiberius CÆsar, and above all the ladies of her time she was famous for the beauty of her body and the loveliness of her face, and, married as she was, she was reputed the especial mirror of modesty. She cared for nothing else, she studied no other thing, save to please her husband and to worship and reverence Anubis, god of the Egyptians, for whom she had so much devotion, that in everything she did she hoped to merit his grace whom she so much venerated. But, as we know, wherever there is a beautiful woman there are young men who would be her lovers, and especially if she be reputed chaste and honest, so here a young Roman fell in love beyond hope of redemption with the beautiful Paolina. His name was Mundo, he was very rich, and of the noblest family in Rome. He followed her with his eyes, and with much amorous and humble service as lovers are wont to do, and with prayers too, and with promises and presents, but he found her not to be won, for that she, modest and pure as she was, placed all her affection in her husband, and considered all those words and promises as nothing but air. Mundo, seeing all this, almost hopeless at last, turned all his thoughts to wickedness and fraud."

"It seems that Paolina used to visit almost every day the Temple of Isis, where, with continual oblations and sacred offerings, she worshipped and honoured the god Anubis with the greatest devotion; which, when the young man knew of it, love showed him a way, and he thought and imagined in his heart an unheard-of evil. Telling himself then that the priests and ministers of Anubis would be able to assist and favour his desires, he went to them, and after many prayers and many rich gifts opened to them the matter. And it happened as he wished. For when Paolina next came to the temple the most venerable high priest himself, in a quiet and humble voice, told her that the god Anubis had appeared to him in the night and had bidden him say to her that he, Anubis himself, was well pleased and delighted with her devotion, and that in that temple where she worshipped him he would, for her good and repose of heart, speak with her in the darkness of night. Now when Paolina heard this from so venerable a priest, judging that this had come to her though her devotion and holiness, she rejoiced without measure at the words, and returning home told all to her husband, who, like a fool, believing all to be true, consented that she should spend the following night in the temple. And so it befell at nightfall Paolina came to the preordained place, and after solemn ceremonies and holy prayers alone she entered the rich bed to await Anubis, the god of her devotion. And when she had fallen asleep, came, introduced by the priests, Mundo, covered with the vestments and ornaments of Anubis and full of the most ardent desire; then with a soft voice, taking her in his arms, he awakened her.[546] And Mundo, in the voice of Anubis, seeing her afraid and confused at first waking, bade her be of good heart, saying that he was Anubis whom she had for so long venerated and worshipped, and that he was come from heaven because of her prayers and devotions that he might lie with her, and of her have a son a god like to himself. Which, when Paolina heard, before all else she asked if it were the custom of the supernal powers to mix themselves with mortals; to whom Mundo answered, even so, and gave the example of Jove, who had descended from heaven and passed through the roof where DanÄe lay, into her lap, from which intercourse Perseus, now in heaven, was born. And hearing this Paolina most joyfully consented. Then Mundo, all naked, entered into the bed of Anubis, and so won the desired embraces and kisses and pleasures; and when it was dawn he left her, saying that she had that night conceived a son. And when it was day Paolina arose, and, carried by the priests, returned to her house, believing everything and recounting all to her foolish husband, who received his wife joyfully with the greatest honour, thinking that she would be the mother of a god. Nor would either have doubted this but for the want of caution on the part of the too ardent Mundo. For it seemed to him that Paolina had returned his embraces with the greatest readiness and delight, and thinking therefore that he had conquered her modesty and hoping to enjoy her again, he went to her one day in the temple, and coming close to her whispered, 'Blessed art thou who hast conceived of the god Anubis.' But the result was quite other than he had expected. For stupefied beyond measure, Paolina, bringing all things to her remembrance that had befallen on that night, understood the fraud, and altogether broken-hearted told her husband, opening all her thoughts; and he went immediately in the greatest sorrow and distress to Tiberius CÆsar. And CÆsar ordered that all the priests should be slain with grievous torments, and that Mundo should be sent into exile; and as for the simple and deceived Paolina, she became the laughing-stock of the Roman people."

Such is one of the stories of the De Claris Mulieribus. But though it be one of the best tales there, and indeed we may compare it with a famous story in the Decameron,[547] it is by no means characteristic of the whole book, which has its more serious side, for Boccaccio uses his facts, his supposed facts, often enough to admonish his contemporaries, and therefore to some extent the work may be said to have had a moral purpose.

Yet after all, what chiefly interests us in an inferior piece of work is the view of woman we find there. And strangely enough, in this book so full of mere foolishness and unhappy scolding we find a purer and more splendid praise of woman than anywhere else in his work. "A woman," he tells us, "can remain pure in the midst of corruptions and every horror and vice as a ray of sunlight remains pure even when it falls on a filthy puddle." Yes, they can do so, and that he admits it, is at least something, but if we may judge from this book it was by no means his opinion that commonly they do. For he is always pointing in scorn at the women of his time. He tells of the death of Seneca's wife, who killed herself that she might not survive her husband, in order that he may preach to the widows of his day, who do not hesitate, we learn, to remarry, "not twice nor thrice, but five or six times." Again, he tells the story of Dido more according to the legends that had grown up around it than according to the Æneid, in order that it may be an example "above all among Christians" to those widows who take a third or fourth husband.[548] Having been betrayed by a widow, he is as personally suspicious of and vindictive against them as the elder Mr. Weller.Nor is he sparing in his abuse of women in general. They can only keep a secret of which they are ignorant, he tells us. And like many men who have lived disorderly, he puts an extraordinary, a false, value on chastity. For after recommending all parents to bring up their daughters chastely, which is sane and right, he bids women guard their chastity even to the death, adding that they should prefer a certain death to an uncertain dishonour.[549] And after giving more than one example to bear this out, he cites the women of the Cimbri, who, when their husbands fled, besought the Romans to let them enter the house of the Vestals, and when this was denied them killed themselves after murdering their children. Nor does he ever cease to deplore the luxury and coquetry of women, blaming the Roman Senate when, in honour of Volumnia, mother of Coriolanus, who had saved the Republic, it allowed matrons to wear earrings. For luxury, says he, is the ruin of women, and so of men also, for the world belongs to men, but men to women.

Again and again he returns to the attitude he assumed in the Decameron,[550] but without its gaiety. Man is the more perfect and the firmer and stronger: how then can a woman do else but yield to her lover? If there are exceptions it is because some women partake of the nature of man, Sulpicia, for instance, who was, he says, "rather a man than a woman," and indeed some women have a man's soul in a woman's body. Nor does he omit any sort or kind of temperament. He shows us the courageous woman in Sofonisba, the voluptuous in Cleopatra, the chaste in Gualdrada, the simple in Paolina, the proud in Zenobia, the resigned in Costanza, the wise in Proba, the intriguer in Poppea, the generous in Sempronia.[551] He writes three hundred lives, and in every one we find the same sentiments of passionate interest, suspicion, distrust. If it were possible to gather from this vast depository the type of woman Boccaccio himself preferred, we should find, I think, that she was by no means the intelligent, learned, energetic, independent, and strong-willed woman that negatively, as it were, he praises, for to him she would seem not a woman but a kind of man. No, he remains to worship the beautiful, subtle, credulous, and distracting creature that he had found in that Fiammetta who had betrayed him,—in two minds during a single heart's beat, cruel and sensual too, eager to love and without responsibility, afraid of the dark, but ready to do anything in things to her mind; in fact, the abused heroine of all his books. But while he adores her, he makes fun of her, he scorns her, he curses her, he hates her, yet in a moment she will be in his arms.

It was to one such he thought to dedicate this book of Famous Ladies,[552] to that Queen Giovanna of Naples, the granddaughter of King Robert the Wise, who had been the father of his own Fiammetta. But in the last chapter of the book, which is a long panegyric in her honour, he praises her not as a woman but as a great and powerful king. We do not know, alas! what he really thought of her, for eager Guelf and Angevine as he always was, he would be the last to tell us the truth, if it were evil, about this unhappy lady, and here at least his work is so full of praise that there is no room for judgment. If he had once spoken evil of her[553] he has here made amends, but in such a way that we are in no way enlightened and remain as always at the mercy of the chroniclers.[554]

If we needed any evidence other than the works themselves that these compilations in Latin worried and bored Boccaccio, we should find it in the De Casibus Virorum, a vast work in nine books, which was taken up and put aside in disgust not less than three times, and at last only completed by the continual urgings of Petrarch, who, not understanding the disgust of the creative artist for this kind of book-making, was reduced to reply to the protests of Boccaccio that "man was born for labour."[555] The De Casibus Virorum is certainly a more considerable work than the De Claris Mulieribus, but it is without the occasional liveliness of the earlier work, as we see it, for instance, in the story of Paolina, and is in fact merely an enormous compilation, as I have said, made directly under the influence of Petrarch, who, in imitation of the ancients, was always willing to discourse concerning the instability of Fortune. It was a theme which suited his peculiar genius, and in the De Viris Illustribus and the De Remediis Utriusque FortunÆ we see him at his best in this manner.[556] But for Boccaccio such moralising became a mere drudgery, a mere heaping together of what he had read but not digested. Eager to follow in Petrarch's footsteps, however, he took up the same theme as the subject of an historical work, in which he sets out to show the misfortunes of famous men. Beginning with Adam and Eve—for he admits a few women—he passes in review with an enormous languor that makes the book one of the most wearying in all literature the personages of fable and legend and history, treating all alike, down to his own time. Sometimes he is merely dull, sometimes absurd, sometimes theatrical, but always lifeless in these accounts of the tragic ends of "Famous Men" or of their fall from power. He is never simple, nor does he take his work simply; by every trick he had used in his creative work he tries in vain to give this book some sort of life. He sees his characters in vision, then, in imitation of Petrarch, he interrupts the narrative to preach, to set down tedious moral sentiments—that bad habit of his old age—or philosophical conclusions, or to lose himself in long digressions upon a thousand and one subjects—on riches, on fortune, on happiness, on rhetoric, on the lamentable condition of Rome, on the sadness (acedia) of writers, of which Petrarch had cured him, or again in defence of poetry, never choosing a subject, however, that had not been already treated by Petrarch, except it be woman, whom he again attacks, more soberly perhaps, but infinitely more tediously, warning us against her wiles in the manner of a very minor prophet. As long as he is a mere historian, a mere compiler, a mere scholar, he remains almost unreadable, but as soon as he returns to life, to what he has seen with his own eyes, even in this uncouth jargon, this Church Latin, he becomes an artist, a man of letters, and we find then without surprise that one of the last episodes he recounts, the history of Filippa la Catanese was, even in the seventeenth century, still read apparently with the greatest delight, for very many editions were published of this fragment of his book, of which I have already spoken.[557]

Certainly the most original and probably the best of Boccaccio's Latin works in prose is the De Genealogiis Deorum, with which is generally printed the De Montibus, Sylvis, etc. The first, however, is really but a mass of facts and confused details quite undigested and set forth without any unity, while the latter is an alphabetical dictionary of ancient geography to assist those who read the Latin poets.[558] At the time these books appeared, however, such matters were a novelty, and we have in them the first complete manual of an ancient science and the first dictionary of geography of the modern world. I say of the modern world, yet though we cannot but admire their erudition and the patient research of the author, these do not suffice to place these works really above the meagre compilations of the Middle Age,[559] yet we find there perhaps a change of method which makes them important. Both books are, however, full of credulities, they altogether lack judgment and any system, and can therefore scarcely be said to belong to humanism.

In the De Genealogiis Deorum Boccaccio gathers every mythological story he can find, and would explain them all by means of symbols and allegories, and in doing this he very naturally provoked the fervent applause of his contemporaries.[560] But what renders the volume really interesting and valuable to us is the eager and passionate defence of poetry which forms its epilogue.

Boccaccio had always fought valiantly in defence of "poetry," by which he understood the art of literature, and the new learning, the knowledge of antiquity. This art, for it was by no means yet a science, had many more enemies than friends. To a great extent Petrarch refused to meet these foes, considering them as beneath his notice; it was left for Boccaccio to defend not only letters, but Petrarch and his Muse. To this defence he consecrates two whole books of the De Genealogiis Deorum, the fourteenth and fifteenth, and there he takes under his protection not only the poets of antiquity, but poetry in general and his own occupation with mythology. He pounds away with much success at the scholastic philosophers and theologians, who had no idea that they were already dead and damned, and while they declared poetry to be a sheer tissue of fables he busily dug their graves or heaped earth upon them. He left really nothing undone. He attacked their morality, and where so much was an absurdity of lies that was easy; but he appealed too to S. Augustine and S. Jerome, which was dangerous;[561] and at last, somewhat embarrassed by certain Latin poets who had proved to be too involved in their frivolity to defend, he abandoned them to their fate, reluctantly, it is true, but he abandoned them, and among these were Plautus, Terence, whom he had copied with his own hand, and Ovid, who had been the companion of his youth. The men whom Petrarch refused to touch lest he should soil his hands had to be content with these.

In Boccaccio's definition of the poet, which owed very much to Petrarch we may think, he comprehended the philosopher, the mystic, the prophet—especially the mystic; for he is much concerned with allegory and the hidden meaning of words. For him the work of the poet, and truly, is with words, but with words only. He must find new material if he can it is true, but, above all, he must dress it in long-sought-out words and rhythms that shall at once hide and display the real meaning. He seems to leave nothing to the moment, to spontaneous feeling. The true mistress of the poet does not enter into his calculations; yet there is more spontaneity in the Decameron than in all Petrarch's work. Still he lays stress on that truly Latin gift, the power to describe or contrive a situation which will hold and excite men.

What he most strongly insists upon, however, is the hidden meaning of the ancient poets. He declares that only a fool can fail to see allegories in the works of antiquity.[562] One must be mad not to see, in the Bucolics, the Georgics, and the Æneid of Virgil, allegories, though we may not certainly read them.[563] Is it not thus, he asks, that Dante has hidden in the Comedy the mysteries of the Catholic religion? Are there not allegories in the work of his master Petrarch?[564]

He turns from Petrarch to Homer, whom he declares he has always by him. He speaks of Pilatus, to whom he says he owes much: "A little man but great in learning, so deep in the study of great matters that emperors and princes bore witness that none as learned as he had appeared for many centuries." He closes the book with an appeal to Ugo, King of Cyprus and Jerusalem, who had begged him to write this work, which is a truly marvellous cyclopÆdia of learning and mythology, with this defence of poetry and poets added to it in the two last books, which are later than the rest.[565]It is not, however, in the De Genealogiis but in the De Montibus, Sylvis, Lacubus, Fluminibus, Stagnis seu Paludis, de Nominibus Maris that we have the true type of these works. They are all really dictionaries of learning and legend, but it is only this that is actually in the form of a dictionary, the various subjects being set forth and described in alphabetical order.

The enormous popularity of these works in their day is witnessed by the numerous editions through which they passed both in Latin and Italian in Italy and abroad. They were the textbooks of the early Renaissance, and we owe Boccaccio, as one of the great leaders of that movement, all the gratitude we can give him; all the more that the work he began has been so fruitful that we can scarcely tolerate the works that guided its first steps.