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Updated: June 29, 2025
We have to thank the latter for enriching the literature of his adopted country with a memoir which in the lucid beauty and transparent flow of its style reminds the Italian scholar of the charm of Boccaccio's limpid narrative, and is besides animated with a patriot's enthusiasm and elevated by a statesman's comprehension. A more cordial, heart-warming book we have not for a long time read.
This tale of Boccaccio's gives so admirable an answer to the charge of irreligion which some might make against us if they mistook our intentions, that as we shall not offer any other reply, we have not hesitated to present it entire as it stands to the eyes of our readers.
These dear little ones, carrying the blessed cross and singing the hymns our Master had written for them, went from house to house and church to church, demanding that everything that was vile and base should be delivered up to the flames, and the people, beholding, thought that the angels had indeed come down, and brought forth all their loose pictures and vile books, such as Boccaccio's romances and other defilements, and the children made a splendid bonfire of them in the Grand Piazza, and so thousands of vile things were consumed and scattered.
We all know the story of "Boccaccio's" Jew, who went to Rome an unbeliever, and came back a Christian. There is no need for alarm; it is not my intention to repeat the story. Indeed the only reason for my alluding to it, is to introduce the remark that, at the present day, the Jew would have returned from Rome hardened in heart and unconverted.
It is on the same plan as Boccaccio's "Decamerone," except that the story-tellers are fish-wives going up the Thames in a boat. Imitations of the Italian tales may be found in Hazlitt's "Shakespeare's Library," notably "Romeo and Julietta." Most of these are modernized versions of old tales. Among the characters of Ben Jonson are some good Euphuists.
Although Boccaccio's Teseide furnished the general plot for this Knightes Tale, Chaucer's story is, as Skeat says, "to all intents, a truly original poem." The other pilgrims tell stories in keeping with their professions and characters. Perhaps the next best tale is the merry story of Chanticleer and the Fox. This is related by the Nun's Priest.
It is perfectly true that the work possesses some at least of the qualities of its defects. There are passages which argue a feeling for beauty, none the less real for being of a somewhat conventional order, while we not seldom detect a certain rich luxuriance about the descriptions; but it must be admitted that on the whole the style exhibits most of Boccaccio's faults and few of his merits.
Of these years, then, of disappointment and exile the Divina Commedia was the labor and fruit. A story in Boccaccio's life of Dante, told with some detail, implies, indeed, that it was begun, and some progress made in it, while Dante was yet in Florence begun in Latin, and he quotes three lines of it continued afterward in Italian.
It is surrounded with a stone curb, octagonal in shape, and evidently as ancient as Boccaccio's time. It has a wooden cover, through which is a square opening, and looking down I saw my own face in the water far beneath.
William Spence; another, the Villa dei Tre Visi celebrated in one of Boccaccio's tales belongs to the Earl of Balcarres. This site is much esteemed for the views it commands of the beautiful plains and valleys by which fair Florence is environed.
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