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.