Nothing agrees that's great or generous."
So much for the vulgar. But, as I have already said, beside these elementary discourses we find a vast mass of learning and research that bears eloquent testimony not only to the extent of Boccaccio's reading, but also to his eager and careful study of the works of Dante.
Dr. Toynbee has suggested that it was probably owing to his failing health and energy that he introduced into the Comento so many and so copious extracts from his own previous works, the De Claris Mulieribus,[623] the De Casibus Virorum Illustrium,[624] the De Montibus, Sylvis, Lacubus, etc.,[625] and the De Genealogiis Deorum,[626] but I think probably Boccaccio never gave the matter a thought. His business was to expound, and he used his own previous works as works of reference—the best works of the sort, we must remember, that were to be had in his day. To have named these works—he never does refer to them—would have been useless in those days before the invention of the printing press; and then they were themselves mere collections for the most part, the vast notebooks of his enormous reading.
It is not, however, by any means on them alone he relies, for he uses and lays under contribution, as it might seem almost every writer with whose works he was acquainted.[627] Of these, two are especially notable, namely, Homer and Tacitus. He quotes the former six times in all, four times in the Iliad[628] and twice in the Odyssey;[629] the last quotation from the Iliad being verbatim from the Latin translation of Pilatus which Petrarch had copied, the MS., as we have already noted, being now preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris.[630] As for Tacitus—and Boccaccio is the first modern writer to show any acquaintance with his work—he uses the fifteenth book of the Annals[631] for his account of the death of Lucan, and names his source of information,[632] and books twelve to fifteen for his account of the death of Seneca.[633] The Comento is thus not only a most precious source of information with regard to the Divine Comedy, but a kind of Encyclopædia Dantesca into which the whole learning of the age, the whole reading of Boccaccio had been emptied.
We may perhaps gather something of its significance, its importance, and its extraordinary reputation if we consider for a moment the freedom with which it was exploited by the commentators who came after.[634] Beginning with the Anonimo Fiorentino, who wrote some thirty years after Boccaccio's death, perhaps the worst offender, for he never once mentions Boccaccio's name, while he copies from him page after page, there follow Benvenuto da Imola (1373), Francesco da Buti (1385), who make a very considerable use of his work, the latter especially, while Landino (1481), the best of the Renaissance commentators, freely quotes him,[635] calling him "huomo, et per dottrina, et per costumi, et per essere propinquo a' tempi di Dante, degno di fede." In the sixteenth century Gelli, who lectured before the Academy of Florence between 1541 and 1561, quotes Boccaccio sixty times, "oftener," says Dr. Toynbee, "than he quotes any other commentator save Landino." He more than once declares that Boccaccio has explained a passage so well that he can only repeat his words: "Non saprei io per me trovarci miglior esposizione che quella del Boccaccio." He at least and indeed for the first time appreciates the Comento truly.
Considering then this long chorus of praise, though it be more often the silent praise of imitation than the frank commendation of acknowledgment, it is strange that only four MSS. of the Comento have come down to us, three in the Magliabecchiana and one in the Riccardiana libraries in Florence;[636] while of these only three are complete.[637] Nor is it less surprising that the first printed edition of such a work should not have appeared till 1724.[638] This edition and that by Moutier,[639] which followed it nearly a hundred years later, founded on the same single MS., are of little critical value, and that of Fratticelli, published in 1844, is but a reprint of the Moutier text. It remained for Gaetano Milanesi, that man of herculean labour and vast learning, to produce the first critical text in 1863, three more MSS. of the Comento having been discovered in the meantime. He divided the book into lezioni, which are but doubtfully of any authority; but his text holds the field, and he was not slow or cold in his recognition of the value of the work of one who, almost a contemporary of Dante, had loved and honoured him, not only in writing his life and composing a commentary on his work, but in verse too, as in this inscription for his portrait:—
"Dante Alighieri, a dark oracle
Of wisdom and of art, I am; whose mind
Has to my country such great gifts assign'd
That men account my powers a miracle.