[30] In 1318 Boccaccio di Chellino is spoken of as having been a dweller in the quarter of S. Pier Maggiore for some four years. See Manni, Istoria del Decameron (Firenze, 1742), p. 7, who gives the document. This may mean little, however, for the residence may have been purely formal, and have signified merely that a business was carried on there in his name. But see Crescini, op. cit., pp. 40 and 41, Note 1, and Della Torre, op. cit., pp. 7-14.
[31] Cf. Filocolo, ed. cit., Vol. II, pp. 242-3.
[32] Della Torre, op. cit., p. 2.
[33] Moreover, as we shall see, the story of the "two bears" which in his allegory followed his father and drove himself out of the house—to Naples—seems to make it necessary that they should all have been living together. See infra, p. 14.
[34] In the first page he says: "Vagabondo giovane i Fauni e le Driadi abitatrici del luogo, solea visitare, et elli forse dagli vicini monti avuta antica origine, quasi da carnalità costretto, di ciò avendo memoria, con pietosi affetti gli onorava talvolta...."
[35] The document is given in full in Appendix II. The fact that the parish of S. Pier Maggiore is mentioned proves that when Boccaccio di Chellino was married, he was living therein, for the property was part of the dowry of Margherita di Gian Donato his first wife.
[36] See my Country Walks About Florence (Methuen, 1908), pp. 13-15 Casa di Boccaccio is within sight and almost within hail of Poggio Gherardo, the supposed scene of the first two days of the Decameron.
[37] In the De Genealogiis Deorum, Lib. XV, cap. x., he says "Non dum ad septimum annum deveneram ... vix prima literarum elementa cognoveram...." At this time he was already composing verses, he says.
[38] Cf. Massera, Le più antiche biografie in Zeitschrift für Rom. Phil., XXVII, pp. 310-18. But see Crescini, op. cit., p. 48, note 3; and in reply Della Torre, op. cit., p. 3, note 5.
[39] "Qui ... ferula ... ab incunabulis puellulos primum grammaticæ gradum tentantes cogere consueverat," writes Boccaccio in the letter to Iacobo Pizzinghe. See Corrazini, Le Lett. ed. e ined. di G. B. (Firenze, 1877), p. 196, and Filocolo, ed. cit., I, 75-6. It was probably the Metamorphoses of Ovid that he read with Mazzuoli, though in the Filocolo he speaks of the Ars Amandi! The Metamorphoses were read for the sake of the mythology as well as for the exercise in Latin. Cf. Della Torre, op. cit., p. 4.