[500] Boccaccio also speaks of his journey elsewhere. In a letter to Jacopo da Pizzinghe (Corazzini, op. cit., p. 189) he says: "Incertus Neapoli aliquamdium fueram vere præterito: hinc enim plurimo desiderio trahebar redeundi in patriam, quam autumno nuper elapso indignans liqueram." In another to Niccolò degli Orsini, he says: "Laboriosam magis quam longam, anno præterito perigrinationem intraverim, et casu Neapolim delatus sim, ibi præter opinatum amicos mihi ignotos comperi, a quibus frenatæ domesticæ indignationis meæ impetu, ut starem subsidia præstitere omnia." Cf. Hortis, Studi, u.s., p. 285 note. Hortis is of opinion that the word casu indicates the change of route necessitated by the falsity of Niccolò da Montefalcone. On the dates of these and other letters, see Hortis, u.s. I find myself absolutely in agreement with him.
[501] See letter to Niccolò degli Orsini (Corazzini, op. cit., p. 317).
[502] Corazzini, op. cit., p. 327.
[503] Cf. Corazzini, op. cit., p. 337. We have four letters which Boccaccio wrote during these years: that to Matteo d' Ambrosio, dated "iv Idus Maias," which Hortis (op. cit., p. 285) argues belongs to 1371; that to Orsini, which the same critic gives to June, 1371; that to Jacopo da Pizzinghe, which he gives to the summer of the same year; and that to Piero di Monteforte, dated from Certaldo "Nonis Aprilis," which he gives to 1372. Baldelli, followed by Witte (op. cit., p. xl), thinks the letter to Matteo d' Ambrosio belongs to 1373, and thus argues that Boccaccio was twice in Naples: in the winter of 1370-1, and again in the autumn of 1372 to May, 1373. But Hortis shows it is impossible that the letter to Ambrosio is of May, 1373, since on 19 March, 1373, Boccaccio was in Certaldo when the Bishop Angelo Acciaiuoli committed to him an office—"confidens quam plurimum de fidei puritate providi viri D. Joannis Boccaccii de Certaldo Civis et Clerici Florentini." Cf. Manni, Ist. del Decameron, p. 35, and Hortis, op. cit., pp. 208, n. 1, and 284, n. 3.
[504] On all these works cf. Hortis, Studi sulle opere Latine di G. B. (Trieste, 1879), and on the De Montibus see also Hortis, Acceni alle Scienze Naturali nelle opere di G. B. (Trieste, 1877).
[505] Cf. Hauvette, Recherches sur le Casibus, etc. (Paris, 1901).
[506] Cf. Hortis, Le Donne famose discritte da G. B. (Trieste, 1877).
[507] Cf. F. N. Scott, "De Genealog." of Boccaccio and Sidney's "Arcadia", in Modern Language Notes (Baltimore, 1891), VI, fasc. 4, and Toynbee, The Bibliography of B.'s "A Genealogia Deorum," in Athenæum, No. 3733.
[508] Cf. Mussafia, Il Libro XV della Genealogia Deorum, in Antol. della Critic. Mod. of Morandi (Città di Castello, 1885), p. 334 et seq.
[509] Cf. De Genealog Deorum, XIV, 10, 11, 19; XV, 4, 6. Letter to Niccolò degli Orsini in Corazzini, op. cit., p. 317; Comento sopra Dante, cap. 1.; and cf. Petrarch, Senil., I, 4.