Convito.
[577] See supra, [p. 183, n. 1.]
[578] For date of composition see supra, [p. 183, n. 2.]
[579] He seems to have copied too the Vita Nuova. Barbi in his edition of the Vita Nuova, p. xiv et seq., speaks of Boccaccio's MSS. relating to Dante, and notes in a MS. Laurenziano (xc, sup. 136), "scripto per lo modo che lo scripse Messere Giovanni Boccaccio da Certaldo."
[580] The Carme is given by Corazzini, op. cit., p. 53.
[581] Fam., XXI, 15.
[582] Here we see Petrarch's absurd hatred of the vulgar tongue. How a man so intelligent and so far in advance of his age in all else could deceive himself so easily as to believe that Latin in his day could be anything but a tongue for priests to bark in is difficult to understand. Apart from the Liturgy and the Divine Office and a few hymns and religious works maybe, no work of art has been produced in it. Had Petrarch been an ecclesiastic, it might be comprehensible; but he was the first man of the modern world. No doubt he was dreaming of the Empire.
[583] ? The Carme.
[584] It must be observed that the Vita appears in many forms, but it will be enough for us to consider the two principal, both of which claim to be by Boccaccio. The whole question is thoroughly dealt with by Macri Leone in his edition of the Vita (Firenze, 1888), and more briefly by Witte, The two versions of Boccaccio's life of Dante in Essays on Dante (London, 1898), p. 262 et seq., and by Dr. E. Moore, Dante and his early Biographers (London, 1890).
Of these two versions the longer we shall call the Vita, the shorter the Compendio, but the latter is by no means a mere epitome of the former, for some of the episodes are more fully treated in it, while others are ignored. We shall find ourselves in agreement with the great majority of modern critics if we regard the Vita as the original and the Compendio as a modification of it executed either by Boccaccio or by another, and if we assert that the Vita is by Boccaccio and the Compendio an unauthorised redraft of it, we shall be supported not only by so great an authority as Macri Leone, but by Biscioni, Pelli, Tiraboschi, Gamba, Baldelli, Foscolo, Paur, Witte (who hesitates to condemn the Compendio altogether), Scartazzini, Koerting, and Dr. Moore. On the other hand, Dionisi and Mussi held that the Compendio was the original and the Vita a rifacimento; while Schaeffer-Boichorst thought both to be the work of Boccaccio, the Vita being the original; and the editors of the Paduan edition of the Divine Comedy (1822) thought both to be genuine, but the Compendio the first draft. Dr. Witte enters into the differences between the two, printing passages in parallel columns; Macri Leone is even fuller in his comparison; Dr. Moore also compares them. Briefly we may say that the Compendio is shorter, that it "hedges" when it can and softens and abbreviates the denunciation of Florence, and omits much: e.g. the Vita's assertion of Dante's devotion to Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Statius, while inserting certain personal suggestions: e.g. that in his later years Dante having quite recovered from his love for Beatrice ran after other women especially in his exile in Lucca, where he became enamoured of a young girl called Pargoletta, and in the Casentino of another who "had a pretty face but was afflicted with a goitre." As for Pargoletta, it is not a proper name at all, as Boccaccio knew, for in the same chapter of the Vita he writes: "in sua pargoletta età." He was incapable of falling into this error, which apparently arose from a confusion of Purgatorio, XXIV, 34-6, and XXXI, 59. In the Compendio the attacks on marriage are not less bitter, only whereas in the Vita they are only against marriage in general, in the Compendio we get an amusing description of the hindrances to Dante's studies caused by his wife's complaints of his solitary habits and her absurd interruptions of his meditations by asking him to pay nurse's wages and see to children's clothes. The Compendio too in all matters concerning Dante's contemporaries is more vague. Thus the Vita (possibly wrongly) tells us that in Verona Dante took refuge with Alberto della Scala; the Compendio, more cautious, says with the "Signore della terra." It also omits the stories concerning Dante at Siena and Paris, and entirely remodels the digressions in chapters ix. and x. of the Vita on Poetry. It omits the extremely characteristic excuse for lechery of the Vita and omits all dates: e.g. that Dante began the Vita Nuova in his twenty-sixth year, as well as the assertion that he was in his later years ashamed of it. There are many other differences also. But it might seem impossible in the face of the evidence brought forward by Macri Leone and others to doubt that the Vita is Boccaccio's work and not the Compendio. We shall therefore here leave the latter and devote ourselves to the former, only remarking that if Boccaccio wrote the Vita it is improbable that he wrote another work on the same subject, since, if he did so, it must have been written in the last two years of his life, for only one work is referred to by him in the Comento, viz. the Trattatello in lode di Dante. We consider then the Compendio as a rifacimento not from Boccaccio's hand. The evidence is thoroughly sifted by Macri Leone, op. cit., whom the reader should consult for a complete treatment of the matter.