[508] Boccaccio's story is told in stanzas of eight lines, and has for its title "Il Filostrato" (love's victim: such was at least the sense Boccaccio attributed to the word). Text in "Le Opere volgari di Giov. Boccaccio," Florence, 1831, 8vo, vol. xiii.
[509] Text in "Complete Works," vol. iii. It is divided into five books and written in stanzas of seven lines, rhyming a b a b b c c. See the different texts of this poem published by the Chaucer Society; also Kitredge, "Chaucer's Language in his Troilus," Chaucer Society, 1891. For a comparison between the English and the Italian texts see Rossetti "Troylus and Cressida, compared with Boccaccio's Filostrato," Chaucer Society, 1875. About one-third of Chaucer's poem is derived from Boccaccio. It is dedicated to Gower and to "philosophical Strode" (see above, p. [290]), both friends of the poet.
[510] Book i. st. 28.
[511] And, as the nurse, gets out of breath, so that he cannot speak:
... O veray God, so have I ronne!
Lo, nece myn, see ye nought how I swete?
Book ii. st. 210. Says the Nurse:
Jesu, what haste! can you not stay awhile?
Do you not see that I am out of breath?
[512] Turned later into English verse by Lydgate, to be read as a supplementary Tale of Canterbury: "Here begynneth the sege of Thebes, ful lamentably told by Johnn Lidgate monke of Bury, annexynge it to ye tallys of Canterbury," MS. Royal 18 D ii. in the British Museum. The exquisite miniatures of this MS. represent Thebes besieged with great guns, fol. 158; Creon's coronation by two bishops wearing mitres and gold copes, fol. 160, see below, p. 499.
[513] Book ii. st. 46.
[514] Book ii. st. 100 ff.