Such an ideal of cultivated society afforded no room for the vivacity of delineation so admirable in Chaucer’s portraits derived from all classes; yet the prologue and the little introductory passages to each day are, with their feeling for landscape and poetic truth, even more delightful than the stories themselves. If, as seems probable, some of these were composed at Naples before the pestilence, this lovely framework must have been an afterthought. Of Boccaccio’s greatness as a master of narrative, nothing need here be said, unless that his progressiveness is even more surprising than his talent. Ten years (1339-49) had sufficed to raise him from the eloquent but confused and hyperbolical style of the Filocopo to the perfection of Italian narrative. He was now the unapproached model of later story-tellers, who can, indeed, produce stronger effects by the employment of stronger means, but have never been able to rival him on his own ground of easy, unaffected simplicity.
Two minor works of Boccaccio, written subsequently to theDecameron, deserve a word of notice—theCorbaccio, a lampoon upon a widow who had jilted him, which does him no credit morally, but evinces much satiric force; and theUrbano, a pretty little romance of the identification of an emperor’s abandoned son—the genuineness of which, however, has sometimes been doubted.
It was the constant destiny of Boccaccio to make epochs—producing something absolutely or virtually new, and tracing out the ways in which his successors, far as they might outstrip him, were bound to walk. We have seen that the heroic, the pastoral, the familiar romance owed, if not their actual birth, at least their first considerable beginnings to him; and his activity was no less important in the domain of narrative poetry. He may not have been the inventor of the octave stanza, but undoubtedly he was the first to show its supreme fitness for narrative, and thus mark out the channel in which the epic genius of Italy has flowed ever since. The peculiar grace of her language, and its affluence of rhymes, adapt it especially to this singularly elegant, if not massive or sublime, form of versification, superior for narrative purposes to the sinuous and digressive terza rima, or to Italian counterfeits of the majestic blank verse of England. It could not be expected that Boccaccio’s attempts should at first display all the perfection his metre is capable of receiving, he is undoubtedly lax and diffuse. Yet all the main recommendations of the octave are discoverable in hisTeseide andFilostrato, poems especially interesting to English readers from the imitation—frequently translation—of them in Chaucer’sKnight’s Tale andTroilus. TheTeseide is the earlier, having been composed shortly after Boccaccio’s return to Florence in 1340 for the gratification of his Neapolitan mistress; while theFilostrato, apparently composed upon his second visit to Naples about 1347, is a disguised satire upon her inconstancy.
Both from the acuteness of feeling thus engendered, and from the rapid progress Boccaccio had in the interim made in the poetic art, theFilostrato is the more powerful and poetical composition; the prosperity of Troilus’s love while returned, for example, is described in the liveliest colours and with the truest feeling. The Teseide, on the other hand, has the advantage of a more dignified and heroic story, known to the English reader, not only from Chaucer, but from Dryden’s imitation of the latter in hisPalamon and Arcite. It also gave the plot to Fletcher’sTwo Noble Kinsmen. Boccaccio’s source is uncertain, but is believed to have been some Greek romance written under the later Roman Empire. If so, he can only have been acquainted with it in a Latin translation, now lost as well as the original. His own poem was translated back into Greek in a miserable Romaic version printed in 1529. For the tale of Troilus and Cressida he had Guido de Colonna’s history of the Trojan war, itself indebted for this episode to an ancient metrical romance.
The little idyllic narrativeNinfale Fiesolano is one of the most attractive of Boccaccio’s minor writings. It relates the breach of “Diana’s law” by one of her nymphs, and its tragical consequences—the suicide of the lover, and the metamorphosis, or rather the assumption of the nymph into the waters of a river; although the fruit of their union survives to become a hero and found the city of Fiesole. If, as is probable, somewhat later than theFilostrato, this pleasing little story evinces Boccaccio’s increasing mastery of the octave couplet, ease of narrative, and power of natural description. Had he continued to compose in verse, he would probably have ranked higher among Italian poets than he does now.
TheAmorosa Visione is an earlier and very different work. It is written in terza rima, and betrays an evident ambition to imitate Dante, while in its turn it has not been without influence on Petrarch’sTrionfi. Like the latter, it testifies to the mediæval love of allegories and stately shows, and may well have aided to inspire the Polifilo of Francesco Colonna. The poet is conducted through a number of visions illustrative of the pomps and vanities of the world, and the poem leaves off just as, by command of his mistress, he is about to attempt the narrow way which he should have taken at first. Written apparently for the entertainment of a courtly circle, and encumbered with fantastic acrostics, it reveals little of the deep feeling of its predecessor or its successor; but if regarded simply as the description of a series of pageants, must be allowed the merits of fertile invention and glowing colour. Boccaccio’s enthusiastic praise of Dante, whom he calls the lord of all science, and the source of everything, if there be anything, excellent in himself, is highly honourable to him.
A good example of Boccaccio’s epic vein is afforded by the prayer of Emilia to Diana in theTeseide, uttered when Palamon and Arcite are about to fight for her sake. For this, as for several other versions, the writer is indebted to Miss Ellen Clerke:
She thus in broken vows 'mid sighs began:
“Chaste Goddess, who dost purify the glades,
And of a maiden train dost lead the van,
And him chastises who thy law evades,
As lost Actæon learned in briefest span,
Who, young and hapless, smit 'mid sylvan shades,
Not by scourge whip, but by thy wrath celestial,
Fled as a stag in transformation bestial.
“Hear, then, my voice, if worthy of thy care,
While I implore by thy divinity,
In triple form, accept my lowly prayer,
And if it be an easy task to thee
To perfect it—I prithee strive, if e’er
Soft pity filled thy heart so cold and free
For maiden client who in prayer addrest thee,
And who for grace or favour did request thee.