Petrarca. That letter has brought me hither.
Boccaccio. You do then insist on my fulfilling my promise, the moment I can leave my bed. I am ready and willing.
Petrarca. Promise! none was made. You only told me that, if it pleased God to restore you to your health again, you are ready to acknowledge His mercy by the holocaust of your Decameron. What proof have you that God would exact it? If you could destroy the Inferno of Dante, would you?
Boccaccio. Not I, upon my life! I would not promise to burn a copy of it on the condition of a recovery for twenty years.
Petrarca. You are the only author who would not rather demolish another’s work than his own; especially if he thought it better: a thought which seldom goes beyond suspicion.
Boccaccio. I am not jealous of any one: I think admiration pleasanter. Moreover, Dante and I did not come forward at the same time, nor take the same walks. His flames are too fierce for you and me: we had trouble enough with milder. I never felt any high gratification in hearing of people being damned; and much less would I toss them into the fire myself. I might indeed have put a nettle under the nose of the learned judge in Florence, when he banished you and your family; but I hardly think I could have voted for more than a scourging to the foulest and fiercest of the party.
Petrarca. Be as compassionate, be as amiably irresolute, toward your own Novelle, which have injured no friend of yours, and deserve more affection.
Boccaccio. Francesco! no character I ever knew, ever heard of, or ever feigned, deserves the same affection as you do; the tenderest lover, the truest friend, the firmest patriot, and, rarest of glories! the poet who cherishes another’s fame as dearly as his own.
Petrarca. If aught of this is true, let it be recorded of me that my exhortations and entreaties have been successful, in preserving the works of the most imaginative and creative genius that our Italy, or indeed our world, hath in any age beheld.
Boccaccio. I would not destroy his poems, as I told you, or think I told you. Even the worst of the Florentines, who in general keep only one of God’s commandments, keep it rigidly in regard to Dante—