The Decameron, vol. 1 | Page 7

the lady, who,
though married, proved no Laura, and forthwith returned his love in equal measure. Their
liaison lasted several years, during which Boccaccio recorded the various phases of their
passion with exemplary assiduity in verse and prose. Besides paying her due and discreet
homage in sonnet and canzone, he associated her in one way or another, not only with the
Filocopo (his prose romance of Florio and Biancofiore, which he professes to have
written to pleasure her), but with the Ameto, the Amorosa Visione, the Teseide, and the
Filostrato; and in L'Amorosa Fiammetta he wove out of their relations a romance in
which her lover, who is there called Pamfilo, plays Aeneas to her Dido, though with
somewhat less tragic consequences. The Proem to the Decameron shews us the
after-glow of his passion; the lady herself appears as one of the "honourable company,"
and her portrait, as in the act of receiving the laurel wreath at the close of the Fourth Day,
is a masterpiece of tender and delicate delineation.
Boccaccio appears to have been recalled to Florence by his father in 1341; and it was
probably in that year that he wrote L'Amorosa Fiammetta and the allegorical prose
pastoral (with songs interspersed) which he entitled Ameto, and in which Fiammetta
masquerades in green as one of the nymphs. The Amorosa Visione, written about the
same time, is not only an allegory but an acrostic, the initial letters of its fifteen hundred
triplets composing two sonnets and a ballade in honour of Fiammetta, whom he here for
once ventures to call by her true name. Later came the Teseide, or romance of Palamon
and Arcite, the first extant rendering of the story, in twelve books, and the Filostrato, nine
books of the loves and woes of Troilus and Cressida. Both these poems are in ottava rima,
a metre which, if Boccaccio did not invent it, he was the first to apply to such a purpose.
Both works were dedicated to Fiammetta. A graceful idyll in the same metre, Ninfale
Fiesolano, was written later, probably at Naples in 1345. King Robert was then dead, but
Boccaccio enjoyed the favour of Queen Joan, of somewhat doubtful memory, at whose
instance he hints in one of his later letters that he wrote the Decameron. Without
impugning Boccaccio's veracity we can hardly but think that the Decameron would have
seen the light, though Queen Joan had withheld her encouragement. He had probably
been long meditating it, and gathering materials for it, and we may well suppose that the
outbreak of the plague in 1348, by furnishing him with a sombre background to heighten
the effect of his motley pageant, had far more to do with accelerating the composition
than aught that Queen Joan may have said.
That Boccaccio was not at Florence during the pestilence is certain; but we need not

therefore doubt the substantial accuracy of his marvellous description of the state of the
stricken city, for the course and consequences of the terrible visitation must have been
much the same in all parts of Italy, and as to Florence in particular, Boccaccio could have
no difficulty in obtaining detailed and abundant information from credible eye-witnesses.
The introduction of Fiammetta, who was in all probability at Naples at the time, and in
any case was not a Florentine, shews, however, that he is by no means to be taken
literally, and renders it extremely probable that the facetious, irrepressible, and privileged
Dioneo is no other than himself. At the same time we cannot deem it either impossible, or
very unlikely, that in the general relaxation of morale, which the plague brought in its
train, refuge from care and fear was sought in the diversions which he describes by some
of those who had country-seats to which to withdraw, and whether the "contado" was that
of Florence or that of Naples is a matter of no considerable importance. (1) It is probable
that Boccaccio's father was one of the victims of the pestilence; for he was dead in 1350,
when his son returned to Florence to live thenceforth on the modest patrimony which he
inherited. It must have been about this time that he formed an intimacy with Petrarch,
which, notwithstanding marked diversity of temperament, character and pursuits, was
destined to be broken only by death. Despite his complaints of the malevolence of his
critics in the Proem to the Fourth Day of the Decameron, he had no lack of appreciation
on the part of his fellow-citizens, and was employed by the Republic on several missions;
to Bologna, probably with the view of averting the submission of that city to the Visconti
in 1350; to Petrarch at Padua in March 1351, with a letter from the Priors announcing his
restitution to citizenship, and inviting