To the sources whence they have flowed may be partly ascribed the immorality of the tales of Boccaccio, and the introduction of numerous stories where our disapprobation of the crime is overlooked, in the delight we experience from the description of the ingenuity, by which it was accomplished. This may also be in some degree accounted for by the character of the author, and manners of the time. But that the relation of such stories should be assigned to ladies, or represented as told in their presence,' and that the work, immediately on its appearance, should have become avowedly popular among all classes of readers, is not so much to be imputed to popular rudeness, as to a particular event of the author's age. Just before Boccaccio wrote, the customs and manners of his fellow-citizens underwent a total alteration, owing to the plague which

Antiche.-1. See Novelle letterarie, 1755.-2. Historia de Praeliis, Nectanebus and Olympia.-3. Byzantine Greek source (cf. Landau, 91). -8. German poem, Frauentreue.-9. Provençal story of Cabestaing e della contessa di Roussillon.-10. Seven Wise Masters.

5TH DAY. No. 1. Theocritus.-3. Byzantine Greek source.—Lai du Laustic of Marie de France.-7. The Eneis.-8. Helinandus.—10. A puleius.

6TH DAY. No. 3. Seven Wise Masters-Oriental tale of Nussereddin Hatscha.

7TH DAY. No. 2. Apuleius-Le Cuvier, Fabliau.-4. Seven Wise Masters-Discipl. Clericalis, Alphonsus.-5. Du chevalier qui fist sa fame confesse, fabliau.-6. Seven Wise Masters-Discipl. Cleric.-7. De la bourgeoise d'Orleans, etc. fabliau.-8. Pantschatantra and other Oriental tales-Des tresces, fabliau.-9. La dame qui fait accroire à son mari qu'il a révé, fabliau.

8TH DAY. No. 1. Le bouchier d'Abbeville, fabliau.-4. Du prestre et de la dame, fabliau.—3. Fabliau de Coquaigne.-4. Le prêtre et Alison, fabliau.-7. Somadeva.-8. De la dame qui attrapa un prêtre, un prêvot, etc., fabliau.-10. Gesta Romanorum-Discipl. Cleric.

9TH DAY. No. 3. Aucassin et Nicolette.-6. De Gombert et de deux clercs, fabliau.--10. De la damoiselle qui volt voler en l'air, fabliau. 10TH DAY. No. 1. Gesta Romanorum-Busone da Gubbio- Barlaam e Josaphat.. -3. Oriental source.-8. Seven Wise Masters-Gesta Romanorum-Discipl. Cleric.-9. Busone da Gubbio.

It is evident that Boccaccio afterwards became ashamed of the licentiousness of the Decameron, and uneasy at the bad moral tendency of some of its stories. In a letter to Maghinardo de Cavalcanti, marshal of Sicily, which is quoted by Tiraboschi, Boccaccio, speaking of his De cameron, says, "sane quod inclitas mulieres tuas domesticas, nugas meas legere permieris non laudo ; quin immo quæso, per fidem tuam, ne feceris."

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had prevailed in Florence, in the same way as the surviving inhabitants of Lisbon became more dissolute after their earthquake, and the Athenians after the plague by which their city was afflicted. (Thucydides, book 2nd.) "Such," says Boccaccio himself in his introduction, was the public distress, that laws divine and human were no longer regarded." And we are farther informed by Warton, on the authority of contemporary authors, that the women who had outlived this fatal malady, having lost their husbands and parents, gradually threw off those customary formalities and restraints which had previously regulated their conduct. To females the disorder had been peculiarly fatal, and from want of attendants of their own sex, the ladies were obliged to take men alone into their service, which contributed to destroy their habits of delicacy, and gave an opening to unsuitable freedoms. "As to the monasteries," continues Warton, it is not surprising that Boccaccio should have made them the scenes of his most libertine stories. The plague had thrown open the gates of the cloister. The monks and nuns wandered abroad, partaking of the common liberties of life and the world, with an eagerness proportioned to the severity of former restraint. When the malady abated, and the religious were compelled to return to their cloisters, they could not forsake their attachment to secular indulgence. They continued to practise the same free course of life, and would not submit to the disagreeable and unsocial injunctions of their respective orders. Contemporary historians give a dreadful picture of the unbounded debaucheries of the Florentines on this occasion, and ecclesiastical writers mention this period as the grand epoch of the relaxation of monastic discipline."

That ecclesiastical abuses and immorality afforded ample scope for satire, does not require to be proved; but that Boccaccio should have dared to expose them, is the second, and perhaps the most curious problem, connected with the history of the Decameron. It would appear, however, that the geniuses of every country in that age, when papal authority was at its height, employed themselves in satirizing the church. We have already seen the liberty that was taken in this respect, by the authors of the Fabliaux; and their contemporary, Jean de Meung, in

his Roman de la Rose, introduces Faux Semblant habited as a monk. In England, about 1350, the corruptions and abuses of religion, and the absurdities of superstition, couched, it is true, under a thick veil of allegorical invention, were ridiculed with much spirit and humour in Langland's "Visions of Piers Plowman," while the Sompnour's tale in Chaucer openly exposed the tricks and extortions of the mendicant friars. At first sight it may appear, that the freedom of Boccaccio was more extraordinary than that of the Trouveurs, of Chaucer, or Longland, as he wrote so near the usual seat of church authority; but it must be recollected, that when Boccaccio attacks the abuses of Rome, it is not properly the church that he vilifies, as the pontifical throne had been transferred from Italy to Avignon, half a century previous to the composition of the Decameron. The former capital is spoken of in similar terms by the gravest writers who were contemporary with Boccaccio. Thus Petrarch [sonnett 107] terms it,

"Gia Roma, or Babilonia falsa e ria."

The whole city was excommunicated in 1327, and, according to all the authors of the period, presented a terrible scene of vice and confusion. Hence the frequent attacks by Boccaccio on Rome, so far from being considered as marks of disrespect, may be considered as proofs of his zeal for Christianity, or at least for the church to which he belonged. Besides, at that period no inquisition existed in Italy, and authors were not accused of heresy for defaming the monks. Much of Boccaccio's satire, too, is directed against the friars, who wandered about as preachers and confessors, and were no favourites of the regular clergy, whom they deprived of profits and inheritances. The church was also aware that the novelists wrote merely for the sake of pleasantry, and without any desire of reformation:-" Ce n'est point," says Mad. de Staël [De la Litterature, ch. 10], sous un point de vue philosophique, qu'ils attaquent les abus de la religion: ils n'ont pas comme quelques-uns de nos écrivains, le bût de réformer les défauts dont ils plaisantent; ce qu'ils veulent seulement c'est s'amuser d'autant plus que le sujet est plus sérieux. C'est la ruse des enfans envers leur pedagogues; ils leur obéissent à condition qu'il

leur soit permis de s'en moquer." Yet still, had printing been invented in the age of Boccaccio, and had he published the Decameron on his personal responsibility, his boldness would be totally inexplicable: But it will be remarked, that the Decameron could only be privately circulated, that it was not published for a hundred years after the death of the author, and though the office of an editor might be sufficiently perilous, he would not, even if discovered, have undergone the severity of punishment which would perhaps have been inflicted on the author.

The Italian novelist has been highly extolled for the beautiful and appropriate manner in which he has introduced his stories, which are so much in unison with the gaiety of the scenes by which the narrators are surrounded. In the beginning of the first day he informs us, that, in the year 1348, Florence was visited by the plague, of the effects of which he gives an admirable description, imitated from Thucydides. During its continuance, seven young ladies accidentally met in the church of St. Mary. At the suggestion of Pampinea, the eldest of their number, they resolved on leaving the city which was thus terribly afflicted. Having joined to their company three young men, who were their admirers, and who entered the chapel during their deliberation, they retired to a villa two miles distant from Florence. A description of the beauty of the grounds, the splendour of the habitation, and agreeable employments of the guests, forms a pleasing contrast to the awful images of misery and disease that had been previously presented. The first scene is indeed one of death and desolation, and neither Thucydides [iii. 47, etc.] nor Lucretius [vi. 1136, etc.] have painted the great scourge of human nature in colours more sombre and terrific: but it changes to pictures the most delightful and attractive, of gay fields, clear fountains, wooded hills, and magnificent castles. Bembo has remarked the charming variety in the descriptions, which commence and terminate so many days of the Decameron, (Prose, lib. 2,) and which possess for the Florentines a local truth and beauty which we can scarcely appreciate. The abode to which the festive band first retire, may be yet recognized in the Poggio Gherardi; the palace described in the prologue to the third day, is the

Villa Palmieri, and the valley so beautifully painted near the conclusion of the sixth, is that on which the traveller yet gazes with rapture from the summit of Fiesole. In these delicious abodes the manner of passing the time seems in general to have been this:-Before the sun was high, a repast was served up, which appears to have corresponded to our breakfast, only it consisted chiefly of confections and wine. After this, some went to sleep, while others amused themselves in various pastimes. About mid-day they all assembled round a delightful fountain, where a sovereign being elected to preside over this entertainment, each related a tale. The party consisting of ten, and ten days of the fortnight during which this mode of life continued, being partly occupied with story-telling, the number of tales amounts to a hundred; and the work itself has received the name of the Decameron. A short while after the novels of the day were related, the company partook of a supper, or late dinner, and the evening concluded with songs and music.

Boccaccio was the first of the Italians who gave a dramatic form to this species of composition. In this respect the Decameron has a manifest advantage over the Cento Novelle Antiche, and, in the simplicity of the frame, is superior to the eastern fables, which, in this respect, Boccaccio appears to have imitated. Compared with those compositions which want this dramatic embellishment, it has something of the advantage which a regular comedy possesses over unconnected scenes. Hence, the more natural and defined the plan the more the characters are diversified, and the more the tales are suited to the characters, the more conspicuous will be the skill of the writer, and his work will approach the nearer to perfection. It has been objected to the plan of Boccaccio, that it is not natural that his company should be devoted to merriment, when they had just interred their nearest relations, or abandoned them in the jaws of the pestilence, and when they themselves were not secure from the distemper, since. it is represented as raging in the country with almost equal violence as in the city. But, in fact, it is in such circumstances that mankind are most disposed for amusemen; amid general calamities every thing is lost but