Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/110

92 dignified and heroic story, known to the English reader, not only from Chaucer, but from Dryden's imitation of the latter in his Palamon and Arcite. It also gave the plot to Fletcher's Two 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 narrative Ninfale 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 the Filostrato, 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.

The Amorosa 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's Trionfi. Like the latter, it testifies to the mediæval love of allegories and stately shows, and may well have aided to inspire the