Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/233

Rh on real occurrences, generally humorous, though the humour is not always as visible to us as to his contemporaries; but sometimes tragic. Some, as with Boccaccio, are derived from folk-lore in the Gesta Romanorum or the Fabliaux. All are recounted with extreme simplicity and brevity. The art of working up a single incident into a long story by subtle delineation of character, elaborate description, and ingenious plot and underplot, was then unknown. Sacchetti is the straightforward raconteur and nothing more, but he deserves as much praise for the ease of his narrative as for the purity of his style. He can hardly be considered as an imitator of Boccaccio, who is always the poet and man of letters, while Sacchetti rather produces the impression of an ordinary Florentine gentleman telling stories after dinner with no special care for artistic effect, which nevertheless he attains by the plain good sense which bids him go straight to his subject and subordinate minor details to the really essential. His tales are single, not set in a framework like Boccaccio's.

This is not the case with his contemporary Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, author of the Pecorone (Great Stupid), who has exposed himself to ridicule by the quaintness of his introductory machinery. A friar and a nun are supposed to meet weekly in the parlour of a convent, and console themselves for the insuperable obstacles to their attachment by telling stories, upon the merits of which they compliment each other extravagantly. The tales, however, are interesting, well told, and greatly esteemed