Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/526

 Cicero, and endeavoured to copy him. Perhaps there was a sort of affinity between their characters. The Epistolse are of very great importance for the study of Petrarch s life and mind, as well as for the history of his times. Africa is a long poem in hexameters on the campaigns of Scipio, which in places shows the gleam of genius. In the Itinerarium Syriacum, and in another work that is now lost, 1 Petrarch appears as the first geographer of modern times. It is not very certain who was the lady loved by Petrarch. There are some reasons for believing that she was called Laura De Noves, and was the wife of Ugo de Sade, but this is very far from being proved. It appears anyhow that the lady lived at Avignon. The Canzoniere is divided into three parts, the first containing the poems written during Laura s lifetime, the second the poems written after her death, the third the Trionfi. The one and only subject of these poems is love ; but the treatment is full of variety in conception, in imagery, and in sentiment, derived from the most varied impressions of nature. Petrarch s love is real and deep, and to this is due the merit of his lyric verse, which is quite different, not only from that of the Provencal trouba dours and of the Italian poets before him, but also from the lyrics of Dante. Petrarch is a psychological poet, who dives down into his own soul, examines all his feelings, and knows how to render them with an art of exquisite sweetness. The lyrics of Petrarch are no longer transcen dental like Dante s, but on the contrary keep entirely within human limits. In struggles, in doubts, in fears, in disappointments, in griefs, in joys, in fact in everything, the poet finds material for his poetry. The second part of the Canzoniere is the more passionate. The Trionfi are inferior ; it is clear that in them Petrarch tried to imitate the Divina Commedia, but never came near it. The Canzoniere includes also a few political poems, a canzone to Italy, one supposed to be addressed to Cola di Rienzi, and several sonnets against the court of Avignon. These are remarkable for their vigour of feeling, and also for showing that Petrarch had formed the idea of Italianita better even than Alighieri. The Italy which he wooed was different from any conceived by the men of the Middle Ages, and in this also he was a precursor of modern times and of modern aspirations. Petrarch had no decided political idea. He exalted Cola di Rienzi, invoked the emperor Charles IV., praised the Visconti; in fact, his politics were affected more by impressions than by prin ciples ; but above all this reigned constantly the love of Italy, his ancient and glorious country, which in his mind is reunited with Rome, the great city of his heroes Cicero and Scipio. Boccaccio. Boccaccio (1313-1375) had the same enthusiastic love of antiquity and the same worship for the new Italian literature as Petrarch. He was the first, with the help of a Greek born in Calabria, to put together a Latin transla tion of the Iliad arid the Odyssey. His vast classical learning was shown specially in the work De Genealoyia Deorum, in which he enumerates the gods according to genealogical trees constructed on the authority of the various authors who wrote about the pagan divinities. This work marked an era in studies preparatory to the revival of classical learning. And at the same time it opened the way for the modern criticism, because Boccaccio in his researches and in his own judgment was always independent of the authors whom he most esteemed. The Genealogia Deorum is, as Heeren said, an encyclopaedia of mythological knowledge ; and it was the precursor of the great humanistic movement which was developed in the 15th century. Boccaccio was also the first historian of 1 See Hortis, Siv.di sulle Opcre, Latine del Boccaccio, Trieste, 1879, pp. 235, 236. [LITERATURE. women in his De Claris Midieribus. and the first to under take to tell the story of the great unfortunate in his De Casibus Virorum Illustrium. He continued and perfected former geographical investigations in his interesting book De Montibus, Silvis, Fontibus, Lacubus,Fhiminibus, Staynis, el Paludibus, et de Nominibus Maris, for which he made use of Vibius Sequester, but which contains also many new and valuable observations. He also wrote in Latin several eclogues, some letters, and other minor com positions. Of his Italian works his lyrics do not come anywhere near to the perfection of Petrarch s. His sonnets, mostly about love, are quite mediocre. His narrative poetry is better. Although now he can no longer claim the distinction long conceded to him of having invented the octave stanza (which afterwards became the metre of the poems of Boiardo, of Ariosto, and of Tasso), yet he was certainly the first to use it in a work of some length and written with artistic skill, such as is his Teseide. This is a poem in twelve books, and the subject is the love of two Theban youths, Arcita and Palemone, for Emilia, one of the Amazons. We find in it great luxury of description, inflated speeches, much erudition, but little poetry. However, the Teseide is the oldest Italian romantic poem. The Filostrato relates the loves of Troiolo and Griseida (Troilus and Cressicla). It may be that Boccaccio knew the French poem of the Trojan war by Benoit de Sainte-More ; but the interest of the Italian work lies in the analysis of the passion of love, which is treated with a masterly hand. The Ninfale Fiesolano tells the love story of the nymph Mesola and the shepherd Africo. The Amoroso, Visione, a poem in triplets, doubtless owed its origin to the Divina Commedia. The Ameto is a mixture of prose and poetry, and is the first Italian pastoral romance. The Filocopo takes the earliest place among prose romancss. In it Boccaccio tells in a laborious style, and in the most prolix way, the loves of Florio and Biancafiore. Probably for this work he drew materials from a popular source or from a Byzantine romance, which Leonzio Pilato may have mentioned to him. In the Filocopo there is a remarkable exuberance in the mythological part, which damages the romance as an artistic work, but which con tributes to the history of Boccaccio s mind. The Fiam- metta is another romance, about the loves of Boccaccio and Maria d Aquino, a supposed natural daughter of King- Robert, whom he always called by this name of Fiammetta. The Italian work which principally made Boccaccio famous was the Decamerone, a collection of a hundred novels, related by a party of men and women, who had retired to a villa near Florence to escape from the plague in 1348. Novel-writing, so abundant in the preceding cen turies, especially in France, now for the first time assumed an artistic shape. The style of Boccaccio tends to the imitation of Latin, but in him prose first took the form of elaborated art. The rudeness of the old fabliaux gives place to the careful and conscientious work of a mind that lias a feeling for what is beautiful, that has studied the classic authors, and that strives to imitate them as much as possible. Over and above this, in the Decamerone, Boccaccio is a delineator of character and an observer of passions. In this lies his novelty. Much has been written about the sources of the novels of the Decamerone. Pro bably Boccaccio made use both of written and of oral sources. Popular tradition must have furnished him with the materials of many stories, as, for example, that of Griseida. Unlike Petrarch, who was always discontented, pre occupied, wearied with life, disturbed by disappointments, we find Boccaccio calm, serene, satisfied with himself and with his surroundings. Notwithstanding these funda-