18 CHARLES BALGUY, M.D. 
Quaritch, of whom I bought it, as being bound in “bright old 
calf.” The stories themselves are bright as Italian skies. If the 
novels of Boccaccio and the tales of Chaucer give true pictures 
of the times, life must have been a joke in the fourteenth 
century. Chaucer’s heart was light enough, but Boccaccio’s was 
lighter. Chaucer put his stories into the mouths of pilgrims 
journeying to Canterbury ; Boccaccio’s Florentine young men 
and women coolly go a pic-nic into the country to avoid the 
awful Black Death, they dance and sing, and during their sojourn 
there relate stories which have moved the laughter of the world 
for centuries. We are reminded of another and older Italian 
writing to his Lesbia— 
‘‘Vivamus mea Lesbia atque amemus, 
Rumoresque senum severiorum 
Omnes unius aestimemus assis.” 
But we are concerned here with one of the worthies of Derby- 
shire, and not with the history of romance. It was Charles 
Balguy’s task to present those old stories in a fair English dress, 
and he accomplished that task well.* His English is always 
pure, and some parts of his prose translation read like poems. 
His metrical versions have no great merit. They are merely 
such as a scholarly writer would make in an age when everybody 
imitated Pope. His prose has the true Addisonian ring, and the 
archaisms which have been altered in subsequent editions have no 
uncouthness to the literary eye.t Whether Balguy had ever lived 
in Italy I know not, but he had certainly a scholarly acquaintance 
* It need hardly be said here that many of the stories are licentious, but 
not more so than those of Chaucer, who, as is well known, borrowed from 
Boccaccio. Yet it appears to me that they always render vice ridiculous, 
and never attractive. 
+In a modern, undated edition of ‘‘ The Decameron” (Chatto & Windus) 
with Stothard’s plates, and an introduction by Thomas Wright, M.A., the well 
known antiquarian writer, no mention is made of the edition of 1741, though 
it is re-printed, word for word, from that translation, with modernized spelling 
and some unnecessary alterations. Two novels are, however, given partly in 
French and Italian, which, for obvious reasons, Balguy thought it proper to 
omit. Several other editions have been printed, either without acknowledg- 
ment, or with a bare reference to the edition of 1741. 
