BOCCACCIO BOCHICA. 



575 



guage,and substitute the study of the ancients for that 

 of tne scholastic philosophy. The reputation which 

 he had gained twice procured for him important mis- 

 sions to pope Urban V. Having fulfilled these, he 

 returned to Certaldo, and resumed his studies. Here 

 he was attacked by a severe and lingering disorder, 

 which finally left him in a state of debility as painful 

 as the disease itself. Upon his recovery, he was 

 charged with a difficult, but very flattering trust. 

 Dante had always been the object of his highest ad- 

 miration. The Florentines, who had once persecuted 

 and banished that illustrious poet, but now did justice 

 to his merits, had resolved, by way of atonement to 

 his memory, to establish a public professorship for the 

 illustration of his poems, which were every day be- 

 coming more obscure, as the distance of the time 

 when they were written became greater. This new 

 professorship was conferred upon B., who devoted 

 himself to it with so much ardour, that his health 

 could never be firmly re-established. This received 

 a further shock from the death of his instructer and 

 dearest friend Petrarch. He survived him not much 

 more than a year, and died at Certaldo, December 

 21, 1375. On his tomb was placed this inscription, 

 composed by himself : 



Hac sub mole jacent cineres ac ossa Joannis, 

 Muns sedet ante Deum meritis ornata laborum 

 Mortalis vitas. Genitor Bocchaccius illi, 

 Patria Certaldum, studium 1'uit alma poesis. 



Boccaccio appears, in all his works, to be a poet of 

 the richest invention, the most lively imagination, 

 and the tenderest and wannest feeling. In prose, he 

 is a perfect master of composition. His Decameron, 

 whicli contains a collection of a hundred tales, partly 

 borrowed from the Provencal poets, is the work on 

 which his fame chiefly rests. In this he painted, as 

 it were, on one vast canvas, men of all ranks, cha- 

 racters, and ages, and incidents of every kind, the 

 most extravagant and comical, as well as the most 

 touching and tragic ; and improved the Italian lan- 

 guage to a degree of excellence never before attained. 

 Of his other works, we will mention only the follow- 

 ing : Lot Teseide, the first attempt towards an Italian 

 epic, and written in ottava rima, of which B. is con- 

 sidered the inventor ; Amoroso, Visione, a long poem 

 in terza rima (the initial letters of which form two 

 sonnets and a canzonet, in praise of the princess 

 Maria, his mistress, whom he here ventures to address 

 by her proper name) ; // Filostrato, a romantic poem 

 in ottava rima ; Nimfale Fiesolano, in the same mea- 

 sure ; Rime; (most of his sonnets, canzonets, and 

 other amatory poems, he consigned to the flames, 

 after reading the Italian poems of Petrarch ; those 

 which remain appear to have been preserved against 

 his will) ; 11 Filocopo, ovvero amoroso, Fatica, a hunt- 

 ?ng romance ; L'amorosa Fiammetta, a charming 

 tale ; IS Urbano (thought by some to be spurious) ; 

 UAmeto ossia Nimfale d'Amelo, a mixed composition, 

 partly in prose, and partly in verse ; // Corbaccio, 

 ossia Laberinto d'Amore, a pungent satire against a 

 lady who had offended him ; and, finally, Origine, 

 vita e Costumi di Dante, Aligliieri, a work interesting 

 for the characteristic traits which it records ; and his 

 Commento sopra la Catnmedia di Dante, which, how- 

 ever, is carried no farther than the seventeenth canto 

 of Dante's Hell. His Latin works are, De Genealogia 

 Deorum, Libri xv ; De Montium, Lacitum, Sylvarum, 

 Fluviorum, Stagnorum et Marium Nominibus Liber ; 

 De Casibus firorum et Feminarum illustrium, Libri 

 iv ; De clans Mulieribus ; and Eclogue. A new cri- 

 tical edition of the Decameron, with an historical lite- 

 rary commentary, and the life of B., was published 

 at Paris, 1823, in 5 vols. In the ducal library at 

 Florence, among the manuscripts collected by the 

 celebrated Magliabecchi, professor Ciampi lately 



discovered a memorandum-book of B. containing a 

 record of his studies, and some curious circumstances 

 relating to himself and a number of his distinguished 

 contemporaries. It has been published. 



BOCCAGE, Marie Anne du, a celebrated French 

 poetess, member of the academies of Rome, Bologna, 

 Padua, Lyons, and Rouen, was born in Rouen, 1710, 

 died 1802. She was educated in Paris, in a nunnery, 

 where she discovered a love of poetry. She became 

 the wife of a receiver of taxes in Dieppe, who died 

 soon after the marriage, leaving her a youthful widow. 

 She concealed her talents, however, till the charms 

 of youth were past, and first published her productions 

 in 1746. The first was a poem on the mutual influ- 

 ence of the fine arts and sciences. This gained the 

 prize from the academy of Rouen. She next attempted 

 an imitation of Paradise Lost, in six cantos ; then, ot 

 the Death of Abel ; next, a tragedy, the Amazons ; 

 and a poem in ten cantos, called the Columbiad. 

 Madame du Boccage was praised by her contempo- 

 raries with an extravagance, for which only her sex 

 and the charms of her person can account. Forma 

 P'enus, arte Minerva, was the motto of her admirers, 

 among whom were Voltaire, Fontenelle, and Clairaut. 

 She was always surrounded by distinguished men, 

 and extolled in a multitude of poems, which, if col- 

 lected, would fill several volumes. There is a great 

 deal of entertaining matter in the letters which she 

 wrote on her travels in England and Holland, and in 

 which one may plainly see the impression she made 

 upon her contemporaries. Her works have been 

 translated into English, Spanish, German, and Italian. 



BOCCHERINI, Luigi, a celebrated composer of instru- 

 mental music, was born in 1740, at Lucca, and re- 

 ceived from the abbot Vanucci, music-master of the 

 archbishop, his first instruction in music and on the 

 violoncello. He further improved himself in the art 

 at Rome, and afterwards went, with Filippo Manfred!, 

 his friend and countryman, to Spain, where he was 

 loaded with honours and presents by the king, and 

 was appointed by the academy to furnish nine pieces 

 of his composition annually, which he continued to 

 do till his death, in 1805. The king of Prussia, 

 Frederic William II., who was a great lover of the 

 violoncello, and admired B.'s compositions, settled 

 upon him a considerable pension, on condition of his 

 sending him yearly some of his quartets and quintets. 

 The compositions which B. has published himself 

 consist of symphonies, sixtets, quintets, quatuors, 

 trios, duets, and sonatas for the violin, violoncello, 

 and piano-forte. He never composed any thing for 

 the theatre, and of church compositions we find but 

 one, his Stabat Mater. The adagios of B. excited 

 the admiration of the connoisseurs and the despair of 

 the composers of his time. He may be regarded as the 

 precursor of Haydn, as he was the first who wrote 

 instrumental quartets, of which all the parts are 

 obligato, and determined the true character of this 

 species of music. His melodies are more highly 

 esteemed in France and Spain than in Germany. 



BOCCHETTA ; a narrow pass of the Apennines, lead- 

 ing from Lombardy to Genoa. It is defended by 

 three fortifications. In the Austrian war of succession 

 (1746 and 1747), and in the French war, towards the 

 end of the eighteenth century, it was the scene of 

 several important events. 



BOCHICA was the founder of the American-Indian 

 empire of Cundinamarca. The inhabitants of the val- 

 ley of Bogota had a tradition, at the period of the Spa- 

 nish conquest, that, in remote times, their ancestors, 

 the Muisca Indians, lived without agriculture, laws, or 

 religion. At length there appeared among them a 

 venerable old man, of foreign aspect, dress, and man- 

 ners, who taught them the arts of life, and reclaimed 

 them from their savage condition. He was 



