OF SIX MEDLEVAL WOMEN 



to find woman treated on a very high plane by 

 Boccaccio, but we recognise that, in a way, this 

 work forms a fresh starting-point in the eternal 

 controversy. Perhaps we should not have had 

 this curious collection of stories of women, 

 virtuous and vicious, mythological and historical 

 stories which are certainly very inferior as 

 art to those of the Decameron had not a 

 crisis occurred in Boccaccio's life. One day a 

 Carthusian monk came to him with a warning 

 message from the dead, and, much troubled in 

 mind, he resolved to try to begin life afresh. 

 But he was a better story-teller than a moraliser. 

 He would fain save his soul, but he liked and 

 courted popularity, and knew well the deeper 

 meaning of the proverb, " A terreno dolce, 

 vanga di legno." And so he mingles virtue and 

 vice, hoping, as he says, that "some utility 

 and profit shall come of the same." To us of 

 to-day, the chief interest of this work is that 

 Boccaccio's fame perhaps gave a definite im- 

 petus to the discussion of the sex, instead of 

 wholesale assertion, and also that it probably 

 suggested to Chaucer the idea for his Legend of 

 Good Women. How refreshing to find ourselves 

 in the atmosphere of the kindly Chaucer ! Let 

 us pause for a moment, and recall what he says 

 of women, he who was not only a knightly 

 Court -poet, but also a popular singer, well 

 versed in the practical wisdom of life. In the 

 prologue we read, " Let be the chaf, and wryt 

 wel of the corn," and in allusion to his library 



130 



