his other writings intO' shadow. His tales have this setting: 

 When the plague was raging in Flovenee in 13-18, ten 

 friends, women aaid men, met daily; and to mitigate dread 

 of the i^est, ten stories a day were told by them for ten 

 days, making in all a hundred stories. Hence the name, 

 Decameron, given to the bock. Boccaccio introduces hiia 

 stories- \'\-ith an a,ccoimt of the plague, which for vivid de- 

 scription has often been favorably compared with accountg 

 by ThucydideB and Lucretius of an earlier pest at Athens, 

 and with that of the great plague at Ijondon, by Defoe. He 

 alrso wrote poetry, which, after reading the sonnets by his 

 friand Petrarch, he wcnld have burnt but for intervention 

 of friends. Still, thongh Dante and Petrarch em-passed 

 him as writers of vernacular poetry, his prose stories were 

 unrivaled in his day, and for ages have had imitators and 

 admirers. 



Boccaccio was r. iskilful delineator of character. His 

 taleis, throngh not the earlieet specimen of vernacular 

 prose, were written with a grace, tenderness and flexibility 

 of idiom his countrymen vuaanimously declare was so^ en- 

 tirely new as to entitle him to' the name of endearment 

 they have given him, namely, "The father of Italian 

 prose." As to his place in literature, Landor concludes 

 his profcnnd study of Boccaccioi in these words: "In the 

 vivacity and versatility of imagination, in the narrative, 

 in the descriptive, in the playful, in the pathetic, the world 

 never saw his equal, imtil the sunrise of our Shakespeare. 

 Aricetoi and Spenser may stand at no great distance from 

 him in the shadowy and unsubstantial ; but multitude man 

 was utterly unknown to them. The human heart through 

 all its foldings vibrates to^ Boccaccio." 



The first edition of Boccaccio's stories was printed by 

 Valdarfer in 1471. It is one of the rare books of the world. 

 The only perfect copy known is that in the John Eylands 

 library, Manchefiter. It was sold in 1812 to the marquie of 

 Blandford for two thousand twoi hundred and sixty pounds 



