is far more likely to have been the kindling of his genius to its subsequent activity:  and the passion he acquired while there for the illegitimate daughter of the King, Maria,—­the Fiammetta of his later life,—­furnished the fuel for its burning; his first work, the ‘Filocopo,’ being written as an offering to her.  It is a prose love story, mixed with mythological allusions,—­after the fashion of the day, which thought more of the classics than of nature; and like all his earlier works, prolix and pedantic.

The ‘Theseide,’ a purely classic theme, the war of Theseus with the Amazons, is in verse; and was followed by the ‘Ameto,’ or ’Florentine Nymphs,’ a story of the loves of Ameto, a rustic swain, with one of the nymphs of the valley of the Affrico, a stream which flows into the Arno not far from where the poet was born, or where at least he passed his youth; and to which valley he seems always greatly attached, putting there the scene of most of his work, including the ‘Decameron.’  ‘Ameto’ is a mythological fiction, in which the characters mingle recitations of verse with the prose narration, and in which the gods of Greece and Rome masque in the familiar scenes.  Following these came the ’Amorosa Visione,’ and ‘Filostrato,’ in verse; ‘Fiammetta’ in prose, being the imaginary complaint of his beloved at their separation; ’Nimfale Fiesolano,’ in verse, the scene also laid on the Affrico; and then the ‘Decameron,’ begun in 1348 and finished in 1353, after which he seems to have gradually acquired a disgust for the world he had lived in as he had known it, and turned to more serious studies.  He wrote a life of Dante, ‘II Corbaccio,’ a piece of satirical savagery, the ’Genealogy of the Gods,’ and various minor works; and spent much of his time in intercourse with Petrarch, whose conversation and influence were of a different character from that of his earlier life.

[Illustration:  G. BOCCACCIO.]

Boccaccio died at Certaldo in the Val d’Elsa, December 2d, 1375.  Of the numerous works he left, that by which his fame as a writer is established is beyond any question the ‘Decameron,’ or Ten Days’ Entertainment; in which a merry company of gentlemen and ladies, appalled by the plague raging in their Florence, take refuge in the villas near the city, and pass their time in story-telling and rambles in the beautiful country around, only returning when the plague has to a great extent abated.  The superiority of the ‘Decameron’ is not only in the polish and grace of its style, the first complete departure from the stilted classicism of contemporary narrative, the happy naturalness of good story-telling,—­but in the conception of the work as a whole, and the marvelous imagination of the filling-in between the framework of the story of the plague by the hundred tales from all lands and times, with the fine thread of the narrative of the day-by-day doings of the merry and gracious company, their wanderings, the exquisite painting of the Tuscan landscape (in which one recognizes the Val d’Arno even to-day), and the delicate drawing of their various characters.  It is only when all these elements have been taken into consideration, and the unity wrought through such a maze of interest and mass of material without ever becoming dull or being driven to repetition, that we understand the power of Boccaccio as an artist.