BOCCACIO, or Boccace, John, one of the most gifted and learned writers of his age, whose name alone, according to Mazzuchelli, is worth a thousand eulogiums, was born in 1313. His father was a merchant at Florence, where the pursuits of commerce were held in the highest estimation; and his family came originally from Certaldo, a village situated about twenty miles from the capital of Tuscany; for which reason he generally subjoined to his name the words da Certaldo. Boccacio was not, therefore, the son of a peasant, as has been asserted in the Dictionnaire Historique. He appears to have been the illegitimate offspring of a connection which his father had formed while at Paris, having been called thither by some commercial affairs; and it was also in the French capital that the illustrious author of the Decameron first saw the light. Conveyed at an early period to Florence, he commenced his studies, and, from his tenderest years, evinced a decided taste for poetry; but he had scarcely attained [7:4:723]the age of ten when his father placed him in the house of another merchant, with the view of training him up to commerce. Several years afterwards this merchant took him to Paris, and kept him in all six years in his house; but failing to inspire his charge with a taste for the mercantile profession, to which the latter gave only a reluctant and compulsory attention, he sent the youth back to his father. At Florence, as at Paris, Boccacio was divided between occupations for which he felt nothing but repugnance, and a taste for letters which went on increasing daily. And this taste received a fresh stimulus at Naples, to which he had been sent with the view of withdrawing him from such pursuits, and attaching him definitively to the mercantile profession. He remained there eight years, and instead of associating only with merchants, he established an intimacy with several learned men, Florentine as well as Neapolitan, whom the favour of King Robert, the friend and patron of letters, had drawn to his capital. There is no evidence whatever of Boccacio having personally experienced the kindness of Robert; but he appears to have excited a tender interest in the bosom of the king’s natural daughter, for whom he composed several works both in prose and verse, and whom he often designates by the name of Fiammetta. Endowed with all exterior advantages, of a lively and joyous disposition, possessing an amiable and yielding character, and the favoured lover of the daughter of a king, it is not surprising that he should have then felt less inclination than ever for mercantile occupations and pursuits. The sprightly taste of the princess, the intimate companionship of men of letters, the impression made upon him in a walk near Naples by the tomb of Virgil, the presence of Petrarch, who was treated with the most marked distinction by the court, being then about to proceed to Rome, there to receive the laurel crown, and probably, also, his first intercourse with this celebrated man, whose intimate friend and associate he was afterwards to become,—all contributed to strengthen his natural inclination, and to decide his vocation as a literary man and a poet.

After a residence of two years with his father at Florence, he returned to Naples, and was favourably received by the queen, Jane; and it is believed that it was as much to gratify the young queen as his dear Fiammetta, that he began the Decameron, or collection of a hundred tales, which places him, without a rival, in the first rank of Italian prose-writers. Having lost his father, and being thus at liberty to follow his own inclination, he went to settle at Florence, where his studies suffered no interruption except what was occasioned by pleasure, and some honourable missions with which he was charged by his fellow-citizens. Among other offices of this kind, he was the person selected to go to Padua, and carry to Petrarch the intelligence of his recall, and of the restitution that had been made of the property of his father, who, formerly banished from Florence, had since died in exile; and it was in the execution of this mission that he formed with his illustrious contemporary that close and intimate friendship which only ceased with their lives. Some years afterwards, having involved himself in embarrassments by his expenditure in the purchase of books and his taste for pleasure, he was generously relieved by Petrarch, who not only afforded him pecuniary aid, but gave him good counsel both as to his works and his conduct, and was mainly instrumental in bringing about the change which subsequently took place in his habits and character. A coürse of pleasure or dissipation is sure, sooner or later, to terminate in satiety, ennui, heart-sickness, and remorse; and when this crisis actually comes on, the presence and counsels of a tender and judicious friend may not only serve to check the moral re-action before it proceeds too far, but may also give a new and salutary direction to the mind and feelings of the penitent. Petrarch performed this important office to his friend. The exhortations of a Carthusian monk had at first inspired the latter with an extravagant scheme of reform, being nothing less than an entire renunciation of the world, and of those studies which are denominated profane; but Petrarch brought him back to better views, and kept him steadily in that just medium which is the position recommended by true wisdom.

Some new troubles having about this time broken out in Florence, Boccacio withdrew to Certaldo, where he possessed a small territory, in order to continue his pursuits in tranquillity. Hitherto he had only written in the vulgar tongue, and produced works of mere amusement; but now he composed several, which he wrote in Latin, on subjects of erudition and history; and one of these treatises is the first modern work in which a collection was made of all the mythological notions which are scattered throughout the writings of the ancients. He knew Greek very well, having brought, at his own expense, from Venice to Florence, Leontius Pilatus of Thessalonica, and entertained him for three years, in order to learn of him that language, to read with the learned refugee the Iliad and the Odyssey, and to translate both from beginning to end into Latin. He had also the glory of procuring from Greece, at his own expense, copies of these immortal works; nor did his zeal in the cause of classical learning stop here; for he spared neither pains nor expense in order to obtain good Greek and Latin manuscripts, and employed all his influence to induce his contemporaries to lcarn Greek, and to substitute the study of antiquity for that of the scholastic sciences,'which alone had hitherto been encouraged. Auspicious for the cause of true learning, these efforts added to the reputation and authority of Boccacio. He was twice charged with important embassies from the republic of Florence to Pope Urban V., and executed them in a manner creditable to himself and satisfactory to his countrymen. He then returned to Certaldo, and resumed his favourite studies; but a long and grievous malady, with which he was now attacked, reduced him to a state of languor and depression more painful than even the disease itself. On recovering somewhat, he undertook a difficult, but to him most agreeable, task. He had always been an ardent admirer of Dante; he knew by heart nearly the whole of his poem, and had copied it several times with his own hand. The Florentines, who had persecuted and exiled this great poet, wishing now to honour and vindicate his memory, instituted, by a decree of the senate, a public chair for the explication of this poem, which, although it contained many sublime things, was nevertheless filled with obscurities and difficulties, certain to increase with the progress of time, and in proportion as we are removed from the period in which the author wrote; and it was on Boccacio that they conferred the new professorship. But the efforts which he made to fulfil the expectations of his countrymen retarded his convalescence; the death of Petrarch, his master and friend, which took place at this time, and was suddenly communicated to him, proved a stunning blow; he became daily weaker and weaker; and in little more than a year he died at Certaldo, on the 21st December 1375, in the sixty-second year of his age.

Boccacio was indeed born a poet; he was so in all his works of imagination, at least in invention if not in style. All that he has written in verse is mediocre; several of his Italian works in prose are also poor enough. He is only superior and inimitable in his novels, of which nevertheless he made small account. Like his master Petrarch, he believed that his serious works, written in Latin, formed his best title to fame; yet his reputation rests exclusively[7:4:724] on a simple collection of tales, as that of Petrarch does on his amatory verses. Every thing lie has written in Latin bears a character of crude precipitation, which, however, is less the effect of negligence in the author, than of those difficulties and obstacles which were then opposed to the composition of such works. In his youth he had flattered himself with the idea of obtaining the second place in poetry by his verses; his admiration of Dante did not allow him to aspire to the first; and the Italian poems of Petrarch were as yet unknown to him. But as soon as he became acquainted with the latter, he threw into the fire the greater part of his lyric verses, sonnets, canzoni, and other amatory poems; and those which’have since been published are merely such as, in spite of himself, escaped this act of severity. But the fortunate result of his disgust with his poetical productions was to induce Boccacio to write with greater care in prose, and to give to his language a perfection, rhythm, harmony, and elegance in the tournure of expression, which it had hitherto wanted, and which Italian, with all its capabilities, has never attained to the same degree in the hands of any other writer. His style may be characterized in two words; it is simplex munditiis; grace, elegance, and simplicity combined are its peculiar attributes; and so skilfully is the art of the writer concealed in the very perfection of his work, that while the charm diffused over it proves irresistible to readers of every class, it seems a spontaneous emanation of his mind, the result of mere volition, without labour, without effort, and without premeditation. The following is a tolerably correct list of Boccacio’s different works:

1. De Genealogia Deorum libri xv. De Montium, Syl-varum, Lacuum, Fluviorum, et Marium nominibus, liber. The first edition of these two works united is in folio, without date, but it is supposed to have been printed at Venice prior to 1472, which is the date of the second edition. A third was printed the following year, and there have since been several at Venice, Paris, and Basel. The treatise on the Genealogy of the Gods was the fruit of immense reading; and as there existed at that time no similar work in which information might be obtained respecting the mythology of the ancients, its success was prodigious. In this production Boccacio cites several authors no longer extant, and derives from them particulars which are only to be found in his book. This work, translated into Italian by Joseph Betusi, has gone through twelve or thirteen editions, the first being that of Venice, 1574, in 4to. There are also two French translations; the first at Paris in 1498, in folio, reprinted in 1531, also in folio, and the second at Paris in 1578, in 8vo. The little Treatise on Mountains, Forests, Lakes, Fivers, and Seas, has also been translated into Italian; it is in quarto, but without date or name of place.

2. De Casibus Virorum et Fceminarum Illustrium, libri ix. The Paris edition of this treatise is in folio, and dated 1535, 1544. It was translated into Italian by Betusi, Venice, 1545, 8vo; into English by John Ludgate, London, 1494, folio, reprinted in the same form in 1527; into Spanish by D. Pedro Lopez de Ayala, and D. Juan de Zamora, Seville, 1495, Toledo, 151Ĩ, folio; into German by Jerome Ziegler, Augsburg, 1545, folio; and several times into French, first by an anonymous translator, Bruges, 1476, folio; next by Laurens du Premier-fait, Paris, 1483, folio, and at Lyons the same year; and, lastly, by Claude Witard, Paris, 1578, 8vo.

3. De Claris Mulicribus. The first edition is without date or name of place; the second was published at Ulm in 1473, and, like the first, is in folio. The work was translated into Italian∙by Vincent Bagli, a Florentine, Venice, 1506, 4to, and by Joseph Betusi, who made several additions, and prefixed a life of Boccacio, Venice, 1545 and 1547,8vo. There are also Spanish, French, and German versions.

4. Eclogae. These eclogues, sixteen in number, were printed, along with those of Virgil, Calphurnius, Nemesianus, Petrarch, and Gauricus, at Florence in 1504, and again at Basel in 1546, in the Bucolicorum Autores.

5. La Tescide, the first Italian poem which presents a specimen of the epopee. It is written in the ottava rima, of which Boccacio is usually considered as the inventor. Ferrara, 1475, folio; Venice, 1528, 4to; Paris, 1597, 12mo, a French translation.

6. Amorosa Visione, Milan 1520 and 1521, in 4to, with grammatical observations, and a defence of Boccacio by Claricio d’Imola, Venice, 1531, 8vo.

7. Il Filostrato, a romantic poem in ottava rima, the hero of which is the young Troilus, son of Priam, and the subject his amours with Chryseis, whom the poet makes the daughter of Chalcas, Bologna, 1498, 4to; Milan, 1499, 4to; Venice, 1501 and 1528, 4to.

8. Nimfale Fiesolano, a poem also in the ottava rima, in which, under the veil of pastoral fiction, Boccacio is supposed to give an account of a gallant adventure which occurred at Florence in his time. Venice, 1477, 4to; Paris, Molini, 1778, 8vo.

9. Fime, or poems on various subjects, being such as escaped the flames when the author resolved to bum all his verses. They have been several times collected; but Baldelli’s edition, printed at Leghorn in 1802, is the best.

10. Il Filocopo, owero Amorosa Fatica, &c. a romance, written by the author when very young, and wholly devoid of interest. It is unconscionably long, and desperately tedious; and the style, which is sometimes flat and at other times bombastical, gives no promise of that purity of diction which Boccacio afterwards attained. Venice, 1472, folio; Milan, 1476 and 1478, folio; Venice, 1514, 4to; Paris, 1542, folio, and 1555, 8vo.

11. L’Amorosa Fiammetta, another romance, in no degree superior to 11 Filostrato. Padua, 1472, 4to; Venice, 1481, 4to; Paris, 1585, 1609, 12mo.

12. Ľ Urbano, Florence, 1598, 8vo; translated into French under the title of Urbain le Mescogneu, Lyons, without date.

13. Ameto or Nimfalc d’ Ameto, a work written in prose, intermixed with verse, and the earliest specimen of this kind of composition. Rome and Venice, 1478, 4to; Treviso, 1479, 4to; Venice, 1503, folio; Florence, 1521, 8vo.

14. Il Corbaccio, o sia Laberinto d’Amore, a bitter and coarse invective against some female who had displeased him after his return to Florence. The indecency of this production is abominable, but the purity and beauty of the style have caused it to be sought after. Florence, 1487, 4to; Venice, 1516, 24to, and 1528, 8vo; Paris, 1569, 8vo.

15. Origine, Vita et Costumi di Dante Alighieri, Rome, 1544, 8vo; Florence, 1576, 8vo. In this life of Dante Boccacio shows himself more of a romancer than a biographer; but it is nevertheless interesting on account of several curious anecdotes it contains, and also by reason of the style, which is every way worthy of Boccacio.

16. Commento sopra la Commedia di Dante Alighieri, invaluable work, containing a great number of explications of difficult passages in Dante, although almost suffocated by a multitude of details foreign to the intelligence of the text. This commentary, which embodies the lessons delivered publicly by Boccacio at Florence, when he was attacked with the malady of which he died, was not printed till the eighteenth century. It extends only to the 17th chapter of the Inferno, and occupies the two last volumes of the collection of Boccacio’s works in Italian prose, published at Naples, with the false imprint of Florence, in θ vols. 8vo, 1724.
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17. Lastly, Il Decamerone, Boccacio’s principal title to immortality, and of all works extant, that, perhaps, of which it is the most difficult to convey a tolerably accurate idea in few words. To regard it merely as a collection of gallant and licentious tales, is to entertain a very false notion indeed of this extraordinary work. The greater part of the poets, it is true, who have borrowed from this source, have indeed taken little else from it than licentiousness; but it is their fault more than that of the author, if their draughts have been so confined. In the Decameron, Boccacio has painted, as on an immense canvass, men of all conditions, of all characters, of all ages; and described events of every kind, from the freest and the gayest to the most touching and the most tragical. He has also given models of all sorts of eloquence, and carried his language to a pitch of perfection unknown before his time, and unrivalled since. For three centuries after it appeared it was constantly reprinted, and more than a hundred different editions might be enumerated; to say nothing of translations into every language of Europe which is connected with an independent literature. At the same time it has experienced singular vicissitudes. From the date of the first edition in 1470, liberties of every kind were taken with the text, particularly in the more licentious parts, which led to its prohibition by two popes, Paul IV. and Pius IV.; some academicians also undertook to reform the Decameron; important corrections as well as suppressions were made; and several editions, thus amended, appeared. But in order to judge of the work as it proceeded from the hand of Boccacio, we must revert to the older editions, or to those which have followed them. The rarestand dearest is that of Florence, 1527, in 4to. Of this, however, an exact copy was printed at Venice in 1729, but bearing at the end the name of Florence and the date of 1527. It is nevertheless easily distinguishable by those marks which are known to bibliographers. The curious ought to have, also, for comparison, the edition amended by the Florentine academicians, conformably to the orders of the grand duke of Tuscany, and approved by Gregory XIII. It will show, on the one hand, to what a state the master-piece of Boccacio had been reduced; and, on the other, excite surprise at the remnants of the old interpolations which are preserved, and invested with the pontifical sanction. This edition was printed at Florence in 1573, in 4to. The edition of Salviati, who undertook a new reform, appeared at Venice in 1584, in 4to. In both these reformed editions the portion of the text respected and left untouched is of extreme purity. It would be endless to attempt an enumeration of other editions, or of the translations which have been made into different languages. (Biographie Universelle, Creseembeni.') (a.)