Excerpt from The Quarterly Review, Vol. 145: January and April, 1878

Perhaps no literary work more completely embodies the spirit of the Renaissance 1n Italy than the 'decameron. The calm and detailed narrative of the plague at Florence, presenting, as it does, a picture of unmitigated selfishness, relieved by no single touch of humanity or devotion, 13 in itself a reflection of the disunion of Italian society. Again, the conception of the composition, in which the dark background of Divine wrath and judgment (for m this light Boccaccio evidently regarded the plague), sets off the delightful gardens, with their youthful visitors banishing care with gay tales and graceful diversions, exactly expresses that para doxical union of Christian doctrine and Pagan sentiment, which is one of the most curious features of the Renaissance. Most cha racteristic of all, however, is the tone of irony running throughout the Decameron, ' that grave sobriety of style which, while ob serving the decent forms of morality and religion, suggests a spirit utterlydat variance with what these appear to express.' Boccaccio, ' says r Symonds, was the first who sought frankly to justify the pleasure of the carnal life; whose temperament, unburdened by asceticism, found a congenial element 1n the amorous legends of antiquity.' Frankness scarcely appears to us a word applicable to Boccaccio; his tone, in the introduction to the Decameron, ' is that of a man of the world who compounds for licence by observing decorum. The matter of most of the hundred tales is not very different from that of the English comedies after the Restoration; but we can scarcely conceive of seven English ladies, of whom the eldest was not more than nineteen years old, sitting down with three young men to listen to a play of Wycherley read aloud. Boccaccio' s pre-eminent genius is seen in this, that while the undoubted wit of the English playwrights has utterly failed to preserve their works from neglect, the extreme beauty and humanity of the Italian's style has so far compensated for his want of nobility of thought, that he still retains his place among the European classics.

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