Youth, beauty, and love, wit, gayety and laughter, are the componentparts of the delightful picture conjured up by the mere name of GiovanniBoccaccio, the prince of story-tellers for all generations of men. Thiscreator of a real literary epoch was born in Paris, in 1313, (in theeleventh year of Dante's exile), of an Italian father and a French-womanof good family. His father was a merchant of Florence, whither hereturned with his son when the child was seven years old. The boyreceived some education, but was placed in a counting-house when he wasonly thirteen, and at seventeen he was sent by his father to Naples toenter another commercial establishment. But he disliked commerce, andfinally persuaded his father to allow him to study law for two years atthe University of Naples, during which period the lively and attractiveyouth made brisk use of his leisure time in that gay and romantic city,where he made his way into the highest circles of society, andunconsciously gleaned the material for the rich harvest of song andstory that came with his later years. At this time he was present at thecoronation of the poet Petrarch in the Capitol, and was fired withadmiration for the second greatest poet of that day. He chose Petrarchfor his model and guide, and in riper manhood became his most intimatefriend.
By the time he was twenty-five, Boccaccio had fallen in love with theLady Maria, a natural daughter of King Robert of Naples, who had causedher to be adopted as a member of the family of the Count d'Aquino, andto be married when very young to a Neapolitan nobleman. Boccaccio firstsaw her in the Church of San Lorenzo on the morning of Easter eve, in1338, and their ensuing friendship was no secret to their world. For theentertainment of this youthful beauty he wrote his Filicopo, and thefair Maria is undoubtedly the heroine of several of his stories andpoems. His father insisted upon his return to Florence in 1340, andafter he had settled in that city he occupied himself seriously withliterary work, producing, between the years 1343 and 1355, the Teseide(familiar to English readers as "The Knight's Tale" in Chaucer,modernized by Dryden as "Palamon and Arcite"), Ameto, Amorosa Visione,La Fiammetta, Ninfale Fiesolona, and his most famous work, theDecameron, a collection of stories written, it is said, to amuse QueenJoanna of Naples and her court, during the period when one of theworld's greatest plagues swept over Europe in 1348. In these years herose from the vivid but confused and exaggerated manner of Filocopo tothe perfection of polished literary style. The Decameron fullyrevealed his genius, his ability to weave the tales of all lands and allages into one harmonious whole; from the confused mass of legends of theMiddle Ages, he evolved a world of human interest and dazzling beauty,fixed the kaleidoscopic picture of Italian society, and set it in therichest frame of romance.
While he had the Decameron still in hand, he paused in that greatwork, with heart full of passionate longing for the lady of his love,far away in Naples, to pour out his very soul in La Fiammetta, thename by which he always called the Lady Maria. Of the real character ofthis lady, so famous in literature, and her true relations withBoccaccio, little that is certain is known. In several of his poems andin the Decameron he alludes to her as being cold as a marble statue,