where he made his way into the highest circles of society, and
unconsciously gleaned the material for the rich harvest of song and
story that came with his later years. At this time he was present at the
coronation of the poet Petrarch in the Capitol, and was fired with
admiration for the second greatest poet of that day. He chose Petrarch
for his model and guide, and in riper manhood became his most intimate
friend.

By the time he was twenty-five, Boccaccio had fallen in love with the
Lady Maria, a natural daughter of King Robert of Naples, who had caused
her to be adopted as a member of the family of the Count d'Aquino, and
to be married when very young to a Neapolitan nobleman. Boccaccio first
saw her in the Church of San Lorenzo on the morning of Easter eve, in
1338, and their ensuing friendship was no secret to their world. For the
entertainment of this youthful beauty he wrote his _Filicopo_, and the
fair Maria is undoubtedly the heroine of several of his stories and
poems. His father insisted upon his return to Florence in 1340, and
after he had settled in that city he occupied himself seriously with
literary 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, the
_Decameron_, a collection of stories written, it is said, to amuse Queen
Joanna of Naples and her court, during the period when one of the
world's greatest plagues swept over Europe in 1348. In these years he
rose from the vivid but confused and exaggerated manner of _Filocopo_ to
the perfection of polished literary style. The _Decameron_ fully
revealed his genius, his ability to weave the tales of all lands and all
ages into one harmonious whole; from the confused mass of legends of the
Middle Ages, he evolved a world of human interest and dazzling beauty,