of tears and laughter, its copious and felicitous diction, inevitably apt
for every occasion, and, notwithstanding the frequent harshness, and
occasional obscurity of its at times tangled, at times laboured periods,
its sustained energy and animation of style must ever ensure for this human
comedy unchallenged rank among the literary masterpieces that are truly
immortal.

The Decameron was among the earliest of printed books, Venice leading the
way with a folio edition in 1471, Mantua following suit in 1472, and
Vicenza in 1478. A folio edition, adorned, with most graceful wood-
engravings, was published at Venice in 1492. Notwithstanding the freedom
with which in divers passages Boccaccio reflected on the morals of the
clergy, the Roman Curia spared the book, which the austere Savonarola
condemned to the flames. The tradition that the Decameron was among the
pile of "vanities" burned by Savonarola in the Piazza della Signoria on
the last day of the Carnival of 1497, little more than a year before he
was himself burned there, is so intrinsically probable--and accords so
well with the extreme paucity of early copies of the work--that it would
be the very perversity of scepticism to doubt it. It is by no means to
the credit of our country that, except to scholars, it long remained in
England, an almost entirely closed book. (2) Indeed the first nominally
complete English translation, a sadly mutilated and garbled rendering of
the French version by Antoine Le Macon, did not appear till 1620, and
though successive redactions brought it nearer to the original, it
remained at the best but a sorry faute de mieux. Such as it was,
however, our forefathers were perforce fain to be content with it.

The first Englishman to render the whole Decameron direct from the Italian
was Mr. John Payne; but his work, printed for the Villon Society in 1886,
was only for private circulation, and those least inclined to disparage