and eternity, and hence his poems in Italian, the _Rhymes_ and
_Triumphs_. The sensitiveness of Petrarch was admirable; never did
pure love, growing mystical and mingling with divine love, find accents
alike more profound and noble than came from this Platonist refined with
Italian subtlety. Petrarchism became a fashion among the mediocre and a
school among these above the common. In the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries there were innumerable imitators of Petrarch in Italy, and
later still in France. It is impossible not to instance Lamartine as the
last in date.

BOCCACCIO: _THE DECAMERON_.--Immediately after these two great men
came Boccaccio, born in Paris but of Italian parentage, who resided at
Naples at the court of King Robert. He was a great admirer of Dante and
Petrarch, and himself wrote several estimable poems, but, in despair no
doubt of attaining the height of his models and also to please the taste
of Mary, daughter of King Robert, he wrote the libertine tales which are
gathered in the collection entitled _The Decameron_ and which
established his fame. He is one of the purest authors, as stylist, of all
Italian literature, and may be regarded as the principle creator of prose
in his own land.

THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY IN ITALY.--The fifteenth century, less great among
the Italians than the fourteenth, yielded many wise men: Marsiglio
Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Aurispa, etc. But omission must not be
made of poets such as Ange Politien, refined humanist, graceful lyrist;
and the earliest of dramatic poets of any rank, such as Pulci and
Bojardo. In prose note Pandolfini, master and delineator of domestic
life, as was Xenophon in Greece, and Leonardo da Vinci, the great painter
who left a treatise on his art; nor must it be forgotten that Savonarola
was a remarkably fine orator.