spirits: and now, dear Francesco! do say a couple of prayers for me,
while I lay together the materials of a tale; a right merry one, I
promise you. Faith! it shall amuse you, and pay decently for the
prayers; a good honest litany-worth. I hardly know whether I ought to
have a nun in it: do you think I may?
_Petrarca._ Cannot you do without one?
_Boccaccio._ No; a nun I must have: say nothing against her; I can
more easily let the abbess alone. Yet Frate Biagio ... that Frate
Biagio, who never came to visit me but when he thought I was at
extremities or asleep.... Assuntina! are you there?
_Petrarca._ No; do you want her?
_Boccaccio._ Not a bit. That Frate Biagio has heightened my pulse when
I could not lower it again. The very devil is that Frate for
heightening pulses. And with him I shall now make merry ... God
willing ... in God's good time ... should it be His divine will to
restore me! which I think He has begun to do miraculously. I seem to
be within a frog's leap of well again; and we will presently have some
rare fun in my _Tale of the Frate_.
_Petrarca._ Do not openly name him.
_Boccaccio._ He shall recognize himself by one single expression. He
said to me, when I was at the worst:
'Ser Giovanni! it would not be much amiss (with permission!) if you
begin to think (at any spare time), just a morsel, of eternity.'
'Ah! Fra Biagio!' answered I, contritely, 'I never heard a sermon of
yours but I thought of it seriously and uneasily, long before the
discourse was over.'
'So must all,' replied he, 'and yet few have the grace to own it.'
Now mind, Francesco! if it should please the Lord to call me unto Him,
I say, _The Nun and Fra Biagio_ will be found, after my decease, in
the closet cut out of the wall, behind yon Saint Zacharias in blue and
yellow.
Well done! well done! Francesco. I never heard any man repeat his
prayers so fast and fluently. Why! how many (at a guess) have you
repeated? Such is the power of friendship, and such the habit of
religion! They have done me good: I feel myself stronger already.
To-morrow I think I shall be able, by leaning on that stout maple
stick in the corner, to walk half over my podere.
Have you done? have you done?
_Petrarca._ Be quiet: you may talk too much.
_Boccaccio._ I cannot be quiet for another hour; so, if you have any
more prayers to get over, stick the spur into the other side of them:
they must verily speed, if they beat the last.
_Petrarca._ Be more serious, dear Giovanni.
_Boccaccio._ Never bid a convalescent be more serious: no, nor a sick
man neither. To health it may give that composure which it takes away
from sickness. Every man will have his hours of seriousness; but, like
the hours of rest, they often are ill-chosen and unwholesome. Be
assured, our heavenly Father is as well pleased to see His children in
the playground as in the schoolroom. He has provided both for us, and
has given us intimations when each should occupy us.
_Petrarca._ You are right, Giovanni! but we know which bell is heard
the most distinctly. We fold our arms at the one, try the cooler part
of the pillow, and turn again to slumber; at the first stroke of the
other, we are beyond our monitors. As for you, hardly Dante himself
could make you grave.
_Boccaccio._ I do not remember how it happened that we slipped away
from his side. One of us must have found him tedious.
_Petrarca._ If you were really and substantially at his side, he would
have no mercy on you.
_Boccaccio._ In sooth, our good Alighieri seems to have had the
appetite of a dogfish or shark, and to have bitten the harder the
warmer he was. I would not voluntarily be under his manifold rows of
dentals. He has an incisor to every saint in the calendar. I should
fare, methinks, like Brutus and the archbishop. He is forced to
stretch himself, out of sheer listlessness, in so idle a place as
Purgatory: he loses half his strength in Paradise: Hell alone makes
him alert and lively: there he moves about and threatens as
tremendously as the serpent that opposed the legions on their march
in Africa. He would not have been contented in Tuscany itself, even
had his enemies left him unmolested. Were I to write on his model a
tripartite poem, I think it should be entitled, _Earth, Italy, and
Heaven_.
_Petrarca._ You will never give yourself the trouble.
_Boccaccio._ I should not succeed.
_Petrarca._ Perhaps not: but you have done very much, and may be able
to do very much more.
_Boccaccio._ Wonderful is it to me, when I consider that an infirm and
helpless creature, as I am, should be capable of laying thoughts up in
their cabinets of words, which Time, as he rushes by, with the
revolutions of stormy and destructive years, can never move from their
places. On this coarse mattress, one among the homeliest in the fair
at Impruneta, is stretched an old burgess of Certaldo, of whom perhaps
more will be known hereafter than we know of the Ptolemies and the
Pharaohs; while popes and princes are lying as unregarded as the fleas
that are shaken out of the window. Upon my life, Francesco! to think
of this is enough to make a man presumptuous.
_Petrarca._ No, Giovanni! not when the man thinks justly of it, as
such a man ought to do, and must. For so mighty a power over Time, who
casts all other mortals under his, comes down to us from a greater;
and it is only if we abuse the victory that it were better we had
encountered a defeat. Unremitting care must be taken that nothing soil
the monuments we are raising: sure enough we are that nothing can
subvert, and nothing but our negligence, or worse than negligence,
efface them. Under the glorious lamp entrusted to your vigilance, one
among the lights of the world, which the ministering angels of our God
have suspended for His service, let there stand, with unclosing eyes,
Integrity, Compassion, Self-denial.
_Boccaccio._ These are holier and cheerfuller images than Dante has
been setting up before us. I hope every thesis in dispute among his
theologians will be settled ere I set foot among them. I like Tuscany
well enough: it answers all my purposes for the present: and I am
without the benefit of those preliminary studies which might render me
a worthy auditor of incomprehensible wisdom.
_Petrarca._ I do not wonder you are attached to Tuscany. Many as have
been your visits and adventures in other parts, you have rendered it
pleasanter and more interesting than any: and indeed we can scarcely
walk in any quarter from the gates of Florence without the
recollection of some witty or affecting story related by you. Every
street, every farm, is peopled by your genius: and this population
cannot change with seasons or with ages, with factions or with
incursions. Ghibellines and Guelphs will have been contested for only
by the worms, long before the _Decameron_ has ceased to be recited on
our banks of blue lilies and under our arching vines. Another plague
may come amidst us; and something of a solace in so terrible a
visitation would be found in your pages, by those to whom letters are
a refuge and relief.
_Boccaccio._ I do indeed think my little bevy from Santa Maria Novella
would be better company on such an occasion, than a devil with three
heads, who diverts the pain his claws inflicted, by sticking his fangs
in another place.
_Petrarca._ This is atrocious, not terrific nor grand. Alighieri is
grand by his lights, not by his shadows; by his human affections, not
by his infernal. As the minutest sands are the labours of some
profound sea, or the spoils of some vast mountain, in like manner his
horrid wastes and wearying minutenesses are the chafings of a
turbulent spirit, grasping the loftiest things and penetrating the
deepest, and moving and moaning on the earth in loneliness and
sadness.
_Boccaccio._ Among men he is what among waters is
The strange, mysterious, solitary Nile.
_Petrarca._ Is that his verse? I do not remember it.
_Boccaccio._ No, it is mine for the present: how long it may continue
mine I cannot tell. I never run after those who steal my apples: it
would only tire me: and they are hardly worth recovering when they are
bruised and bitten, as they are usually. I would not stand upon my
verses: it is a perilous boy's trick, which we ought to leave off when
we put on square shoes. Let our prose show what we are, and our poetry
what we have been.
_Petrarca._ You would never have given this advice to Alighieri.
_Boccaccio._ I would never plough porphyry; there is ground fitter for
grain. Alighieri is the parent of his system, like the sun, about whom
all the worlds are but particles thrown forth from him. We may write
little things well, and accumulate one upon another; but never will
any be justly called a great poet unless he has treated a great
subject worthily. He may be the poet of the lover and of the idler, he
may be the poet of green fields or gay society; but whoever is this
can be no more. A throne is not built of birds'-nests, nor do a
thousand reeds make a trumpet.
_Petrarca._ I wish Alighieri had blown his on nobler occasions.
_Boccaccio._ We may rightly wish it: but, in regretting what he
wanted, let us acknowledge what he had: and never forget (which we
omitted to mention) that he borrowed less from his predecessors than
any of the Roman poets from theirs. Reasonably may it be expected that
almost all who follow will be greatly more indebted to antiquity, to
whose stores we, every year, are making some addition.
_Petrarca._ It can be held no flaw in the title-deeds of genius, if
the same thoughts reappear as have been exhibited long ago. The
indisputable sign of defect should be looked for in the proportion
they bear to the unquestionably original. There are ideas which
necessarily must occur to minds of the like magnitude and materials,
aspect and temperature. When two ages are in the same phasis, they
will excite the same humours, and produce the same coincidences and
combinations. In addition to which, a great poet may really borrow: he
may even condescend to an obligation at the hand of an equal or
inferior: but he forfeits his title if he borrows more than the amount
of his own possessions. The nightingale himself takes somewhat of his
song from birds less glorified: and the lark, having beaten with her
wing the very gates of heaven, cools her breast among the grass. The
lowlier of intellect may lay out a table in their field, at which
table the highest one shall sometimes be disposed to partake: want
does not compel him. Imitation, as we call it, is often weakness, but
it likewise is often sympathy.
_Boccaccio._ Our poet was seldom accessible in this quarter. Invective
picks up the first stone on the wayside, and wants leisure to consult
a forerunner.
_Petrarca._ Dante (original enough everywhere) is coarse and clumsy in
this career. Vengeance has nothing to do with comedy, nor properly
with satire. The satirist who told us that Indignation made his verses
for him, might have been told in return that she excluded him thereby
from the first class, and thrust him among the rhetoricians and
declaimers. Lucretius, in his vituperation, is graver and more
dignified than Alighieri. Painful; to see how tolerant is the atheist,
how intolerant the Catholic: how anxiously the one removes from among
the sufferings of Mortality, her last and heaviest, the fear of a
vindictive Fury pursuing her shadow across rivers of fire and tears;
how laboriously the other brings down Anguish and Despair, even when
Death has done his work. How grateful the one is to that beneficent
philosopher who made him at peace with himself, and tolerant and
kindly toward his fellow-creatures! how importunate the other that God
should forgo His divine mercy, and hurl everlasting torments both upon
the dead and the living!
_Boccaccio._ I have always heard that Ser Dante was a very good man
and sound Catholic: but Christ forgive me if my heart is oftener on
the side of Lucretius![17] Observe, I say, my heart; nothing more. I
devoutly hold to the sacraments and the mysteries: yet somehow I would
rather see men tranquillized than frightened out of their senses, and
rather fast asleep than burning. Sometimes I have been ready to
believe, as far as our holy faith will allow me, that it were better
our Lord were nowhere, than torturing in His inscrutable wisdom, to
all eternity, so many myriads of us poor devils, the creatures of His
hands. Do not cross thyself so thickly, Francesco! nor hang down thy
nether lip so loosely, languidly, and helplessly; for I would be a
good Catholic, alive or dead. But, upon my conscience, it goes hard
with me to think it of Him, when I hear that woodlark yonder, gushing
with joyousness, or when I see the beautiful clouds, resting so softly
one upon another, dissolving ... and not damned for it. Above all, I
am slow to apprehend it, when I remember His great goodness vouchsafed
to me, and reflect on my sinful life heretofore, chiefly in summer
time, and in cities, or their vicinity. But I was tempted beyond my
strength; and I fell as any man might do. However, this last illness,
by God's grace, has well-nigh brought me to my right mind again in all
such matters: and if I get stout in the present month, and can hold
out the next without sliding, I do verily think I am safe, or nearly
so, until the season of beccaficoes.
_Petrarca._ Be not too confident!
_Boccaccio._ Well, I will not be.
_Petrarca._ But be firm.
_Boccaccio._ Assuntina! what! are you come in again?
_Assunta._ Did you or my master call me, Riverenza?
_Petrarca._ No, child!
_Boccaccio._ Oh! get you gone! Get you gone! you little rogue you!
Francesco, I feel quite well. Your kindness to my playful creatures in
the _Decameron_ has revived me, and has put me into good humour with
the greater part of them. Are you quite certain the Madonna will not
expect me to keep my promise? You said you were: I need not ask you
again. I will accept the whole of your assurances, and half your
praises.
_Petrarca._ To represent so vast a variety of personages so
characteristically as you have done, to give the wise all their
wisdom, the witty all their wit, and (what is harder to do
advantageously) the simple all their simplicity, requires a genius
such as you alone possess. Those who doubt it are the least dangerous
of your rivals.
FOOTNOTE:
[17] Qy. How much of Lucretius (or Petronius or Catullus, before
cited) was then known?
FIFTH DAY'S INTERVIEW
It being now the last morning that Petrarca could remain with his
friend, he resolved to pass early into his bedchamber. Boccaccio had
risen and was standing at the open window, with his arms against it.
Renovated health sparkled in the eyes of the one; surprise and delight
and thankfulness to Heaven filled the other's with sudden tears. He
clasped Giovanni, kissed his flaccid and sallow cheek, and falling on
his knees, adored the Giver of life, the source of health to body and
soul. Giovanni was not unmoved: he bent one knee as he leaned on the
shoulder of Francesco, looking down into his face, repeating his
words, and adding:
'Blessed be Thou, O Lord! who sendest me health again! and blessings
on Thy messenger who brought it.'
He had slept soundly; for ere he closed his eyes he had unburdened his
mind of its freight, not only by employing the prayers appointed by
Holy Church, but likewise by ejaculating; as sundry of the fathers did
of old. He acknowledged his contrition for many transgressions, and
chiefly for uncharitable thoughts of Fra Biagio: on which occasion he
turned fairly round on his couch, and leaning his brow against the
wall, and his body being in a becomingly curved position, and proper
for the purpose, he thus ejaculated:
'Thou knowest, O most Holy Virgin! that never have I spoken to
handmaiden at this villetta, or within my mansion at Certaldo,
wantonly or indiscreetly, but have always been, inasmuch as may be,
the guardian of innocence; deeming it better, when irregular thoughts
assailed me, to ventilate them abroad than to poison the house with
them. And if, sinner as I am, I have thought uncharitably of others,
and more especially of Fra Biagio, pardon me, out of thy exceeding
great mercies! And let it not be imputed to me, if I have kept, and
may keep hereafter, an eye over him, in wariness and watchfulness; not
otherwise. For thou knowest, O Madonna! that many who have a perfect
and unwavering faith in thee, yet do cover up their cheese from the
nibblings of vermin.'
Whereupon, he turned round again, threw himself on his back at full
length, and feeling the sheets cool, smooth, and refreshing, folded
his arms, and slept instantaneously. The consequence of his wholesome
slumber was a calm alacrity: and the idea that his visitor would be
happy at seeing him on his feet again, made him attempt to get up: at
which he succeeded, to his own wonder. And it was increased by the
manifestation of his strength in opening the casement, stiff from
being closed, and swelled by the continuance of the rains. The morning
was warm and sunny: and it is known that on this occasion he composed
the verses below:
My old familiar cottage-green!
I see once more thy pleasant sheen;
The gossamer suspended over
Smart celandine by lusty clover;
And the last blossom of the plum
Inviting her first leaves to come;
Which hang a little back, but show
'Tis not their nature to say no.
I scarcely am in voice to sing
How graceful are the steps of Spring;
And ah! it makes me sigh to look
How leaps along my merry brook,
The very same to-day as when
He chirrupt first to maids and men.
_Petrarca._ I can rejoice at the freshness of your feelings: but the
sight of the green turf reminds me rather of its ultimate use and
destination.
For many serves the parish pall,
The turf in common serves for all.
_Boccaccio._ Very true; and, such being the case, let us carefully
fold it up, and lay it by until we call for it.
Francesco, you made me quite light-headed yesterday. I am rather too
old to dance either with Spring, as I have been saying, or with
Vanity: and yet I accepted her at your hand as a partner. In future,
no more of comparisons for me! You not only can do me no good, but you
can leave me no pleasure: for here I shall remain the few days I have
to live, and shall see nobody who will be disposed to remind me of
your praises. Beside, you yourself will get hated for them. We neither
can deserve praise nor receive it with impunity.
_Petrarca._ Have you never remarked that it is into quiet water that
children throw pebbles to disturb it? and that it is into deep caverns
that the idle drop sticks and dirt? We must expect such treatment.
_Boccaccio._ Your admonition shall have its wholesome influence over
me, when the fever your praises have excited has grown moderate.
... After the conversation on this topic and various others had
continued some time, it was interrupted by a visitor. The clergy and
monkery at Certaldo had never been cordial with Messer Giovanni, it
being suspected that certain of his _Novelle_ were modelled on
originals in their orders. Hence, although they indeed both professed
and felt esteem for Canonico Petrarca, they abstained from expressing
it at the villetta. But Frate Biagio of San Vivaldo was (by his own
appointment) the friend of the house; and, being considered as very
expert in pharmacy, had, day after day, brought over no indifferent
store of simples, in ptisans, and other refections, during the
continuance of Ser Giovanni's ailment. Something now moved him to cast
about in his mind whether it might not appear dutiful to make another
visit. Perhaps he thought it possible that, among those who
peradventure had seen him lately on the road, one or other might
expect from him a solution of the questions, What sort of person was
the _crowned martyr_? whether he carried a palm in his hand? whether a
seam was visible across the throat? whether he wore a ring over his
glove, with a chrysolite in it, like the bishops, but representing the
city of Jerusalem and the judgment-seat of Pontius Pilate? Such were
the reports; but the inhabitants of San Vivaldo could not believe the
Certaldese, who, inhabiting the next township to them, were naturally
their enemies. Yet they might believe Frate Biagio, and certainly
would interrogate him accordingly. He formed his determination, put
his frock and hood on, and gave a curvature to his shoe, to evince his
knowledge of the world, by pushing the extremity of it with his
breast-bone against the corner of his cell. Studious of his figure and
of his attire, he walked as much as possible on his heels, to keep up
the reformation he had wrought in the workmanship of the cordwainer.
On former occasions he had borrowed a horse, as being wanted to hear
confession or to carry medicines, which might otherwise be too late.
But, having put on an entirely new habiliment, and it being the season
when horses are beginning to do the same, he deemed it prudent to
travel on foot. Approaching the villetta, his first intention was to
walk directly into his patient's room: but he found it impossible to
resist the impulses of pride, in showing Assunta his rigid and stately
frock, and shoes rather of the equestrian order than the monastic. So
he went into the kitchen where the girl was at work, having just taken
away the remains of the breakfast.
'Frate Biagio!' cried she, 'is this you? Have you been sleeping at
Conte Jeronimo's?'
'Not I,' replied he.
'Why!' said she, 'those are surely his shoes! Santa Maria! you must
have put them on in the dusk of the morning, to say your prayers in!
Here! here! take these old ones of Signor Padrone, for the love of
God! I hope your Reverence met nobody.'
_Frate._ What dost smile at?
_Assunta._ Smile at! I could find in my heart to laugh outright, if I
only were certain that nobody had seen your Reverence in such a funny
trim. Riverenza! put on these.
_Frate._ Not I indeed.
_Assunta._ Allow me then?
_Frate._ No, nor you.
_Assunta._ Then let me stand upon yours, to push down the points.
... Frate Biagio now began to relent a little, when Assunta, who had
made one step toward the project, bethought herself suddenly, and
said:
'No; I might miss my footing. But, mercy upon us! what made you cramp
your Reverence with those ox-yoke shoes? and strangle your Reverence
with that hangdog collar?'
'If you must know,' answered the Frate, reddening, 'it was because I
am making a visit to the Canonico of Parma. I should like to know
something about him: perhaps you could tell me?'
_Assunta._ Ever so much.
_Frate._ I thought no less: indeed I knew it. Which goes to bed first?
_Assunta._ Both together.
_Frate._ Demonio! what dost mean?
_Assunta._ He tells me never to sit up waiting, but to say my prayers
and dream of the Virgin.
_Frate._ As if it was any business of his! Does he put out his lamp
himself?
_Assunta._ To be sure he does: why should not he? what should he be
afraid of? It is not winter: and beside, there is a mat upon the
floor, all round the bed, excepting the top and bottom.
_Frate._ I am quite convinced he never said anything to make you
blush. Why are you silent?
_Assunta._ I have a right.
_Frate._ He did then? ay? Do not nod your head: that will never do.
Discreet girls speak plainly.
_Assunta._ What would you have?
_Frate._ The truth; the truth; again, I say, the truth.
_Assunta._ He _did_ then.
_Frate._ I knew it! The most dangerous man living!
_Assunta._ Ah! indeed he is! Signor Padrone said so.
_Frate._ He knows him of old: he warned you, it seems.
_Assunta._ Me! He never said it was I who was in danger.
_Frate._ He might: it was his duty.
_Assunta._ Am I so fat? Lord! you may feel every rib. Girls who run
about as I do, slip away from apoplexy.
_Frate._ Ho! ho! that is all, is it?
_Assunta._ And bad enough too! that such good-natured men should ever
grow so bulky; and stand in danger, as Padrone said they both do, of
such a seizure?
_Frate._ What? and art ready to cry about it? Old folks cannot die
easier: and there are always plenty of younger to run quick enough for
a confessor. But I must not trifle in this manner. It is my duty to
set your feet in the right way: it is my bounden duty to report to Ser
Giovanni all irregularities I know of, committed in his domicile. I
could indeed, and would, remit a trifle, on hearing the worst. Tell me
now, Assunta! tell me, you little angel! did you ... we all may, the
very best of us may, and do ... sin, my sweet?