ing their
greatness. The reason is that their great products overshadow all later
production, and prevent all competition by their very greatness. When
once a nation has worked up its mythic element into an epos, it contains
in itself no further materials out of which an epos can be elaborated.
So Italian literature has always been overshadowed by Latin literature.
Italian writers, especially in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, were
always conscious of their past, and dared not compete with the great
names of Virgil, Ovid, Horace, and the rest. At the same time, with this
consciousness of the past, they had evolved a special interest in the
problems and arts of the present. The split-up of the peninsula into so
many small states, many of them republics, had developed individual life
just as the city-states of Hellas had done in ancient times. The main
interest shifted from the state and the nation to the life and
development of the individual.[3] And with this interest arose in the
literary sphere the dramatic narrative of human action--the Novella.

[Footnote 3: See Burckhardt, _Cultur der Renaisance in Italien_,
Buch II., especially Kap. iii.]

The genealogy of the Novella is short but curious. The first known
collection of tales in modern European literature dealing with the
tragic and comic aspects of daily life was that made by Petrus Alphonsi,
a baptized Spanish Jew, who knew some Arabic.[4] His book, the
_Disciplina Clericalis_, was originally intended as seasoning for
sermons, and very strong seasoning they must have been found. The
stories were translated into French, and thus gave rise to the
_Fabliau_, which allowed full expression to the _esprit Gaulois_. From
France the _Fabliau_ passed to Italy, and came ultimately into the hands
of Boccaccio, under whose influence it became transformed into the
_Novella_.[5]

[Footnote 4: On Peter Alphonsi see my edition of Caxton's _AEsop_,
which contains selections from him in Vol. II.]

[Footnote 5: Signor Bartoli has written on _I Precursori di
Boccaccio_, 1874, Landau on his Life and Sources (_Leben_, 1880,
_Quellen des Dekameron_, 1884), and on his successors (_Beitraege
zur Geschichte der ital. Novelle_, 1874). Mr. Symonds has an
admirable chapter on the _Novellieri_ in his _Renaissance_, vol. v.]

It is an elementary mistake to associate Boccaccio's name with the tales
of gayer tone traceable to the _Fabliaux_. He initi