n many others, to discover
with certainty Boccaccio's exact meaning, owing to his affectation of
Ciceronian concision and delight in obscure elliptical forms of
construction; whilst his use of words in a remote or unfamiliar sense
and the impossibility of deciding, in certain cases, the person of the
pronouns and adjectives employed tend still farther to darken counsel.
_E.g._, if we render _affezione_ sentiment, _cognobbe_ (as
_riconobbe_) acknowledged, recognized, and read _le sue parole_ as
meaning _her_ (instead of _his_) words, the whole sense of the passage
is changed, and we must read it "more by her sentiment (_i.e._ by the
tendency and spirit of her story) recognized the inclination of her
companions than that of the king by her [actual] words." I have
commented thus at large on this passage, in order to give my readers
some idea of the difficulties which at every page beset the translator
of the Decameron and which make Boccaccio perhaps the most troublesome
of all authors to render into representative English.]

"The vulgar have a proverb to the effect that he who is naught and is
held good may do ill and it is not believed of him; the which
affordeth me ample matter for discourse upon that which hath been
proposed to me and at the same time to show what and how great is the
hypocrisy of the clergy, who, with garments long and wide and faces
paled by art and voices humble and meek to solicit the folk, but
exceeding loud and fierce to rebuke in others their own vices, pretend
that themselves by taking and others by giving to them come to
salvation, and to boot, not as men who have, like ourselves, to
purchase paradise, but as in a manner they were possessors and lords
thereof, assign unto each who dieth, according to the sum of the
monies left them by him, a more or less excellent place there,
studying thus to deceive first themselves, an they believe as they
say, and after those who put faith for that matter in their words.
Anent whom, were it permitted me to discover as much as it behoved, I
would quickly make clear to many simple folk that which they keep
hidden under those huge wide gowns of theirs. But would God it might
betide them all of their cozening tricks, as it betided a certain
minor friar, and he no youngling, but held one of the first
casuists[225] in Venice; of whom it especially pleaseth me to tell
you, so as peradventure somewhat to cheer your hearts, that are full
of compassion for the deat