and adorned by the wit of men and the beauty of women,
Boccaccio lived for several years. We can imagine how the tedious duties
of the market and the counting-house became more and more distasteful
to his aspiring nature. We are told that, finding himself by chance on
the supposed grave of Virgil, near Naples, Boccaccio on that sacred spot
took the firm resolution of devoting himself for ever to poetry. But
perhaps another event, which happened some time after, led quite as much
as the first-mentioned occurrence to this decisive turning-point in his
life. On Easter-eve, 1341, in the church of San Lorenzo, Boccaccio saw
for the first time the natural daughter of King Robert, Maria, whom he
immortalized as Fiammetta in the noblest creations of his muse.
Boccaccio's passion on seeing her was instantaneous, and (if we may
accept as genuine the confessions contained in one of her lover's works)
was returned with equal ardour on the part of the lady. But not till
after much delay did she yield to the amorous demands of the poet, in
spite of her honour and her duty as the wife of another. All the
information we have with regard to Maria or Fiammetta is derived from
the works of Boccaccio himself, and owing to several apparently
contradictory statements occurring in these works, the very existence of
the lady has been doubted by commentators, who seem to forget that,
surrounded by the chattering tongues of a court, and watched perhaps by
a jealous husband, Boccaccio had all possible reason to give the
appearance of fictitious incongruity to the effusions of his real
passion. But there seems no more reason to call into question the main
features of the story, or even the identity of the person, than there
would be in the case of Petrarch's Laura or of Dante's Beatrice. It has
been ingeniously pointed out by Baldelli, that the fact of her descent
from King Robert being known only to Maria herself, and through her to
Boccaccio, the latter was the more at liberty to refer to this
circumstance,--the bold expression of the truth serving in this case to
increase the mystery with which the poets of the middle ages loved, or
were obliged, to surround the objects of their praise. From Boccaccio's
_Ameto_ we learn that Maria's mother was, like his own, a French lady,
whose husband, according to Baldelli's ingenious conjecture, was of the
noble house of Aquino, and therefore of the same family with the
celebrated Thomas Aquinas. Maria died,