according to his account, long
before her lover, who cherished her memory to the end of his life, as we
see from a sonnet written shortly before his death.

The first work of Boccaccio, composed by him at Fiammetta's command, was
the prose tale, _Filocopo_, describing the romantic love and adventures
of Florio and Biancafiore, a favourite subject with the knightly
minstrels of France, Italy and Germany. The treatment of the story by
Boccaccio is not remarkable for originality or beauty, and the narrative
is encumbered by classical allusions and allegorical conceits. The style
also cannot be held worthy of the future great master of Italian prose.
Considering, however, that this prose was in its infancy, and that this
was Boccaccio's first attempt at remoulding the unwieldy material at his
disposal, it would be unjust to deny that _Filocopo_ is a highly
interesting work, full of promise and all but articulate power. Another
work, written about the same time by Fiammetta's desire and dedicated to
her, is the _Teseide_, an epic poem, and indeed the first heroic epic in
the Italian language. The name is chosen somewhat inappropriately, as
King Theseus plays a secondary part, and the interest of the story
centres in the two noble knights, Palemone and Arcito, and their wooing
of the beautiful Emelia. The _Teseide_ is of particular interest to the
student of poetry, because it exhibits the first example of the _ottava
rima_, a metre which was adopted by Tasso and Ariosto, and in English by
Byron in _Don Juan_. Another link between Boccaccio's epic and English
literature is formed by the fact of Chaucer having in the _Knight's
Tale_ adopted its main features.

Boccaccio's poetry has been severely criticized by his countrymen, and
most severely by the author himself. On reading Petrarch's sonnets,
Boccaccio resolved in a fit of despair to burn his own attempts, and
only the kindly encouragement of his great friend prevented the
holocaust. Posterity has justly differed from the author's sweeping
self-criticism. It is true, that compared with Dante's grandeur and
passion, and with Petrarch's absolute mastership of metre and language,
Boccaccio's poetry seems to be somewhat thrown into shade. His verse is
occasionally slip-shod, and particularly his epic poetry lacks what in
modern parlance is called poetic diction,--the quality, that is, which
distinguishes the elevated pathos of the recorder of heroic deeds from
the easy grace