ogress of a prose in a manner created by it.
This influence has indeed prevailed down to the present time, to an
extent beneficial upon the whole, although frequently fatal to the
development of individual writers. Novelists like Giovanni Fiorentino or
Franco Sacchetti are completely under the sway of their great model; and
Boccaccio's influence may be discerned equally in the plastic fulness of
Machiavelli and in the pointed satire of Aretino. Without touching upon
the individual merits of Lasca, Bandello and other novelists of the
_cinque-cento_, it may be asserted that none of them created a style
independent of their great predecessor. One cannot indeed but acquiesce
in the authoritative utterance of the Accademia della Crusca, which
holds up the _Decameron_ as the standard and model of Italian prose.
Even the Della Cruscan writers themselves have been unable to deprive
the language wholly of the fresh spontaneity of Boccaccio's manner,
which in modern literature we again admire in Manzoni's _Promessi
sposi_.

A detailed analysis of a work so well known as the _Decameron_ would be
unnecessary. The description of the plague of Florence preceding the
stories is universally acknowledged to be a masterpiece of epic grandeur
and vividness. It ranks with the paintings of similar calamities by
Thucydides, Defoe and Manzoni. Like Defoe, Boccaccio had to draw largely
on hearsay and his own imagination, it being almost certain that in 1348
he was at Naples, and therefore no eye-witness of the scenes he
describes. The stories themselves, a hundred in number, range from the
highest pathos to the coarsest licentiousness. A creation like the
patient Griselda, which international literature owes to Boccaccio,
ought to atone for much that is morally and artistically objectionable
in the _Decameron_. It may be said on this head, that his age and his
country were not only deeply immoral, but in addition exceedingly
outspoken. Moreover, his sources were anything but pure. Most of his
improper stories are either anecdotes from real life, or they are taken
from the _fabliaux_ of medieval French poets. On comparing the latter
class of stories (about one-fifth of the whole _Decameron_) with their
French originals, one finds that Boccaccio has never added to, but has
sometimes toned down the revolting ingredients. Notwithstanding this, it
cannot be denied that the artistic value of the _Decameron_ is greatly
impaired by descriptions and ex