Clerk of Oxford's
tale;[541] it was turned several times into French.[542] Pinturicchio
represented the adventures of Griselda in a series of pictures, now
preserved in the National Gallery; the story furnished the subject of
plays in Italy, in France, and in England.[543] These exaggerated
descriptions were just what went to the very heart; people wept over
them in the fourteenth century as over Clarissa in the eighteenth.
Petrarch, writing to Boccaccio about Griselda, uses almost the same
terms as Lady Bradshaigh, writing to Richardson about Clarissa:

"Had you seen me, I surely should have moved your pity. When alone, in
agonies would I lay down the book, take it up again, walk about the
room, let fall a flood of tears, wipe my eyes, read again--perhaps not
three lines--throw away the book, crying out: 'Excuse me, good Mr.
Richardson, I cannot go on; it is your fault, you have done more than I
can bear.'"[544]

I made "one of our mutual friends from Padua," writes Petrarch, "a man
of elevated mind and vast learning, read this story. He had hardly got
half through, when suddenly he stopped, choking with tears; a moment
after, having composed himself, he took up the narrative once more to
continue reading, and, behold, a second time sobs stopped his utterance.
He declared it was impossible for him to continue, and he made a person
of much instruction, who accompanied him, finish the reading." About
that time, in all probability, Petrarch, who, as we see in the same
letter, liked to renew the experience, gave the English poet and
negotiator, who had come to visit him in his retreat, this tale to read,
and Chaucer, for that very reason less free than with most of his other
stories, scarcely altered anything in Petrarch's text. With him as with
his model, Griselda is Patience, nothing more; everything is sacrificed
to that virtue; Griselda is neither woman nor mother; she is only the
patient spouse, Patience made wife. They take her daughter from her, to
be killed, as they tell her, by order of the marquis. So be it, replies
Griselda:

"Goth now," quod she, "and dooth my lordes heste;
But o thing wil I preye yow of your grace.
That, but my lord forbad yow, atte leste,
Burieth this litel body in som place,
That bestes ne no briddes it to-race."
But he no word wol to that purpos seye,
But took the child and wente upon his weye.[545]

Whereupon every one goes into ecstasies, and is greatly