GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO was born in 1313 in Paris, the son of a Florentine merchant and a French-woman. His father had property in the hamlet of Certaldo, and the author always signed himself "Boccaccio da Certaldo." He was destined, first for commerce, then for the study of the law, but finding neither avocation congenial, he after his father's death, devoted himself entirely to his favourite pursuits. He was honoured with the favour of King Robert of Naples and with the love of the King's daughter, Maria, whom he celebrates in his poems under the name of Fiammetta. His zeal for the writers of antiquity was not inferior to that of Petrarch. He sent for Leontius Pilatus to teach him Greek. He devoted large sums to the purchase and reproduction of the works of classical writers. He seems to have been an amiable and honourable man, free alike from pride like that of Dante, and from vanity like that of Petrarch. He repented in later years of the somewhat frivolous character of many of his writings, took holy orders, and spent the last days of his life at Certaldo. When Florence endowed a chair for the explanation of the _Divine Comedy,_ Boccaccio was the first to be appointed. He wrote a life of Dante and began a commentary on the _Inferno,_ which, however, he did not live to finish, dying at Certaldo on the 21st of December, 1375. Boccaccio was a most fertile writer, both in Latin and in Italian. His Latin works have but little merit and are vastly inferior to those of Petrarch in strength and originality of thought. His Italian poems are heavy and uninteresting, but he has the credit of inventing the "Ottava Rima," the stanza in which Ariosto and Tasso subsequently wrote their immortal epics. Praise-worthy as these works were for the time in which they were written, he would not occupy a high position in the literature of his country, had he not proved himself in other productions to be the first great writer of Italian prose. His romantic stories, _Il Filocopo, La Fiammetta, l'Admeto,_ are written in a flowing and pleasing style; his _Life of Dante_ and _Commentary on the Inferno_ are valuable for the information they impart, but the crowning glory of his literary career is the collection of stories published under the title of _Il Decamerone._ The terrible plague that swept over the earth in the middle of the Thirteenth Century, known in history as the "Black Death,"[1] ravaged Florence with peculiar malignity, and Boccaccio feigns that five ladies and their cavaliers took refuge in a villa in the neighbourhood and beguiled their leisure by telling stories to each other. Being a collection of tales told by various characters, the _Decamerone_ bears a certain resemblance to another memorable work of the Fourteenth Century, Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales,_ but happier than his great contemporary, Boccaccio lived to complete his design.