Here our praise of this celebrated work must stop. Of its indecencies we have already spoken. The narrative, though clothed in decent words, frequently runs in such a strain as no company of women above the lowest grade of shame would now listen to, much less indulge in. Bad as this is, a still deeper stain is to be found in the utter absence of all moral principle, and callousness to all good feeling. Long planned seduction, breach of hospitality, betrayal of friendship, all these are painted as fortunate and spirited adventures, and as desirable objects of attainment. Unlucky husbands are sneered at; jealousy of honour is censured as stupidity or tyranny. Some of the female characters are even worse than the male; and the world of the Decameron is one which no man of common decency or honour could bear to live in. Boccaccio saw the mischief he had done, and was sorry when it was too late. In a letter to Mainardo de’ Cavalcanti, Marshal of Sicily, he entreated him not to suffer the females of his family to read the Decameron; because, “although education and honour would keep them above temptation, yet their minds could not but be tainted by such obscene stories.” He is fond of introducing monks and friars engaged in licentious pursuits, and exposed to ludicrous and humiliating adventures. He also at times speaks of the rites of the church in a profane or sarcastic manner. From this it has been inferred that he was a sceptic or heretic. The conclusion is erroneous. Like other wits of that ignorant, superstitious, and debauched age, Boccaccio sneered, reviled, and yet feared: and while he ridiculed the ministers and usages of the church, he was employed in collecting relics, and ended his loose tales with invocations of heaven and the saints. Besides, the secular clergy themselves bore no love towards the monks and mendicant friars: they were jealous of the former, and they hated and despised the latter. From Dante down to Leo X. the dignitaries of the church spoke of friars in terms nearly as opprobrious as Boccaccio himself. Leo made public jest of them. Bembo, the secretary of Leo, and a cardinal himself, and Berni, the secretary to several cardinals, give no more quarter to them than is given in the Decameron. No wonder then that laymen should take similar liberties, and that a friar should be regarded, as Ugo Foscolo observes, as a sort of scape-goat for the sins of the whole clergy. These considerations may explain how the Decameron went through several editions, both at Venice and Florence, without attracting the censures of the Court of Rome. The earliest editions bear the dates of 1471–2, but these became extremely scarce, since the fanatic Savanarola had a heap of them burnt in the public square of Florence in 1497. Of the Valdarfer edition of 1471, only one copy is known to exist. This has long been an object of interest to book collectors; and was purchased, at the Roxburgh sale, by the Marquis of Blandford, for the enormous sum