of £2260. After the reformation in Germany, a more watchful censorship was established, and the Decameron was placed in the list of proscribed books. An expurgated edition however was allowed to appear, under the _imprimatur_ of Pope Gregory XIII. in 1573, in which many passages marked by the Inquisition were expunged, and laymen were made to take the places of the clergy in the more indecorous adventures. The MS. from which this and most of the subsequent editions are taken, was written by Mannelli, the godson, and friend of Boccaccio, in 1384, nine years after the author’s death. It is now in the Laurentian library at Florence. Mannelli has copied scrupulously what he calls “the text,” whether an autograph of Boccaccio, or an earlier copy, even to its errors and omissions, noting from time to time in the margin “sic textus,” or “deficiebat,” or “superfluum.” It may therefore be presumed that the author had not put the last finish to his work. Boccaccio began the Decameron soon after the plague of 1348, and seems to have circulated the days, or parts, among his friends as he completed them. He was a long time in completing the work, which he seems to have laid aside, and resumed at leisure; and it is believed that he was eight years employed upon it, and that he wrote the latter tales about 1356. From that time he seems to have taken no more notice of it. He never sent it to Petrarch, to whom he was in the habit of transmitting all his other compositions; and it was only by accident, many years after, that the poet saw a copy of it. This he mentions in one of his letters to Boccaccio, and says that he “supposes it to be one of his juvenile productions.” Petrarch praised only the description of the plague, and the story of Griselda. This he translated into Latin. Boccaccio’s other Italian prose works are ‘Il Filocopo,’ a prose romance, written at the request of his Fiammetta. It is a dull composition, far inferior to the Decameron in style, and displaying an anomalous mixture of Christian and Pagan images and sentiments. ‘L’Amorosa Fiammetta’ is also a prose romance, in which the lady relates her passion and grief for the absence of Pamfilo, by which name the author is supposed to have designated himself. ‘Il Corbaccio,’ or the ‘Labyrinth of Love,’ in which he relates his adventures with a certain widow, the same probably as he has introduced in the seventh tale of the eighth day of the Decameron. ‘Ameto,’ a drama of mixed prose and verse. ‘Origine, vita, e costumi di Dante Alighieri,’ the life of Dante already mentioned. Several letters remain, but the bulk of his correspondence is lost. A life of Petrarch by Boccaccio, written originally in Latin, has been recently discovered, and published in 1828 by Domenico Rossetti, of Trieste.