Boccaccio wrote a quantity of Italian verse, of which he himself thought little, after seeing those of Petrarch; and posterity has confirmed his judgment. His Teseide, a heroic poem, in ottava rima, may be excepted. This metre, generally adopted by the Italian epic and romantic poets, he has the merit of having invented. Though imperfect, and little attractive as an epic poem, the Teseide is not destitute of minor beauties. Chaucer is indebted to it for his Knight’s Tale, remodelled by Dryden under the name of Palamon and Arcite. An edition of Boccaccio’s Italian prose works was printed at Naples, with the date of Florence, in 1723–4, in 6 vols. 8vo.; but a better edition has been lately published at Florence, corrected after the best approved MSS. in 13 vols. 8vo. 1827–32. The editions of the Decameron are almost innumerable. The best and most recent ones are those of Poggiali, 1789–90, in 5 vols. 8vo.; that of Ferrario, Milan, 1803; that of Colombo, Parma, 1812; all with copious notes and comments; a small one by Molini, Florence, 1820; and the one by Pickering, London, to which the late Ugo Foscolo prefixed an elaborate and interesting historical dissertation. Domenico Maria Manni wrote a ‘History of the Decameron,’ Florence, 1742, in which he has collected a store of curious information concerning that work and its author. The principal biographers of Boccaccio are Filippo Villani, who may be considered as a contemporary of our author; Giannozzo Mannetti, Francesco Sansovino, Giuseppe Betussi, Count Mazzuchelli, and lastly, the Count G. Battista Baldelli, who published a new life of Boccaccio in 1806 at Florence. [Illustration: [Scene from the Introduction to the Decameron, after a design by Stothard.]] [Illustration] CLAUDE.