The study of rhetoric was first cultivated in Florence, and we see, by Dante’s education, the importance attached to this branch of knowledge. However, the earliest rhetoricians, such as Buoncompagni and Guidotto of Bologna, seldom employed the vernacular. The honour of fixing, so to say, the Tuscan dialect, of raising the Italian patois to the rank which Latin had occupied exclusively till then, belongs to Brunetto Latini, of whom Villani tells us that he was “the first to polish the Florentines,” and to whom Dante, his pupil, raised a monument more durable than any other claim to immortality which the poor orator possessed: “You taught me how man can make himself immortal, and it is right that while I live my tongue should declare the gratitude which I feel.”[g] BOCCACCIO But these after all are only tentative efforts. The first writer to make use of the new vehicle as a medium for really artistic prose of a creative type was a Florentine of a slightly later epoch, the contemporary of Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio, the famous author of the _Decameron_. Boccaccio was born at Paris, in 1313, and was the natural son of a merchant of Florence, himself born at Certaldo, a castle in the Val d’Elsa, in the Florentine territory. His father had intended him for a commercial life, but before devoting him to it, indulged him with a literary education. From his earliest years, Boccaccio evinced a decided predilection for letters. He wrote verses, and manifested an extreme aversion to trade. He revolted equally at the prospect of a commercial life, and the study of the canon law, which his father was desirous of his undertaking. To oblige his father, however, he made several journeys of business; but he brought back with him, instead of a love for his employment, a more extended information, and an increased passion for study.