[Footnote 4: On Peter Alphonsi see my edition of Caxton’s _Æsop_, which contains selections from him in Vol. II.] [Footnote 5: Signor Bartoli has written on _I Precursori di Boccaccio_, 1874, Landau on his Life and Sources (_Leben_, 1880, _Quellen des Dekameron_, 1884), and on his successors (_Beiträge zur Geschichte der ital. Novelle_, 1874). Mr. Symonds has an admirable chapter on the _Novellieri_ in his _Renaissance_, vol. v.] It is an elementary mistake to associate Boccaccio’s name with the tales of gayer tone traceable to the _Fabliaux_. He initiated the custom of mixing tragic with the comic tales. Nearly all the _novelle_ of the Fourth Day, for example, deal with tragic topics. And the example he set in this way was followed by the whole school of _Novellieri_. As Painter’s book is so largely due to them, a few words on the _Novellieri_ used by him seem desirable, reserving for the present the question of his treatment of their text. Of Giovanne Boccaccio himself it is difficult for any one with a love of letters to speak in few or measured words. He may have been a Philistine, as Mr. Symonds calls him, but he was surely a Philistine of genius. He has the supreme virtue of style. In fact, it may be roughly said that in Europe for nearly two centuries there is no such thing as a prose style but Boccaccio’s. Even when dealing with his grosser topics--and these he derived from others--he half disarms disgust by the lightness of his touch. And he could tell a tale, one of the most difficult of literary tasks. When he deals with graver actions, if he does not always rise to the occasion, he never fails to give the due impression of seriousness and dignity. It is not for nothing that the _Decamerone_ has been the storehouse of poetic inspiration for nearly five centuries. In this country alone, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dryden, Keats, Tennyson, have each in turn gone to Boccaccio for material.