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in the University for the sole study of the _Divine Comedy_, he himself
being the first to occupy the chair, and writing a _Life of Dante_,
besides commentaries on the _Comedy_ itself.

Mainly through his intimacy with the spiritual mind of Petrarch,
Boccaccio's moral character gradually underwent a change from the
reckless freedom and unbridled love of pleasure into which he had easily
fallen among his associates in the court life at Naples. He admired the
delicacy and high standard of honor of his friend, and became awakened
to a sense of man's duty to the world and to himself. During the decade
following the year 1365 he occupied himself at his home in Certaldo,
near Florence, with various literary labors, often entertaining there
the great men of the world.

Petrarch's death occurred in 1374, and Boccaccio survived him but one
year, dying on the twenty-first of December, 1375. He was buried in
Certaldo, in the Church of San Michele e Giacomo.

That one city should have produced three such men as the great
triumvirate of the fourteenth century--Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio--and
that one half-century should have witnessed their successive triumphs,
is the greatest glory of Florence, and is one of the most notable facts
in the history of genius.

We quote once more from Symonds: "Dante brought the universe into his
_Divine Comedy_. 'But the soul of man, too, is a universe', and of this
inner microcosm Petrarch was the poet and genius. It remained for
Boccaccio to treat of daily life with an art as distinct and dazzling as
theirs. From Dante's Beatrice, through Petrarch's Laura, to Boccaccio's
La Fiammetta--from woman as an allegory of the noblest thoughts and
purest stirrings of the soul, through woman as the symbol of all beauty
worshiped at a distance, to woman as man's lover, kindling and
reciprocating the most ardent passion; from mystic, stately periods to
Protean prose; from verse built up into cathedral-like dignity, through
lyrics light as arabesques and pointed with the steely touch of polished
style, to that free form of speech which takes all moods and lends
itself alike to low or lofty things--such was the rapid movement of
Italian genius within the brief space of fifty years. So quickly did the
Renaissance emerge from the Middle Ages; and when the voices of that
august trio were silenced in the grave, their echoes ever widened and
grew louder through the spacious time to come."

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