ries. Boccaccio, next in rank to
Petrarch, evolved a poetry consisting of Norman wit and Provencal love,
joined to an elaborate setting of his own. He took Livy and Cicero for
his models, and tried to combine ancient mythology with Christian
history, the result being that his writings were not so fine as they
would have been had they displayed a greater freedom a of style. His
most celebrated work is the Decameron, the idea of which is taken from
an old Hindu romance which was translated into Latin in the twelfth
century. Most of these tales have also been found in the ancient French
fabliaux, and while Boccaccio cannot be said to have really invented
them, he did clothe them anew, and his tales in their turn have been
translated into all the European languages.

It is due to Cosmo and Lorenzo de' Medici, and to Pope Leo X, that
there was such a glorious development of the fine arts in the fifteenth
century, an era whose benefits have been felt among the cultivated
nations for over three hundred years.

At the same time Poliziano created the pastoral tragedy, which served
to revive the study of Virgil. Other poets seizing on the old romance
of the Trouveres, added to them an element of mockery, in place of the
old religious belief. This new spirit was adopted by Ariosto. From the
East he borrowed the magic and sorcery interwoven in the adventures of
his knights and ladies, giants and magicians. It remained for Torquato
Tasso to revive the heroic epic in his Jerusalem Delivered, in which he
depicts the struggle between the Christians and Saracens. Neither the
Siege of Trod, nor the Adventures of Aeneas could compare with the
splendid dramatic element in Tasso's immortal poem, which has been said
to combine the classic and the romantic style in a new and unusual
degree.

In the sixteenth century Strapparola, an Italian novelist, wrote a
number of fairy tales, which have been a treasure house for later
writers, and to which we are indebted for Puss in Boots, Fortunio, and
other stories which have now become familiar in the nursery lore of
most modern nations. Bandello, in the same century, was a novelist from
whom Shakespeare and other English dramatists have borrowed much
material.

One thing which is peculiar to Italy, and which has found its way into
nearly the whole civilized world, is Italian Opera or melodrama. It was
an outcome of the Pastoral drama, and first took shape in 1594 under
Rinuccini, a Florentine. B