OF SIX MEDIÆVAL WOMEN
to find woman treated on a very high plane by Boccaccio, but we recognise that, in a way, this work forms a fresh starting-point in the eternal controversy. Perhaps we should not have had this curious collection of stories of women, virtuous and vicious, mythological and historical—stories which are certainly very inferior as art to those of the Decameron—had not a crisis occurred in Boccaccio's life. One day a Carthusian monk came to him with a warning message from the dead, and, much troubled in mind, he resolved to try to begin life afresh. But he was a better story-teller than a moraliser. He would fain save his soul, but he liked and courted popularity, and knew well the deeper meaning of the proverb, "A terreno dolce, vanga di legno." And so he mingles virtue and vice, hoping, as he says, that "some utility and profit shall come of the same." To us of to-day, the chief interest of this work is that Boccaccio's fame perhaps gave a definite impetus to the discussion of the sex, instead of wholesale assertion, and also that it probably suggested to Chaucer the idea for his Legend of Good Women. How refreshing to find ourselves in the atmosphere of the kindly Chaucer! Let us pause for a moment, and recall what he says of women, he who was not only a knightly Court-poet, but also a popular singer, well versed in the practical wisdom of life. In the prologue we read, "Let be the chaf, and wryt wel of the corn," and in allusion to his library
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