standard of the Decameron; yet even he will remark that they want the direct aim and clear comprehension of story which are never wanting in Boccacio . . . . And the youngest reader will probably take note that 'there is a savour of impossibility (so to speak), a sort of incongruous beauty dividing the subject and the style, which removes the Stories after Nature from our complete apprehension, and baffles the reader's delight in them;' that 'even the license of a fairy tale is here abruptly leapt over; names and places are thrust in which perplex the very readiest belief even of that factitious kind which we may accord to things practically impossible: English kings and Tuscan dukes occupy the place reserved in the charity of our imaginations for kings of Lyonesse and princesses of Garba; the language also is often cast in the mould of Elizabethan convention; absolute Euphuism, with all its fantastic corruption of style, breaks out and runs rampant here and there; especially in a few of
