rest somewhat after the manner of Petrarch's _Daphne_. In it Boccaccio
tells us, under the thinnest veil of pastoral, how his daughter Violante,
dead in childhood many years before, appeared to him bearing tidings of
the land beyond the grave. The theme is the same as that of the almost
contemporary _Pearl_; and in treating it Boccaccio achieves something of
the sweetness and pathos of the English poem. One eclogue, finally, the
_Valle tenebrosa (Vallis Opaca)_, which appears to owe something to
Dante's description of hell, is probably historical in its intention, but
the gloss explains _obscurum per obscurius_, and we can only suppose that
the author intended that the inner sense should remain a mystery.

When Boccaccio wrote, the eclogue had not yet degenerated into the
literary convention it became in the following century; and, though he was
no doubt tempted to the use of the form by Vergilian tradition and the
example of Petrarch, he must also have followed therein a natural
inclination and no mere dictate of fashion. Even in these poems the
humanity of the writer's personality makes itself felt. While Laura tends
to fade into a personification of poetry, and Petrarch's strongest
convictions find expression through the mouth of St. Peter, we feel that
behind Boccaccio's humanistic exercise lies his own amorous passion, his
own religious enthusiasm, his own fatherly tenderness and love. His
eclogues, however, never attained the same reputation as Petrarch's, and
remained in manuscript till the appearance of Giunta's bucolic collection
of 1504.

* * * * *

As humanism advanced and the golden age of the renaissance approached,
Latin bucolic writers sprang up and multiplied. The fullest
collection--that printed by Oporinus at Basel in March, 1546--contains the