The third great name in Italian mediaeval literature is that of Giovanni Boccaccio.He was born in Paris in l3l3, and died at Certaldo in 1345.Like Dante and Petrarch he was a scholar and an industrious writer.He wrote some important historical treatises, and many poems, some of which attained some fame.But it is as a writer of prose that he deserves the name he has.In Italy, as in all other lands, there was in the Middle Ages a large body of tales and fables in circulation.In Italy, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, these tales came into literature as Novellas or novels.The Decamerone of Boccaccio is a collection of a hundred such novels or tales.They are derived from many sources, probably not more than three or four of them being invented by Boccaccio.The tale we select is interesting as furnishing the basis for one of Keats' beautiful romantic ballads.
THE POT OF BASIL.
