My bookseller and I came nigh to blows
some months ago over an edition of Boccaccio, which
my bookseller tried to sell me. This was a copy
in the original, published at Antwerp in 1603, prettily
rubricated, and elaborately adorned with some forty
or fifty copperplates illustrative of the text.
I dare say the volume was cheap enough at thirty dollars,
but I did not want it.
My reason for not wanting it gave
rise to that discussion between my bookseller and
myself, which became very heated before it ended.
I said very frankly that I did not care for the book
in the original, because I had several translations
done by the most competent hands. Thereupon my
bookseller ventured that aged and hackneyed argument
which has for centuries done the book trade such
effective service namely, that in every
translation, no matter how good that translation may
be, there is certain to be lost a share of the flavor
and spirit of the meaning.
“Fiddledeedee!” said I.
“Do you suppose that these translators who
have devoted their lives to the study and practice
of the art are not competent to interpret the different
shades and colors of meaning better than the mere
dabbler in foreign tongues? And then, again,
is not human life too short for the lover of books
to spend his precious time digging out the recondite
allusions of authors, lexicon in hand? My dear
sir, it is a wickedly false economy to expend time
and money for that which one can get done much better
and at a much smaller expenditure by another hand.”
From my encounter with my bookseller
I went straight home and took down my favorite copy
of the “Decameron” and thumbed it over
very tenderly; for you must know that I am particularly
attached to that little volume. I can hardly
realize that nearly half a century has elapsed since
Yseult Hardynge and I parted. She was such a creature
as the great novelist himself would have chosen for
a heroine; she had the beauty and the wit of those
Florentine ladies who flourished in the fourteenth
century, and whose graces of body and mind have been
immortalized by Boccaccio. Her eyes, as I particularly
recall, were specially fine, reflecting from their
dark depths every expression of her varying moods.
Why I called her Fiammetta I cannot
say, for I do not remember; perhaps from a boyish
fancy, merely. At that time Boccaccio and I were
famous friends; we were together constantly, and his
companionship had such an influence upon me that for
the nonce I lived and walked and had my being in that
distant, romantic period when all men were gallants
and all women were grandes dames and all
birds were nightingales.
I bought myself an old Florentine
sword at Noseda’s in the Strand and hung it
on the wall in my modest apartments; under it I placed
Boccaccio’s portrait and Fiammetta’s, and
I was wont to drink toasts to these beloved counterfeit
presentments in flagons (mind you, genuine antique
flagons) of Italian wine. Twice I took Fiammetta
boating upon the Thames and once to view the Lord
Mayor’s pageant; her mother was with us on both
occasions, but she might as well have been at the
bottom of the sea, for she was a stupid old soul, wholly
incapable of sharing or appreciating the poetic enthusiasms
of romantic youth.
Had Fiammetta been a book ah,
unfortunate lady! had she but been a book
she might still be mine, for me to care for lovingly
and to hide from profane eyes and to attire in crushed
levant and gold and to cherish as a best-beloved companion
in mine age! Had she been a book she could not
have been guilty of the folly of wedding with a yeoman
of Lincolnshire ah me, what rude awakenings
too often dispel the pleasing dreams of youth!
When I revisited England in the sixties,
I was tempted to make an excursion into Lincolnshire
for the purpose of renewing my acquaintance with Fiammetta.
Before, however, I had achieved that object this
thought occurred to me: “You are upon a
fool’s errand; turn back, or you will destroy
forever one of the sweetest of your boyhood illusions!
You seek Fiammetta in the delusive hope of finding
her in the person of Mrs. Henry Boggs; there is but
one Fiammetta, and she is the memory abiding in your
heart. Spare yourself the misery of discovering
in the hearty, fleshy Lincolnshire hussif the decay
of the promises of years ago; be content to do reverence
to the ideal Fiammetta who has built her little shrine
in your sympathetic heart!”
Now this was strange counsel, yet
it had so great weight with me that I was persuaded
by it, and after lying a night at the Swan-and-Quiver
Tavern I went back to London, and never again had a
desire to visit Lincolnshire.
But Fiammetta is still a pleasing
memory ay, and more than a memory to me,
for whenever I take down that precious book and open
it, what a host of friends do troop forth! Cavaliers,
princesses, courtiers, damoiselles, monks, nuns, equerries,
pages, maidens humanity of every class
and condition, and all instinct with the color of the
master magician, Boccaccio!
And before them all cometh a maiden
with dark, glorious eyes, and she beareth garlands
of roses; the moonlight falleth like a benediction
upon the Florentine garden slope, and the night wind
seeketh its cradle in the laurel tree, and fain would
sleep to the song of the nightingale.
As for Judge Methuen, he loves his
Boccaccio quite as much as I do mine, and being somewhat
of a versifier he has made a little poem on the subject,
a copy of which I have secured surreptitiously and
do now offer for your delectation:
One day upon a topmost shelf
I found a precious
prize indeed,
Which father used to read himself,
But did not want
us boys to read;
A brown old book of certain age
(As type and binding
seemed to show),
While on the spotted title-page
Appeared the name
“Boccaccio.”
I’d never heard that name
before,
But in due season
it became
To him who fondly brooded o’er
Those pages a
beloved name!
Adown the centuries I walked
Mid pastoral scenes
and royal show;
With seigneurs and their dames
I talked
The crony of Boccaccio!
Those courtly knights and sprightly
maids,
Who really seemed disposed
to shine
In gallantries and escapades,
Anon became great
friends of mine.
Yet was there sentiment with fun,
And oftentimes
my tears would flow
At some quaint tale of valor done,
As told by my
Boccaccio.
In boyish dreams I saw again
Bucolic belles
and dames of court,
The princely youths and monkish
men
Arrayed for sacrifice
or sport.
Again I heard the nightingale
Sing as she sang
those years ago
In his embowered Italian vale
To my revered
Boccaccio.
And still I love that brown old
book
I found upon the
topmost shelf
I love it so I let none look
Upon the treasure
but myself!
And yet I have a strapping boy
Who (I have every
cause to know)
Would to its full extent enjoy
The friendship
of Boccaccio!
But boys are, oh! so different now
From what they
were when I was one!
I fear my boy would not know how
To take that old
raconteur’s fun!
In your companionship, O friend,
I think it wise
alone to go
Plucking the gracious fruits that
bend
Wheree’er
you lead, Boccaccio.
So rest you there upon the shelf,
Clad in your garb
of faded brown;
Perhaps, sometime, my boy himself
Shall find you
out and take you down.
Then may he feel the joy once more
That thrilled
me, filled me years ago
When reverently I brooded o’er
The glories of
Boccaccio!
Out upon the vile brood of imitators,
I say! Get ye gone, ye Bandellos and ye Straparolas
and ye other charlatans who would fain possess yourselves
of the empire which the genius of Boccaccio bequeathed
to humanity. There is but one master, and to
him we render grateful homage. He leads us down
through the cloisters of time, and at his touch the
dead become reanimate, and all the sweetness and the
valor of antiquity recur; heroism, love, sacrifice,
tears, laughter, wisdom, wit, philosophy, charity,
and understanding are his auxiliaries; humanity is
his inspiration, humanity his theme, humanity his audience,
humanity his debtor.
Now it is of Tancred’s daughter
he tells, and now of Rossiglione’s wife; anon
of the cozening gardener he speaks and anon of Alibech;
of what befell Gillette de Narbonne, of Iphigenia
and Cymon, of Saladin, of Calandrino, of Dianora and
Ansaldo we hear; and what subject soever he touches
he quickens it into life, and he so subtly invests
it with that indefinable quality of his genius as
to attract thereunto not only our sympathies but also
our enthusiasm.
Yes, truly, he should be read with
understanding; what author should not? I would
no more think of putting my Boccaccio into the hands
of a dullard than I would think of leaving a bright
and beautiful woman at the mercy of a blind mute.
I have hinted at the horror of the
fate which befell Yseult Hardynge in the seclusion
of Mr. Henry Boggs’s Lincolnshire estate.
Mr. Henry Boggs knew nothing of romance, and he cared
less; he was wholly incapable of appreciating a woman
with dark, glorious eyes and an expanding soul; I’ll
warrant me that he would at any time gladly have traded
a “Decameron” for a copy of “The
Gentleman Poulterer,” or for a year’s
subscription to that grewsome monument to human imbecility,
London “Punch.”
Ah, Yseult! hadst thou but been a book!