Note 39 — Chapter I

"Qui ... ferula ... ab incunabulis puellulos primum grammaticæ gradum tentantes cogere consueverat," writes Boccaccio in the letter to Iacobo Pizzinghe. See Corrazini, Le Lett. ed. e ined. di G. B. (Firenze, 1877), p. 196, and Filocolo, ed. cit., I, 75-6. It was probably the Metamorphoses of Ovid that he read with Mazzuoli, though in the Filocolo he speaks of the Ars Amandi! The Metamorphoses were read for the sake of the mythology as well as for the exercise in Latin. Cf. Della Torre, op. cit., p. 4.