Note 226 — Chapter V

The order of the production of these youthful works is extremely uncertain. I do not believe it possible to give their true order, because they were not necessarily begun and finished in the same sequence. We may be sure that the Filocolo is the first work he began: it seems almost equally certain that the Filostrato is the first of his long poems. That no work was completed in Naples I think equally certain; but it is possible that the Ameto, begun in Florence, was finished before any other book. The Filostrato was begun in Naples, but it s so much finer than the Filocolo or the Ameto, and is perhaps the finest work of his youth, that many critics have wished to place it later.