Note 132 — Chapter III
Reading edition
It is not quite exact, though convenient, to identify Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio severally with the religious, chivalrous and national principles of which I have been speaking. Petrarch stands midway. With Dante he shares the chivalrous, with Boccaccio the humanistic side of the national element. Though Boccaccio anticipates in his work the literature of the Renaissance, yet Petrarch was certainly not less influential as an authority in style. Ariosto represents the fusion of both sections of the national element in literature—Italian is distinguished from Tuscan.