CHAPTER V.

LITERATURE OF THE VULGAR TONGUE. POPULAR AND SACRED POETRY. THE period succeeding Petrarca and Boccaccio gave indications that the spirit of poetry was extinguished for some time to come. After Boccaccio’s death, his would-be rival, Franco Sacchetti, a man not only skilled in grave and gay compositions, but able to unite literary work with political office at home and abroad, a man capable of thoroughly appreciating the varied circumstances of life, merrily sang: The spring of poetry is now grown dry, No living…