As yet the history of the Black Death can hardly be said to have been
investigated at all; and until specialists can be prevailed upon to
examine the evidence ready at hand, we shall continue to be put off
with mere generalities when we ask for more light upon a calamity
which was the most stupendous that ever befell this island.
* * * * * * *
We have all heard of Boccaccio's _Decameron_--only naughty
people have _read it_--and how it was written when the plague
was raging at Florence, the great plague that carried off Petrarch's
Laura, and those other thousands of whom the world knew nothing then
and knows nothing now. Some, too, have heard that the plague swept
over Europe--desolating, devastating--the spectre with the swinging
scythe mowing down broad swathes of men. Some, when they hear of it,
picture to themselves Pope Clement VI. at Avignon, sitting in that
vast palace that overlooks the Rhone, the stench of corpses mastered
for him by the fragrant smoke of aromatic logs burning in huge pyres
round about him night and day. Some have heard of Giovanne Villani,
the historian of Florence, who wrote feebly about that same
pestilence in his native city, and who doubtless would have written
more, and more plainly and more strongly, but that in the midst of
his writing Azrael touched him too, and his pen fell from his hand.
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