son Stephen. That monarch bequeathed it to a second Henry, who was followed by his son John. This prince was distinguished for his courtesy, (questo re Giovanni fu il piu cortese signor del Mondo,) but dying without children, was succeeded by his brother Richard, &c. &c. I do not know how King John (unless it was by his dastardly submission to the pope,) obtained such high reputation in Italy; but the novels of that country, particularly the Cento Novelle Antiche, are full of instances of his generosity and courtesy.

The last tale contains the history of Charles, count of Anjou, brother of St Louis. This story occupies a fifth part of the whole work, and is by much too long to have been related at a stolen interview between a nun and an enamoured chaplain. In some of the MS. copies of the Pecorone, there is substituted for this historical novel an account of an intrigue carried on by a young man with a nun, and of the extraordinary punishment that remained to him after his death.

held this sow in the same respect that the Jacobites did the little gentleman in the velvet coat, who raised the hillock over which the horse of King William stumbled,

In no species of composition is the stagnation or degeneracy of national literature, which took place in Italy from the end of the 14th to the conclusion of the 15th century, more remarkable than in that with which we are now engaged. I know of no imitator of Boccaccio worthy to be mentioned in the course of that period: the twelve novels of Gentile Sermini of Sienna, and those of Fortini, both of whom lived during this interval, are totally uninteresting; yet in them we may trace the origin of our most ordinary jests, or, at least, a coincidence with them; thus, the 10th of Sermini is the story of one stammerer meeting another, and each supposing that his neighbour intends to ridicule him. In the 8th novel of Fortini, a countryman is persuaded at market, by the repeated asseverations of the by-standers, that the kids he had for sale were capons, and he disposes of them as such.

Subsequent to Ser Giovanni, the first novelist deserving of notice is

MASSUCCIO DI SALERNO,'

who flourished about 1470. The date of the composition of his tales, at least, cannot be placed earlier, as he mentions in one of his stories the сарture of Arzilla, which happened in that year. Of the circumstances of the life of this novelist, the little that may be known can only be gathered from his writings. He was a Neapolitan by birth, and a man of some rank and family: he seldom resided, however, in his own country, the greater part of his life having been spent in the service of the dukes of Milan. In his Prooemium he asserts the truth of his stories more vehemently than usual. "Invoco," says the author, "l'altissimo Dio per testimonio che tutte son verisimile historie; e le piu negli nostri moderni tempi avenute." It is pretended, in the same part of his work, that he had tried to imitate the language and idiom of Boccaccio; an attempt, however laudable, in which he has been extremely unsuccessful, as his style is corrupted by the frequent use of the Neapolitan dia

Il Novellino: nel quale si contengono cinquanta Novelle.

lect, and his sentences are often strangely inverted. The tales of Massuccio, however, are more original than those of most Italian novelists, few being borrowed from Boccaccio, or even from the Fabliaux. Whatever may be the merit of Massuccio, if we may judge from the number of editions, he has been, next to the father of Tuscan prose, the most popular of all the authors of this class. His novels were first published at Naples, folio, 1476; afterwards at Venice, 1484; again in 1492, without date of place; there was a 4to edition in 1522, and three in 8vo, 1525, 1531, 1535, all at Venice. A subsequent Venetian edition, 1541, and one printed at Naples about the same time, have been much mutilated and corrected, on account of the satire and reflections on monks and ecclesiastics, of which the tales of Massuccio are full indeed, the professed object of the work, as the author declares, is to expose "la guasta vita de finti Religiosi."

The tales of Massuccio are divided into five parts, in each of which, at least in the three first, he seems to have had in view some particular maxim, which he meant to establish or illustrate. In the first part, which contains ten novels, the scope of the stories is to show that God will, sooner or later, inflict vengeance on dissolute monks,

who in these tales are generally brought to shame from being detected at a rendezvous. The first in this division is the story of a monk killed by a jealous husband, on account of an affair of gallantry. In this tale the amusement consists in the schemes devised for getting rid of the dead body. The husband places it in an appendage to a monastery, where it was sure to be early discovered: it is there found by the prior, who carries it to the door of the murderer, and, after some other adventures, it is finally tied to a young and unbroken horse. A lance is placed in the hand, and a shield tied round the neck. Those on the street, recognising the monk, believe him to be mad, and attribute his death to the colt falling with him into a well. The origin of this tale is the fabliau entitled Le Sacristain de Cluni (Le Grand, iv. 252,) or the thirty-first chapter of the English Gesta Romanorum. Strange as it may appear, this was a favourite tale both in France and England, and has been imitated by almost every novelist, and in all the languages of Europe.

The principal object of the second part is to prove that the monks of those days invented many frauds to draw money from the credulous, and that in return they were often cozened by laymen. Thus, two Neapolitan sharpers had stolen a purse