qualities which their future monarch should possess, and said such fine and popular things on this subject, that he not only obtained the respite he solicited, but was unanimously chosen king after the interment of the late sovereign and the officers of his household. Every nation has been fond of relating stories of the advancement of their countrymen in foreign lands by the force of talents. In this country, Turkey has generally been fixed on as the theatre of promotion. The above stories may perhaps appear dull to the reader; they are, nevertheless, a very favourable specimen of the merit and originality of Sabadino.

This author was the last of the Italian novelists who wrote in the 15th century, and

AGNOLO FIRENZUOLA

is the first of the succeeding age. This writer was an inhabitant of Florence, and an abbot of Vallombrosa; but his novels, which are ten in number, are not such as might be expected from his clerical situation. Most of them are interwoven in his Ragionamenti, printed at Florence, 1548. He tells us that a mistress, who lived with him, intended l'essere ragionamenti, but that she died of a fever

before she could execute this design, which, while on her death-bed, she solicited him to accomplish. This story is probably feigned, but it seems a singular fiction for an ecclesiastic.

The first tale of Firenzuola, is one that has become very common in modern novels and romance. A young man being shipwrecked on the coast of Barbary, is picked up by some fishermen, and sold to the bashaw of Tunis. He there becomes a great favourite of his master, and still more of his mistress, whom he persuades not only to assist in his escape, but to accompany him in his flight. The seventh is a story repeated in many of the Italian novels. A person lays out a sum to be paid as the dowery of a young woman when she is married. The mother, in order to get hold of this money, comes to the benefactor, accompanied by her daughter, and a person who assumed the character of husband. The donor insists that the new-married couple should remain all night in his house, and assigns them the same apartment. Firenzuola had this story from the fourteenth of Fortini, and it has been imitated in the novels of Grazzini, called Le Lasca (Part 2, N. 10). Most of the other tales of Firenzuola, in which the chief characters are nuns and monks, can hardly be extracted. They are all, however, accounted re

markable for that elegance of style which distinguishes the works of Firenzuola. These consist of two dialogues on beauty, a few comedies, and a free translation of the Ass of Apuleius.

About the same time with Firenzuola lived Luigi da Porto, whose novel has already been mentioned, and the celebrated Molza, who wrote a hundred novels, all of which have been lost except four, and none of them, while extant, obtained a reputation equal to his other works. Nearly at the same period in which Molza and Firenzuola flourished,

GIOVANNI BREVIO,

a Venetian canon of Ceneda, wrote six novels, which were accounted remarkable for the liveli ness of their style. They were published at Rome along with his Rime in 1545, 8vo. The first is the story of a lady who brought a lover to her house during the absence of her husband, who, returning unexpectedly, is surprised at the preparations for a supper, and in the heat of resentment upbraids his wife, and throws every thing into confusion. Meanwhile the lover had fled unseen to the house of a neighbour, who, at his

solicitation, came with him and reproached the husband for breaking up a party he was entertaining, and for whose accommodation the lady had favoured him with the loan of the house.

2. A priest extorts money by passing for a cardinal.

3. Is the story of a father ruined by the extravagance of children, who afterwards neglect him. He pretends he has found a treasure. They treat him well for the rest of his life, but find empty coffers at his death. It is difficult to understand what comfort the father could receive in the attention or caresses of such a family. This novel is the subject of Piron's comedy of the Fils Ingrats, afterwards published by him under the title of L'Ecole des Peres, the representation of which, in 1728, was the epoch of the revival of the Comedie Larmoiante. In the drama, however, the fiction of the treasure is invented by the father's valet, and entraps the young men into a restitution of the wealth they had obtained, in order to get the whole by this proof of disinterested affection. The story is also in the Pieuses Recreations d' Angelin Gazeé, and is told in the Colloquia Mensalia of Luther, among other examples, to deter fathers from dividing their property during

life among their children—a practice to which they are in general little addicted.

4. Is the renowned tale of Belfagor. This story, with merely a difference of names, was originally told in an old Latin MS., which is now lost, but which, till the period of the civil wars in France, remained in the library of Saint Martin de Tours. But whether Brevio or Machiavel first exhibited the tale in an Italian garb, has been a matter of dispute among the critics of their country. It was printed by Brevio during his life, and under his own name, in 1545; and with the name of Machiavel, in 1549, which was about eighteen years af ter that historian's death. Both writers probably borrowed the incidents from the Latin MS., for they could scarcely have copied from each other. The story is besides in the Nights of Straparola, but much mutilated; and has also been imitated by Fontaine. The following is the outline of the tale, as related by Machiavel. All the souls which found their way to hell, complained that they had been brought to that melancholy predicament by means of their wives: Minos and Rhadamanthus reported the case to Pluto, who summoned an infernal council to consult on the best mode of ascertaining the truth or falsehood of such statements. After some deliberation it was determi