Medici. Malespini was the first person who published the Jerusalem Delivered of Tasso, which he did in a very imperfect and mutilated manner, and without the consent of the poet. His novels, which amount to two hundred divided into two parts, were written about 1580, and published at Venice in 1609, 4to. He introduces them by telling that a party of ladies and gentlemen, who had fled from Venice during the plague in 1576, met in a palace in the Contado di Trevizi, where they chiefly amused themselves with relating stories. In N. 41, of the first part, there is a curious account of the amusements of the Compagnia della Calza, so called from a particular stocking which the members wore. This society, which existed in Italy during the 15th and 16th centuries, was neither, as some have imagined, a chivalrous nor academic institution, but merely an association for the purposes of public and private entertainments, as games, feasts, and theatrical representations. In course of time this university became divided into different fraternities, as the Compagnia dei Floridi, Sempiterni, &c., each of which was governed by particular laws and officers, and the members were distinguished by a certain habit.

Few of the tales of Malespini are original: long before the period of their publication, the Cent

Nouvelles Nouvelles had been written in France, and almost the whole of these have been inserted by Malespini in his novels; indeed he has translated them all except the 5th, 35th, 36th, 64th, 74th, and 93d. The correspondence of the tales in these two works will be best shown from the following table :

Malespini, however, has levied contributions on other works than the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles. By this time the Diana Enamorada of Montemayor had appeared in Spain, and three of the longest tales are taken from that pastoral. In the first part, the 25th tale is borrowed from the intri

cate loves of Ismenia Selvagio and Alanio, related in the Diana. The 36th of the second part is the Moorish episode of Xarifa, and the 94th is the story of the shepherdess Belisa. A few are also borrowed from the preceding Italian novelists. The 71st is from the 22d of the last part of Bandello, and others may be found in the Ecatommithi of Cinthio.

ANNIBAL CAMPEGGI

lived in the beginning of the 17th century. His first tale is as old as the Heetopades, and is the story of the jealous husband who tied his wife to a post. The second is that of the Widow of Ephesus, related by Petronius Arbiter, and in the Seven Wise Masters (see above, vol. I. p. 126). It has been imitated in Italian by Eustachio Manfredi, in French by St Evremont and Fontaine, and forms the subject of an English drama of the commencement of the 17th century, entitled Women's Tears (Dodsley's Collection, vol. 6.) The story has been also inserted by John of Salisbury in his book, De Nugis Curialibus (b. 8, c. 11): he reports it as a historical incident, and cites Flavian as his authority for this assertion.

Subsequent to this period, there appeared but few Italian novels, and scarcely any of merit. From this censure I have only to except one striking tale, by Vincenzo Rota, a Paduan gentleman, of the last century. It is the story of a young man who fled from parents, who kept a small inn in a remote part of the Brescian territory. Having in course of time acquired a fortune by industry, he returned after an absence of twenty-five years, but concealed who he was on the first night of his arrival, and not being recognised, is murdered while asleep by his parents, for the sake of the treasure which his father found he had along with him. From the priest of the village, to whom alone their son had discovered himself, they learn with despair, on the following morning, the full extent of their guilt and misery. This tale was first printed by the Count Borromeo, a fellow-citizen of the author, in his Notizia de Novellieri Italiani da lui posseduti con alcune Novelle inedite Bassano, 1794. A similar story is related of a Nor man innkeeper, in an obscure periodical publication, called the Visitor; and also forms the basis of the plot of the Fatal Curiosity, a tragedy by Lillo, in three acts, which Mr Harris, in his Philological Enquiries, says, "is the model of a perfect fable." The subject of this piece was taken