Chapter X: The Novellieri (2)

In favor of the Florentines, we might plead that these _Novelle_ were accepted as pure fictions--debauches of the fancy, escapades of inventive wit. The ideal world they represented, claimed no contact with realities of life. The pranks of Lo Scheggia and Il Pilucca, which drove one man into exile, another to the hospital, and a third to his death, had no more actuality than the tricks of clown and pantaloon. A plea of this sort was advanced by Charles Lamb for the dramatists of the Restoration; and it carries, undoubtedly, its measure of conviction. Literature of convention, which begins by stimulating curiosity, must find novel combinations and fresh seasonings, to pique the palate of the public. Thus the abominations of Il Lasca's stories would have to be regarded as the last desperate bids for popularity, as final hyperboles of exhausted rhetoric. Yet, after all, books remain the mirror of a people's taste. Whatever their quality may be, they are produced to satisfy some demand. And the wonderful vivacity of Il Lasca's coloring, the veracity of his art, preclude him from the benefit of a defense which presupposes that he stood in some unnatural relation to his age. While we read his tales, we cannot but remember the faces painted by Bronzino, or modeled by Cellini. The sixteenth-century Florentines were hard and cold as steel. Their temper had been brutalized by servitude, superficially polished by humanism, blunted by the extraordinary intellectual activity of three centuries. Compared with the voluptuous but sympathetic mood of the Lombard novelists, this cruelty means something special to the race.

Some of Il Lasca's stories, fortunately, need no such strained apology or explanation. The tale of Lisabetta's dream, though it lacks point, is free from his worse faults[98]; while the novel of Zoroaster is not only innocent, but highly humorous and charged with playful sarcasm.[99] It contains a portrait of a knavish astrologer, worthy to be set beside the _Negromante_ of Ariosto or Ben Jonson's _Alchemist_. When Jerome Cardan was coquetting with chiromancy and magic, when Cellini was raising fiends with the Sicilian necromancer in the Coliseum, a novelist found sufficient stuff for comedy and satire in the foibles of ghost-seekers and the tricks of philter-mongers. The companion portrait of the dissolute monk, who sets his hand to any dirty work that has the spice of fun in it, is also executed with no little spirit.

[Footnote 98: _Cena_ ii. 3.]

[Footnote 99: _Cena_ ii. 4.]

Among the most graceful of the Tuscan novelists may be mentioned Agnolo Firenzuola. His family derived its name from a village at the foot of the Pistojan Apennines, and his father was a citizen of Florence. Agnolo spent his youth at Siena and Perugia, where he made the friendship of Pietro Aretino, leading the wild student life described in their correspondence.[100] That he subsequently entered the Vallombrosan order seems to be certain; but it is somewhat doubtful whether he attained the dignity of Abbot which his biographers ascribe to him.[101] Tiraboschi, unwilling to admit so great a scandal to the Church, has adduced reasons why we should suspend our judgment.[102] Yet the tradition rests on substantial authority. A monument erected by Firenzuola to his uncle Alessandro Braccio in the church of S. Prassede, at Rome, describes him as _aedis hujus Abbas_. S. Maria di Spoleti and S. Salvator di Vaiano are supposed to have been his benefices. Some further collateral proof might be drawn from the opening of the dialogue _Sopra le Bellezze delle Donne_. The scene of it is laid in the convent grounds of Grignano, and Celso is undoubtedly Firenzuola. A portion of his manhood was spent at Rome in friendship with Molza, Berni, and other brilliant literary men. While resident in Rome he contracted a severe and tedious illness, which obliged him to retire to Prato, where he spent some of the happiest years of his life.[103] Nearly all his works contain frequent and affectionate recollections of this sunny little town, the beauty of whose women is enthusiastically celebrated by him. Firenzuola died before the middle of the sixteenth century at the age of about fifty. Neither his life nor his friendships nor yet his writings were consistent with his monastic profession and the dignity of Abbot. The charm of Firenzuola's _Novelle_ is due in a large measure to his style, which has a wonderful transparency and ease, a wealth of the rarest Tuscan phrases, and a freshness of humor that renders them delightful reading. The storm at sea in the first tale, and the night scene in the streets of Florence in the third, are described with Ariostean brilliancy.[104] In point of subject-matter they do not greatly differ from the ordinary novels of the day, and some of the tales reappear in the collections of other novelists.[105] Most of them turn upon the foibles and the vices of the clergy. The fourth _Novella_, which is perhaps the best of all in style and humor, presents a truly comic picture of the parish priest, while the fifth describes the interior of a dissolute convent at Perugia, and the tenth exposes the arts whereby confessors induced silly women to make wills in the favor of their convents. Don Giovanni, Suor Appellagia, and Fra Cherubino, the chief actors in these stories, might be selected as typical characters in the Italian comedy of clerical dissoluteness.

[Footnote 100: See the Letters of Aretino, vol. ii. p. 239.]

[Footnote 101: All my references are made to the _Opere di Messer Agnolo Firenzuola_, 5 vols. Milan, 1802.]

[Footnote 102: _Storia della Lett. It._ lib. iii. cap. 3, sect. 27.]

[Footnote 103: In a letter to Aretino, dated Prato, Oct. 5, 1541, he says he had been ill for eleven years. It seems probable that his illness was of the kind alluded to in his _Capitolo_ "In Lode del Legno Santo" (_Op. Volg._ iv. p. 204).]

[Footnote 104: _Op._ ii. pp. 94, 130.]

[Footnote 105: For example, _Nov._ iv. is the same as Bandello's II. xx.; _Nov._ vii. is the same as Il Lasca's ii. 10. and Fortina's xiv.]

Firenzuola prefaced his novels with an elaborate introduction, describing the meeting of some friends at Celso's villa near Pazolatico, and their discourse on love.[106] From discussion they pass to telling amorous stories under the guidance of a Queen selected by the company.[107] The introductory conversation is full of a dreamy, sensualized, disintegrated Platonism. It parades conventional distinctions between earthly and heavenly love, between the beauty of the soul and the beauty of the body; and then we pass without modulation into the region of what is here called _accidenti amorosi_. The same insincere Platonism gives color to Firenzuola's discourse on the Beauty of Women--one of the most important productions of the sixteenth century in illustration of popular and artistic taste.[108] The author imagines himself to have interrupted a bevy of fair ladies from Prato in the midst of a dispute about the beauty of Mona Amelia della Torre Nuova. Mona Amelia herself was present; and so were Mona Lampiada, Mona Amorrorisca, Mona Selvaggia, and Mona Verdespina.[109] Under these names it is clear that living persons of the town of Prato are designated; and all the examples of beauty given in the dialogue are chosen from well-known women of the district. The composition must therefore be reckoned as an elaborate compliment from Firenzuola to the fair sex of Prato.[110] Celso begins his exposition of beauty by declaring that "it is God's highest gift to human nature, inasmuch as by its virtue we direct our soul to contemplation, and through contemplation to the desire of heavenly things."[111] He then proceeds to define beauty as "an ordered concord, or, as it were, a harmony inscrutably resulting from the composition, union, and commission of divers members, each of which shall in itself be well proportioned and in a certain sense beautiful, but which, before they combine to make one body, shall be different and discrepant among themselves."[112] Having explained each clause of this definition, he passes to the appetite for beauty, and tells the myth invented for Aristophanes in Plato's _Symposium_. This leads by natural transitions to the real business of the dialogue, which consists in analyzing and defining every kind of loveliness in women, and minutely describing the proportions, qualities, and colors of each portion of the female body. The whole is carried through with the method of a philosopher, the enthusiasm of an artist, and the refinement of a well-bred gentleman. The articles upon _Leggiadria_, _Grazia_, _Vaghezza_, _Venusta_, _Aria_, _Maesta_, may even now be read with profit by those who desire to comprehend the nice gradations of meaning implied by these terms.[113] The discourses on the form and color of the ear, and on the proper way of wearing ornamental flowers, bring incomparably graceful images before us[114]; and this, indeed, can be said about the whole dialogue, for there is hardly a sentence that does not reveal the delicate perceptions of an artistic nature.

[Footnote 106: Vol ii. p. 28. The poem put into Celso's mouth, p. 39, is clearly autobiographical.]

[Footnote 107: There is the usual reference to Boccaccio, at p. 32. I may take this occasion for citing an allusion to Boccaccio from the Introduction to _Le Cene_, which shows how truly he was recognized as the patron saint of novelists. See _Le Cene_ (Firenze, Lemonnier, 1857), p. 4.]

[Footnote 108: Vol. i. pp. 1-97. I may here allude to a still more copious and detailed treatise on the same theme by Federigo Luigino of Udine: _Il Libro della Bella Donna_, Milano, Daelli, 1863; a reprint from the Venetian edition of 1554. This book is a symphony of grateful images and delicately chosen phrases; it is a dithyramb in praise of feminine beauty, which owes its charm to the intense sympathy, sensual and aesthetic, of the author for his subject.]

[Footnote 109: Selvaggia was the lady of Firenzuola's _Rime_.]

[Footnote 110: See the _Elegia alle Donne Pratesi_, vol. iv. p. 41.]

[Footnote 111: Vol. i. p. 16. Compare the extraordinary paragraph about female beauty being an earnest of the beauties of Paradise (pp. 31, 32).]

[Footnote 112: _Ibid._ p. 21.]

[Footnote 113: _Ibid._ pp. 51-62.]

[Footnote 114: Vol. i. pp. 75-80.]

Firenzuola's adaptation of the _Golden Ass_ may be reckoned among the triumphs of his style, and the fables contained in his _Discorsi degli Animali_ are so many minutely finished novelettes.[115] Both of these works belong to the proper subject of the present chapter. His comedies and his burlesque poems must be left for discussion under different headings. With regard to his serious verses, addressed to Mona Selvaggia, it will be enough to say that they are modeled upon Petrarch. Though limpid in style and musical, as all Firenzuola's writing never failed to be, they ring hollow. The true note of the man's feeling was sensual. The highest point it reached was the admiration for plastic beauty expressed in his dialogue on women. It had nothing in common with Petrarch's melancholy. Of these minor poems I admire the little ballad beginning _O rozza pastorella_, and the wonderfully lucid version of Poliziano's _Violae--O Viole formose, o dolci viole_--more than any others.[116]

[Footnote 115: Vol. iii. The _Golden Ass_ begins with an autobiography (vol. i. p. 103).]

[Footnote 116: Vol. iv. pp. 19, 76.]

Except for the long illness which brought him to Prato, Firenzuola appears to have spent a happy and mirthful life; and if we may trust his introduction to the Novels, he was fairly wealthy. What we know about the biography of Antonfrancesco Doni, who also deserves a place among the Tuscan novelists, presents a striking contrast to this luxurious and amorous existence.[117] He was a Florentine, and, like Firenzuola, dedicated to religion. Born in 1513, he entered the Servite order in the cloister of the Annunziata. He began by teaching the boys intrusted to the monks for education. But about 1540 he was obliged to fly the monastery under the cloud of some grave charge connected with his pupils.[118] Doni turned his back on Florence; and after wandering from town to town in Northern Italy, settled at last in 1542 at Piacenza, where he seems for a short while to have applied himself with an unwilling mind to law-studies. At Piacenza he made the acquaintance of Lodovico Domenichi, who introduced him into the Accademia Ortolana. This was a semi-literary club of profligates with the Priapic emblems for its ensign. Doni's wild and capricious humor made him a chief ornament of the society; but the members so misconducted themselves in word and deed that it was soon found necessary to suppress their meetings. While amusing himself with poetry and music among his boon companions, Doni was on the lookout for a place at Court or in the household of a wealthy nobleman. His letters at this period show that he was willing to become anything from poet or musician down to fool or something worse. Failing in all his applications, he at last resolved to make what gains he could by literature. His friend Domenichi had already settled at Venice, when Doni joined him there in 1544. But his stay was of brief duration. We find him again at Piacenza, next at Rome, and then at Florence, where he established a printing-press. The principal event of this Florentine residence was a definite rupture with Domenichi. We do not know the causes of their quarrel; but both of them were such scamps that it is probable they took good care, while abusing one another in general terms, to guard the secrets of their respective crimes. During the rest of Doni's life he pursued his old friend with relentless animosity. His invectives deserve to be compared with those of the humanists in the preceding century; while Domenichi, who had succeeded in securing a position for himself at Florence, replied with no less hostility in the tone of injured virtue.

[Footnote 117: My principal authority is Doni's Life by S. Bongi prefixed to an edition of the _Novelle_, 1851, and reprinted in Fanfani's edition of _I Marmi_, Florence, 1863.]

[Footnote 118: See Zilioli, quoted by Bongi, _I Marmi_, vol. i. p. xiv.]

In 1547 Doni settled finally at Venice. The city of the lagoons was the only safe resort for a man who had offended the Church by abandoning his vows, and whose life and writings were a scandal even in that age of license. Everywhere else he would have been exposed to peril from the Inquisition. Though he had dropped the cowl, he could not throw aside the cassock, and his condition as priest proved not only irksome but perilous.[119] At Venice he lived a singular Bohemian existence, inhabiting a garret which overlooked one of the noisiest of the small canals, and scribbling for his daily bread. He was a rapid and prolific writer, sending his copy to the press before it was dry, and never caring for revision. To gain money was the sole object of his labors. The versatility of his mind and his peculiar humor made his miscellanies popular; and like Aretino he wheedled or menaced ducats out of patrons. Indeed, Doni's life at Venice is the proper pendent to Aretino's, who was once his friend and afterwards his bitter foe. But while Aretino contrived to live like a prince, Doni, for many years at any rate, endured the miseries of Grub Street. They quarreled about a present which the Duke of Urbino had promised Doni through his secretary. Aretino thought that this meant poaching on his manors. Accordingly he threatened his comrade with a thorough literary scourging. Doni replied by a pamphlet with this singular title: "Terremoto del Doni fiorentino, con la rovina d'un gran Colosso bestiale Antichristo della nostra eta." His capricious nature and bizarre passions made Doni a bad friend; but he was an incomparably amusing companion. Accordingly we find that his society was sought by the literary circles of all cities where he lived. At Florence he had been appointed secretary to the Umidi. At Venice he became a member of the Pellegrini. This academy was founded before the League of Cambrai in a deserted villa near the lagoons.[120] Mystery hung over its origin and continued to involve its objects. Several wealthy noblemen of Venice supplied the club with ample funds. They had a good library, and employed two presses for the printing of their works. The members formed a kind of masonic body, bound together by strict mutual obligations, and sworn to maintain each other in peril or in want. They also exercised generosity toward needy men of letters, dowered poor girls, and practiced many charities of a similar description. Their meetings took place in certain gardens at Murano or on the island of S. Giorgio Maggiore. The two Sansovini, Nardi, Titian, Dolce, and other eminent men belonged to the society; but Doni appears to have been its moving spirit on all occasions of convivial intercourse.

[Footnote 119: How Doni hated his orders may be gathered from these extracts: "La bestial cosa che sia sopportare quattro corna in capo senza belare unquanco. Io ho un capriccio di farmi scomunicare per non cantare piu _Domine labia_, e spretarmi per non essere a noia a tutte le persone." "L'esser colla chierica puzza a tutti." His chief grievance was that he had made no money out of the Church.]

[Footnote 120: The greater part of what we know about the Pellegrini occurs in Doni's _I Marmi_. See also a memoir by Giaxich, and the notices in Mutinelli's _Diari Urbani_.]

The last years of this Bohemian life were spent beneath the Euganean hills in a square castle, which, picturesquely draped with ivy, may still be seen towering above Monselice. That Doni had accumulated some capital by his incessant scribbling, is proved by the fact that he laid out the grounds about his fortress with considerable luxury. A passage quoted from the Venetian Zilioli serves to bring the man more vividly before us: "At the summit of the hill above Monselice stands the house where Antonfrancesco Doni indulged his leisure with philosophy and poetry. He was a man of bizarre humor, who had but little patience with his neighbors. Retiring from society, he chose this abode in order to give full scope in his own way and without regard for any one to his caprices, which were often very ludicrous. Who could have refrained from laughter, when he saw a man of mature age, with a beard down to his breast, going abroad at night barefooted and in his shirt, careering among the fields, singing his own songs and those of other poets; or else in daytime playing on a lute and dancing like a little boy?" Doni died at Venice in the autumn of 1574.

Doni's _Novelle_ are rather detached scenes of life than stories with a plot or theme. Glowing and picturesque in style, sharply outlined, and smartly told, they have the point of epigrams. The fourth of the series might be chosen to illustrate the extravagant efforts after effect made by the Italian novelist with a view to stimulating the attention of his audience. It is a tale of two mortal enemies, one of whom kills the father and the brother of his foe. The injured man challenges and conquers him in single combat, when, having the ruffian at his mercy, he raises him from the ground, pardons him, and makes him his bosom friend. Likelihood and moral propriety are sacrificed in order that the _Novella_ may end with a surprise.

Doni's _Novelle_, taken by themselves, would scarcely have justified the space allotted to him in this chapter. His biography has, however, the importance attaching to the history of a representative man, for much of the literature of amusement in the sixteenth century was supplied by Bohemians of Doni's type. To give a complete account of his miscellaneous works would be out of the question. Besides treatises on music and the arts of design and a catalogue of Italian books, which might be valuable if the author had not used it as a vehicle for his literary animosities, he published letters and poems, collections of proverbs and short tales under the title of _La Zucca_, dialogues and dissertations on various topics with the name of _I Mondi_, an essay on moral philosophy, an edition of Burchiello's poems illustrated by notes more difficult to understand than the text, an explanation of the Apocalypse proving Luther to be Antichrist, a libel upon Aretino, two commonplace books of sentences and maxims styled _I Cancellieri_, a work on villa-building, a series of imaginary pictures, a comedy called _Lo Stufaiuolo_, and many others which it would be tedious to catalogue. It is not probable that any one has made a thorough study of Doni's writings; but those who know them best, report that they are all marked by the same sallies of capricious humor and wild fancy.[121]

[Footnote 121: Those I am acquainted with are _I Marmi_, _I Mondi_, _Lo Stufaiuolo_, the _Novelle_, and two little burlesque caprices in prose, _La Mula_ and _La Chiave_.]

A glance at the _Marmi_ will suffice to illustrate Doni's method in these miscellanies.[122] In his preface to the reader he says it often happens that, awaked from sleep, he spends the night-hours in thinking of himself and of his neighbors--"not, however, as the common folk do, nor like men of learning, but following the whimsies of a teeming brain. I am at home, you see. I fly aloft into the air, above some city, and believe myself to be a huge bird, monstrous, monstrous, piercing with keen sight to everything that's going on below; and in the twinkling of an eye, the roofs fly off, and I behold each man, each woman at their several affairs. One is at home and weeping, another laughing; one giving birth to children, one begetting; this man reading, that man writing; one eating, another praying. One is scolding his household, another playing; and see, yon fellow has fallen starved to earth, while that one vomits his superfluous food! What contrasts are there in one single city, at one single moment! Then I pass from land to land, and notice divers customs, with variety of speech and converse. In Naples, for example, the gentry are wont to ride abroad and take the evening freshness. In Rome they haunt cool vineyards, or seek their pleasure by artificial fountains. In Venice they roam the canals in dainty gondolas, or sweep the salt lagoons, with music, women, and such delights, putting to flight the day's annoyances and heat. But above all other pleasures in the cool, methinks the Florentines do best. Their way is this. They have the square of Santa Liberata, midway between the ancient shrine of Mars, now San Giovanni, and the marvelous modern Duomo. They have, I say, certain stairs of marble, and the topmost stair leads to a large space, where the young men come to rest in those great heats, seeing that a most refreshing wind is always blowing there, and a delicious breeze, and, besides, the fair white marbles for the most part keep their freshness. It is there I find my best amusements; for, as I sail through the air, invisibly I settle, soaring over them; and hear and see their talk and doings. And forasmuch as they are all fine wits and comely, they have a thousand lovely things to say--novels, stratagems and fables; they tell of intrigues, stories, jokes, tricks played off on men and women--all things sprightly, noble, noteworthy and fit for gentle ears." Such is the exordium. What follows, consists of conversations, held at night upon these marble slabs by citizens of Florence. The dialogue is lively; the pictures tersely etched; the language racy; the matter almost always worthy of attention. One sustained dialogue on printing is particularly interesting, since it involves a review of contemporary literature from the standpoint of one who was himself exclusively employed in hack production for the press.[123] The whole book, however, abounds in excellent criticism and clever hints. "See what the world is coming to," says one of the speakers, "when no one can read anything, full though it be of learning and goodness, without flinging it away at the end of three words! More artifice than patience goes nowadays to the writing of a book; more racking the brains to invent some whimsical title, which makes one take it up and read a word or two, than the composition of the whole book demands. Just try and tell people to touch a volume labeled _Doctrine of Good Living_ or _The Spiritual Life_! God preserve you! Put upon the title page _An Invective against an Honest Man_, or _New Pasquinade_, or _Pimps Expounded_, or _The Whore Lost_, and all the world will grab at it. If our Gelli, when he wanted to teach a thousand fine things, full of philosophy and useful to a Christian, had not called them _The Cobbler's Caprices_, there's not a soul would have so much as touched them. Had he christened his book _Instructions in Civil Conduct_ or _Divine Discourses_, it must have fallen stillborn; but that _Cobbler_, those _Caprices_ make every one cry out: 'I'll see what sort of balderdash it is!'"

[Footnote 122: _I Marmi_, per Fanfani e Bongi, Firenze, Barbera, 1863, 2 vols.]

[Footnote 123: Parte ii. "Della Stampa."]

One might fancy that this passage had been written to satirize our own times rather than the sixteenth century. More than enough, however, remains from the popular literature of Doni's days to illustrate his observation. We have already seen how ingeniously he titillated public curiosity in the title of his invective against Aretino. "_The Earthquake of Doni, the Florentine, with the Ruin of a Great Bestial Colossus, the Antichrist of our Age_," is worthy to take rank among the most capricious pamphlets of the English Commonwealth. Meanwhile the Venetian press kept pouring out stores of miscellaneous information under bizarre titles; such as the _Piazza_, which described all sorts of trades, including the most infamous, and _Il Perche_, which was a kind of vulgar cyclopaedia, with special reference to physiology. Manuals of domestic medicine or directions for the toilette, like the curious _Comare_ on obstetrics, and Marinello's interesting _Ornamenti delle Donne_; eccentricities in the style of the _Hospidale de' Pazzi_ or the _Sinagoga degli Ignoranti_; might be cited through a dozen pages. It is impossible to do justice to this undergrowth of literature, which testifies to the extent of the plebeian reading public in Italy.

The Novelists of Siena form a separate group, and are distinguished by a certain air of delicate voluptuous grace.[124] Siena, though it wears so pensive an aspect now, was famous in the middle ages for the refinements of sensuality. It was here that the _godereccia brigata_, condemned to Hell by Dante, spent their substance in gay living. Folgore da San Gemignano's pleasure-seeking Company was Sienese. Beccadelli called the city _molles Senae_, and AEneas Sylvius dedicated her groves and palaces to Venus--the Venus who appeared in dreams to Gentile Sermini.[125] The impress of luxury is stamped upon the works of her best novelists. They blend the _morbidezza_ of the senses with a rare feeling for natural and artistic beauty. Descriptions of banquets and gardens, fountains and wayside thickets, form a delightful background to the never-ending festival of love. We wander through pleasant bypaths of Tuscan country, abloom in spring with acacia trees and resonant with song-birds. Though indescribably licentious, these novelists are rarely coarse or vulgar. There is no Florentine blackguardism, no acerbity of scorn or stain of blood-lust on their pages. They are humorous; but they do not season humor with cruelty. Their tales, for the most part, are the lunes of wanton love, day-dreams of erotic fancy, a free debauch of images, now laughable, now lewd, but all provocative of sensual desire. At the same time, their delight in landscape-painting, combined with a certain refinement of aesthetic taste, saves them from the brutalities of lust.

[Footnote 124: _Novelle di Autori Senesi_, edited by Gaetano Poggiali, Londra (Livorno), 1796. This collection, reprinted in the _Raccolta di Novellieri Italiani_, Milano, 1815, vols. xiv. and xv., contains Bernardo Illicini, Giustiniano Nelli, Scipione Bargagli, Gentile Sermini, Pietro Fortini, and others. Of Sermini's _Novelle_ a complete edition appeared in 1874 at Livorno, from the press of Francesco Vigo; and to this the student should now go. Romagnoli of Bologna in 1877 published three hitherto inedited novels of Fortini, together with the rubrics of all those which have not yet been printed. Their titles enable us to comprehend the scruples which prevented Poggiali from issuing the whole series.]

[Footnote 125: _Imbasciata di Venere_, Sermini, ed. cit. p. 117.]

The foregoing remarks apply in their fullest extension to Sermini and Fortini. The best passages from the _Ars Amandi_ of these authors admit of no quotation. Attention, may, however, be called to the graphic description by Sermini of the Sienese boxing-matches.[126] It is a masterpiece of vigorous dialogue and lively movement--a little drama in epitome or profile, bringing the excitement of the champions and their backers vividly before us by a series of exclamations and ejaculated sentences. Fortini does not offer the same advantage to a modest critic; yet his handling of a very comic situation in the fourteenth _Novella_ may be conveniently compared with Firenzuola's and Il Lasca's treatment of the same theme.[127] Those, too, who are curious in such matters, may trace the correspondences between his twelfth _Novella_ and many similar subjects in the _Cent nouvelles Nouvelles_. The common material of a _fabliau_ is here Italianized with an exquisite sense of plastic and landscape beauty; and the crude obscenity of the _motif_ craves pardon for the sake of its rare setting.

[Footnote 126: _Il Giuoco della pugna_, Sermini, ed. cit. p. 105.]

[Footnote 127: See _Le Cene_, pt. ii. _Nov._ 10, and Firenzuola's seventh _Novella_.]

Bargagli's tales are less offensive to modern notions of propriety than either Sermini's or Fortini's. They do not detach themselves from the average of such compositions by any peculiarly Sienese quality. But his _Trattenimenti_ are valuable for their introduction, which consists of a minute and pathetically simple narrative of the sufferings sustained by the Sienese during the siege of 1553. Boccaccio's description of the Plague at Florence was in Bargagli's mind, when he made this unaffected record of a city's agony the frontispiece to tales of mirth and passion. Though somewhat out of place, it has the interest which belongs to the faithful history of an eye-witness.

One beautiful story, borrowed from the annals of their own city, was treated by the two Sienese novelists, Illicini and Sermini. The palm of excellence, however, must be awarded to the elder of these authors. Of Bernardo Lapini, surnamed Illicini or Ollicino, very little is known, except that he served both Gian Galeazzo Visconti and Borso da Este in the capacity of physician, and composed a commentary on the _Trionfi_ of Petrarch. His _Novella_ opens with a conversation between certain noble ladies of Siena, who agreed that the three most eminent virtues of a generous nature are courtesy, gratitude, and liberality. An ancient dame, who kept them company on that occasion, offered to relate a tale, which should illustrate these qualities and raise certain fine questions concerning their exercise in actual life. The two Sienese families De' Salimbeni and De' Montanini had long been on terms of coldness; and though their ancient feuds were passing into oblivion, no treaty of peace had yet been ratified between their houses, when Anselmo Salimbeni fell deeply in love with Angelica the only sister of Carlo Montanini. Anselmo was wealthy; but to Carlo and his sister there only remained, of their vast ancestral possessions, one small estate, where they lived together in retirement. Delicacy thus prevented the rich Anselmo from declaring his affection, until an event happened which placed it in his power to be of signal service to the Montanini. A prosperous member of the Sienese government desired to purchase Carlo's house at the price of one thousand ducats. Carlo refused to sell this estate, seeing it was his sister's only support and future source of dowry. Thereupon the powerful man of state accused him falsely of treason to the commonwealth. He was cast into prison and condemned to death or the forfeit of one thousand ducats. Anselmo, the very night before Carlo's threatened execution, paid this fine, and sent the deed of release by the hands of a servant to the prison. When Carlo was once more at liberty, he made inquiries which proved beyond doubt that Anselmo, a man unknown to him, the member of a house at ancient feud with his, had done him this great courtesy. It then rushed across his mind that certain acts and gestures of Anselmo betrayed a secret liking for Angelica. This decided him upon the course he had to take. Having communicated the plan to his sister, he went alone with her at night to Salimbeni's castle, and, when he had expressed his gratitude, there left her in her lover's power, as the most precious thing he could bestow upon the saviour of his life. Anselmo, not to be surpassed in this exchange of courtesies, delivered Angelica to the women of his household, and afterwards, attended by the train of his retainers, sought Carlo in his home. There he made a public statement of what had passed between them, wedded Angelica with three rings, dowered her with the half of his estates, and by a formal deed of gift assigned the residue of his fortune to Carlo. This is a bare outline of the story, which Illicini has adorned in all its details with subtle analyses of feeling and reflections on the several situations. The problem proposed to the gentlewoman is to decide which of the two men, Anselmo or Carlo, showed the more perfect courtesy in their several circumstances. How they settled this knotty point, may be left to the readers of _Novelle_ to discover.

Bandello more than adequately represents the Lombard group of novelists; and since his works have been already discussed, it will suffice to allude briefly to three collections which in their day were highly popular. These are _I Proverbi_ of Antonio Cornazano, _Le Piacevoli Notti_ of Straparola, and Giraldi's _Hecatommithi_.[128] Cornazano was a copious writer both in Latin and Italian. He passed his life at the Courts of Francesco Sforza, Bartolommeo Colleoni, and Ercole I. of Ferrara. One of his earliest compositions was a Life of Christ. This fact is not insignificant, as a sign of the conditions under which literature was produced in the Renaissance. A man who had gained reputation by a learned or religious treatise, ventured to extend it by jests of the broadest humor. The _Proverbi_, by which alone Cornazano's name is now distinguished, are sixteen carefully-wrought stories, very droll but very dirty. Each illustrates a common proverb, and pretends to relate the circumstances which gave it currency. The author opens one tale with a simple statement: "From the deserts of the Thebaid came to us that trite and much used saying, _Better late than never_; and this was how it happened." Having stated the theme, he enters on his narrative, diverts attention by a series of absurdities which lead to an unexpected climax. He concludes it thus: "The abbot answered: 'It is not this which makes me weep, but to think of my misfortune, who have been so long without discovering and commending so excellent an usage.' 'Father,' said the monk, '_Better late than never_.'" There is considerable comic vigor in the working of this motive. Our sense of the ridiculous is stimulated by a studied disproportion between the universality of the proverb and the strangeness of the incidents invented to account for it.

[Footnote 128: None of them are included in the Milanese _Novellieri Italiani_. The editions I shall use are _Proverbii di Messer Antonio Cornazano in Facetie_, Bologna, Romagnoli, 1865; _Le Piacevoli Notti_, in Vinegia per Comin da Trino di Monferrato, MDLI.; _Gli Hecatommithi di M. Giovanbattista Giraldi Cinthio, Nobile Ferrarese_, in Vinegia, MDLXVI., Girolamo Scotto, 2 vols.]

Straparola breaks ground in a different direction. The majority of his novels bear traces of their origin in fairy stories or _Volksmaerchen_. Much interest attaches to the _Notti Piacevoli_, as the literary reproduction of a popular species which the Venetian Gozzi afterwards rendered famous. Students of folk-lore may compare them with the Sicilian fables recently committed to the press by Signor Pitre.[129] The element of bizarre fancy is remarkable in all these tales; but the marvelous has been so mingled with the facts of common life as to give each narrative the true air of the conventional _Novella_. One in particular may be mentioned, since it is written on the same motive as Machiavelli's _Belphegor_. The rubric runs as follows: "The Devil, hearing the complaints of husbands against their wives, marries Silvia Ballastro, and takes Gasparino Boncio for gossip of the ring, and forasmuch as he finds it impossible to live with his wife, enters into the body of the Duke of Melphi, and Gasparino, his gossip, expels him thence." Between Straparola's and Machiavelli's treatment of this subject, the resemblance is so close as to justify the opinion that the former tale was simply modeled on the latter, or that both were drawn from an original source. In each case it is the wife's pride which renders life unendurable to her demon husband, and in both he is expelled from the possessed person by mistaking a brass band in full play for the approach of his tumultuous consort. But Straparola's loose and careless style of narrative bears no comparison with the caustic satire of Machiavelli's meditated art.[130] The same theme was treated in Italian by Giovanni Brevio; and since Machiavelli's novel first appeared in print in the year 1549, Straparola's seeing the light in 1550, and Brevio's in 1545, we may reasonably conclude that each version was an adaptation of some primitive monastic story.[131]

[Footnote 129: _Fiabe, Novelle, Racconti_, Palermo, Lauriel, 1875, 4 vols. I may here take occasion to notice that one _Novella_ by the Conte Lorenzo Magalotti (_Nov. It._ vol. xiii. p. 362), is the story of Whittington and his Cat, told of a certain Florentine, Ansaldo degli Ormanni, and the King of the Canary Islands.]

[Footnote 130: John Wilson's play of _Belphegor_, Dekker's _If it be not good the Divel is in it_, and Ben Jonson's _The Devil is an Ass_, were more or less founded on Machiavelli's and Straparola's novels.]

[Footnote 131: Dunlop in his _History of Fiction_, vol. ii. p. 411, speaks of a Latin MS. preserved in the library of S. Martin at Tours which contained the tale, but he also says that it was lost at "the period of the civil wars in France."]

On the score of style alone, it would be difficult to explain the widespread popularity of Giraldi Cinthio's one hundred and ten tales.[132] The _Hecatommithi_ are written in a lumbering manner, and the stories are often lifeless. Compared with the brilliancy of the Tuscan _Novelle_, the point and sparkle of _Le Cene_, the grace and gusto of Sermini, or Firenzuola's golden fluency, the diction of this noble Ferrarese is dull. Yet the _Hecatommithi_ were reprinted again and again and translated into several languages. In England, through Painter's _Palace of Pleasure_, they obtained wide circulation and supplied our best dramatists, including Shakspere and Fletcher, with hints for plays. It is probable that they owed their fame in no small measure to what we reckon their defects. Giraldi's language was more intelligible to ordinary readers of Italian than the racy Tuscan of the Sienese authors. His stories had less of a purely local flavor than those of the Florentines. They enjoyed, moreover, the singular advantage of diffusion through the press of Venice, which then commanded the book-market of Europe. But, if we put this point of style aside, the vogue of Cinthio in Italy and Europe becomes at once intelligible. There is a massive force and volume in his matter, which proclaims him an author to be reckoned with. The variety of scenes he represents, the tragic gravity of many of his motives, his intimate acquaintance with the manners and customs of a class that never fails to interest the vulgar, combined with great sagacity in selecting and multiplying instances of striking crime, stood him in the stead of finer art with the special public for whom _Novelle_ were composed.[133] Compared even with Boccaccio, the prince of story-tellers, Cinthio holds his own, not as a great dramatic or descriptive writer but as one who has studied, analyzed, dissected, and digested the material of human action and passion in a vast variety of modes. His work is more solid and reflective than Bandello's; more moralized than Il Lasca's. The ethical tendency both of the tales and the discussions they occasion, is, for the most part, singularly wholesome. In spite, therefore, of the almost revolting frankness with which impurity, fraud, cruelty, violence, and bestial lust are exposed to view, one rises from the perusal of the _Hecatommithi_ with an unimpaired consciousness of good and evil. It is just the negation of this conscience which renders the mass of Italian _Novelle_ worse than unprofitable.

[Footnote 132: The title leads us to expect one hundred tales; but counting the ten of the Introduction, there are one hundred and ten. When the book first circulated, it contained but seventy. The first edition is that of Monte Regale in Sicily, 1565. My copy of the Venetian edition of 1566 is complete.]

[Footnote 133: The ten novels of the Introduction deal exclusively with the manners of Italian prostitutes. Placed as a frontispiece to the whole repertory, they seem intended to attract the vulgar reader.]

The plan of the _Hecatommithi_ deserves a passing notice, if only because it illustrates the more than ordinary force of brain which Cinthio brought to bear upon his light material. He begins with an elaborate description of the Sack of Rome. A party of men and women take refuge from its horrors of rape, pestilence and tortures in one of the Colonna palaces. When affairs have been proved desperate, they set sail from Civita Vecchia for Marseilles, and enliven their voyage with story-telling. A man of mature years opens the discussion with a long panegyric of wedded love, serving as introduction to the tales which treat of illicit passion. From this first day's debate the women of the party are absent. They intervene next day, and upon this and the following nine days one hundred stories are related by different members of the party upon subjects selected for illustration. Each novel is followed by a copious commentary in the form of dialogue, and songs are interspersed. Cinthio thus adhered, as closely as possible, to the model furnished by Boccaccio. But his framework, though ingeniously put together, lacks the grace and sweetness of the Decameron. Not a few of the novels are founded upon facts of history. In the tenth tale of the ninth decade, for example, he repeats the legend of the Borgia family--the murder of the Duke of Gandia, Alexander's death by poison, and Cesare's escape. The names are changed; but the facts, as related by Guicciardini, can be clearly discerned through the transparent veil of fiction.

In concluding this chapter on the _Novelle_, it may be repeated that the species of narrative in question was, in its ultimate development, a peculiar Italian product. Originally derived through the French _fabliaux_ from medieval Latin stories, the _Novella_ received in Italy more serious and more artistic treatment. It satisfied the craving of the race for such delineation of life and manners as a great literature demands; and it did this for reasons which will be explained in the next chapter, with more originality, more adequacy to the special qualities of the Italian people, than even their comedies. What De Quincey wrote concerning our theater in the age of Elizabeth and James, might almost be applied to the material which the _Novellieri_ used: "No literature, not excepting even that of Athens, has ever presented such a multiform theater, such a carnival display, mask and anti-mask of impassioned life--breathing, moving, acting, suffering, laughing:

"Quicquid agunt homines--votum, timor, ira, voluptas,
Gaudia, discursus."

But, when we quit material to think of form, the parallel fails. De Quincey's further description of our dramas, "scenically grouped, draped, and gorgeously colored," is highly inapplicable to the brief, careless, almost pedestrian prose of the _Novelle_. In spite of their indescribable wealth of subject-matter, in spite of those inexhaustible stores of plots and situations, characters and motives, which have made them a mine for playwrights in succeeding ages, they rarely rise to the height of poetry, nor are they ever dramas. The artistic limitations of the Italian _Novelle_ are among the most interesting phenomena presented by the history of literature.