s names, that enabled the narrator
to have more of the artist's freedom in dealing with such topics.

[Footnote 6: Specimens of these in somewhat wooden English were
given by Roscoe in his _Italian Novelists_.]

The other _Novellieri_ from whom Painter drew inspiration may be
dismissed very shortly. Of Ser Giovanne Fiorentino, who wrote the fifty
novels of his _Pecorone_ about 1378, little is known nor need be known;
his merits of style or matter do not raise him above mediocrity.
Straparola's _Piacevole Notti_ were composed in Venice in the earlier
half of the sixteenth century, and are chiefly interesting for the fact
that some dozen or so of his seventy-four stories are folk-tales taken
from the mouth of the people, and were the first thus collected:
Straparola was the earliest Grimm. His contemporary Giraldi, known as
Cinthio (or Cinzio), intended his _Ecatomithi_ to include one hundred
_novelle_, but they never reached beyond seventy; he has the grace to
cause the ladies to retire when the men relate their smoking-room
anecdotes of _feminine impudiche_. Owing to Dryden's statement
"Shakespeare's plots are in the one hundred novels of Cinthio" (Preface
to _Astrologer_), his name has been generally fixed upon as the
representative Italian novelist from whom the Elizabethans drew their
plots. As a matter of fact only "Othello" (_Ecat._ iii. 7), and "Measure
for Measure" (_ib._ viii. 5), can be clearly traced to him, though
"Twelfth Night" has some similarity with Cinthio's "Gravina" (v. 8):
both come from a common source, Bandello.

Bandello is indeed the next greatest name among the _Novellieri_ after
that of Boccaccio, and has perhaps had even a greater influence on
dramatic literature than his master. Matteo Bandello was born at the
end of the fifteenth century at Castelnuovo di Scrivia near Tortona. He
lived mainly in Milan, at the Dominican monastery of Sta. Maria delle
Grazie, where Leonardo painted his "Last Supper." As he belonged to the
French party, he had to leave Milan when it was taken by the Spaniards
in 1525, and after some wanderings settled in France near Agen. About
1550 he was appointed Bishop of Agen by Henri II., and he died some time
after 1561. To do him justice, he only received the revenues of his see,
the episcopal functions of which were performed by the Bishop of Grasse.
His _novelle_ are nothing less than episcopal in tone and he had the
grace to omit his dignity from his title-p