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Perhaps the fullest account of the Italian novelists in an English book is that in Dunlop's History of Fiction, as edited by Wilson, 1888. See also Papanti, Catalogo dei Novelieri italiani, 1871, and the notices prefixed to the specimens translated in Thomas Roscoe's Italian Novelists, 1832.

The fullest accounts of individual Italian dramatists will be found in Ginguené. The beginning of the Italian drama is investigated by D'Ancona in his Origini del Teatro in Italia, 1891; see also the volumes (iv.–vii.) devoted to Italy in Klein's Geschichte des Dramas, D'Ancona has written a monograph on the Sacre Rappresentazioni (see p. 226). The Commedia dell' Arte (pp. 305–307) is treated in Scherillo's monograph with this title, in Maurice Sand's Masques et Bouffons, and in Symonds's preface to his translation of the memoirs of Carlo Gozzi, 1892.

This subject is most fully treated in general histories, whether of Italian or romantic literature. Panizzi's introduction to his edition of Boiardo and Ariosto (1831), though in many respects erroneous or antiquated, deserves attention, as does Ferrario, Storia ed Analisi degli antichi Romanzi di Cavalleria, 1828–29. Ariosto's indebtedness to earlier romancers has been investigated by Rajna, Le Fonti dell' Orlando Furioso. Leigh Hunt's Stories from the Italian Poets is a charming companion to Italian chivalric poetry.

The best view of the Renaissance as a whole is to be obtained from Symonds's great work, The Renaissance in Italy, 1875–81. A new edition is in course of issue. Much of this comprehensive book relates to politics, and much to art; but so complete in the Renaissance period was the interpenetration of all forms of mental activity that no part of the work is useless for the study of literature. The same may be said of almost all modern biographies of leading Italians of the period, of most collections of letters, and of such books as Bisticci's memoirs of his contemporaries (p. 107). A useful abridged account of the