Page:Matteo Bandello - twelve stories (IA cu31924102029083).pdf/20

 cating each tale to some illustrious friend, prefacing this by an elaborately-written prologue. These dedications have their value as showing the reasons which led to the writing of this or that story. But in the present short selection we have preferred to omit them, and let the tales speak for themselves.

Derived as it was from the French fabliau, at that epoch for Italians of all classes the novella possessed absorbing attraction. When Bandello came forward to contribute to the entertainment of his countrymen he brought them a set of tales surprisingly varied in detail and in interest, full of human nature, and touched with the reckless buoyant spirit of the time. Their appeal was immediate and extensive. By their spontaneous simplicity and vigour they reached a larger public than Boccaccio had been able to allure by his florid, more delicately finished work. But then the Tuscan intended his Decamerone to belong to literature; and to literature Bandello avowedly gave little heed. His main intention was to be popular and to amuse. Rhetoric and the graces of style he eschews, being only eager to get to his incidents and to marshal these in such a manner as to hold the reader's attention to the last. To point a moral was still