Page:Matteo Bandello - twelve stories (IA cu31924102029083).pdf/27

 The charge of coarseness which, as a writer, Bandello cannot escape, needs happily in the present instance neither substantiation nor excuse, for of this we have provided no sample. But, in passing, we may note that gross stories were the fashion, and that a popular novel-monger was obliged to give the public that for which it always craved. To-day, we profess to be infinitely appalled by Bandello's obscenity, just as his contemporaries seemed horror-struck that a bishop, robed in ecclesiastical purple and in touch with courts, should deliberately seek to cover his Church with shame, by printing infamous tales about the priests. Yet in our virtuous disdain let us remember that, if Bandello sinned, it was solely in his desire to amuse. Tout pour soullas might well have served him for motto. Herein, again, he emphasises the force of our fin-de-siècle law, which, in the effort to entertain, permits us to shock or to scandalise society, but absolutely forbids us to be dull. To this rule our reverend prelate blandly conforms.

In conclusion, we must admit that Bandello's work is valuable to us as a specimen of the literature which found wide favour with all classes in Italy at the time of the Renascence. It reflects the whole