Page:Matteo Bandello - twelve stories (IA cu31924102029083).pdf/28

 of Italian society, and gives us surprisingly truthful, vivid pictures of its manners and its life. Nor by any one of his contemporaries has the sheer craft of story-telling been more convincingly shown than by the worldly, pleasure-loving, genial bishop to whom Leandro Alberti refers as virum in scribendo, floridum, clarum, nitidum, emunctum et accuratum. A flattering verdict, which, however, on the whole we need not reverse.

PERCY PINKERTON.