[124] Novelle di Autori Senesi, edited by Gaetano Poggiali, Londra (Livorno), 1796. This collection, reprinted in the Raccolta di Novellieri Italiani, Milano, 1815, vols. xiv. and xv., contains Bernardo Illicini, Giustiniano Nelli, Scipione Bargagli, Gentile Sermini, Pietro Fortini, and others. Of Sermini's Novelle a complete edition appeared in 1874 at Livorno, from the press of Francesco Vigo; and to this the student should now go. Romagnoli of Bologna in 1877 published three hitherto inedited novels of Fortini, together with the rubrics of all those which have not yet been printed. Their titles enable us to comprehend the scruples which prevented Poggiali from issuing the whole series.
[125] Imbasciata di Venere, Sermini, ed. cit. p. 117.
[126] Il Giuoco della pugna, Sermini, ed. cit. p. 105.
[127] See Le Cene, pt. ii. Nov. 10, and Firenzuola's seventh Novella.
[128] None of them are included in the Milanese Novellieri Italiani. The editions I shall use are Proverbii di Messer Antonio Cornazano in Facetie, Bologna, Romagnoli, 1865; Le Piacevoli Notti, in Vinegia per Comin da Trino di Monferrato, MDLI.; Gli Hecatommithi di M. Giovanbattista Giraldi Cinthio, Nobile Ferrarese, in Vinegia, MDLXVI., Girolamo Scotto, 2 vols.
[129] Fiabe, Novelle, Racconti, Palermo, Lauriel, 1875, 4 vols. I may here take occasion to notice that one Novella by the Conte Lorenzo Magalotti (Nov. It. vol. xiii. p. 362), is the story of Whittington and his Cat, told of a certain Florentine, Ansaldo degli Ormanni, and the King of the Canary Islands.
[130] John Wilson's play of Belphegor, Dekker's If it be not good the Divel is in it, and Ben Jonson's The Devil is an Ass, were more or less founded on Machiavelli's and Straparola's novels.
[131] Dunlop in his History of Fiction, vol. ii. p. 411, speaks of a Latin MS. preserved in the library of S. Martin at Tours which contained the tale, but he also says that it was lost at "the period of the civil wars in France."
[132] The title leads us to expect one hundred tales; but counting the ten of the Introduction, there are one hundred and ten. When the book first circulated, it contained but seventy. The first edition is that of Monte Regale in Sicily, 1565. My copy of the Venetian edition of 1566 is complete.
[133] The ten novels of the Introduction deal exclusively with the manners of Italian prostitutes. Placed as a frontispiece to the whole repertory, they seem intended to attract the vulgar reader.