BANDELLO, a celebrated Italian novelist, was born at Castelnuovo, in the neighbourhood of Tor tone, about the year 1480. In his youth, he studied both at Rome and at Paris ; and his education being completed, he went to reside at Mantua. There he remained for several years much esteemed by Pirro Gonzaga, who entrusted him with the education of his daughter, the celebrated Lucrezia Gonzaga. The incidents in the lives of literary men, who flourished in Italy during the sixteenth and seventeenth centu ries, have a strong similarity to each other. Like most of his literary contemporaries, Bandello passed from one petty court to another, and was frequently employed in political missions by the patron whom he served at the time. At this period, the small states of Italy were divided between the French and Spanish interests. Bandello had chiefly attached himself to those princes of Lombardy who favoured the French party ; and, in consequence, when the decisive battle of Pavia put the Spaniards in posses sion of Milan, where Bandello at that time resided, his paternal mansion was burned, and the property of his family confiscated. He fled in disguise from Milan, and after wandering from town to town, he placed himself under the protection of Cesar Fregoso, a celebrated captain of that age, who had recently quitted the Venetian for the French service. With this general Bandello resided in Piedmont, till a truce was concluded, when he accompanied his pa tron to France. After the death of Cesar he conti nued to live with his widow and family at Agen, to the Bishoprick of which he was raised by Francis I. in 1550, and continued to reside in the vicinity of that town till his death, which happened about 1562.
During his residence at Agen, Bandello revised and added to his Novels, which he had written in Italy during his youth, and which some of his friends had recovered from the hands of the Spanish soldiers, who burned his house at Milan. His Tales were first published at Lucca in 1554, 4to. In the complete editions of Bandello, the work is divided into four parts—the 1st, 2d, and 3d parts, containing 59 sto ries, and the 4th comprehending 28. The whole are dedicated to Ippolita &bras, though she died be fore their publication, because it was at her desire that the work was originally undertaken. Besides this general dedication, each novel is addressed to some Palermo Si pore, or Chiarissiona Signora, and in these introductions, the novelist generally explains how he came to a knowledge of the event he is about to relate. He usually declares that he heard it told in ,tbe conversation by which it was introduced,—and pretends to report it, as far as his memory serves, in the exact words of his authority.
Bandello is chiefly indebted for his celebrity to these Novels, which belong to a class of composition that enjoyed for many centuries the utmost populari ty in Italy. The tales of the French Trouveurs, hav ing passed into Italy towards the close of the thir teenth century, were first imitated in the Cento No velle Antiche ; which also contains stories formed from episodes in the romances of chivalry, the ancient chronicles of Italy, and jests or repartees current by oral tradition. Boccaccio, whose Decameron appear
ed shortly after, identified this species of composition with the history of Italian literature, and the pro gress of the Italian language. That celebrated writer was followed by Sacchetti, Ser Giovanni, Cen thio, and a numerous tribe of imitators, of whom Bandello is by much the best known, and most cele brated, at least in this country. His popularity, however, has not been so great in Italy, which may probably be attributed to the negligence and impurity of his style ; a defect of which the author himself appears to have been conscious, as he repeatedly apologizes for his defects in elegance of diction. Io non son Toscano, bene intendo la propriety di 'uella lingua ; anzi nit confesso Lom bardo. Napioni, in his eulogy of Bandello, con fesses that he is not remarkable for that harmony of periods, and delightful naivete of expression, for which Boccaccio and others of his predecessors were so distinguished ; but he adds, that none of the Italian novelists are so interesting for the developement and illustration of minute historical facts, which would in vain be sought for in the his tories of the revolutions of the Italian States. Some of the novels of Bandello, however, it must be ad mitted, are little edifying; and it is curious, that one of his stories, which is perhaps the most obscene in the whole series of Italian novels, should be declared, in the introduction, to have been related by the cele brated Navagero, to the Princess of Mantua and Duchess of Urbino. Besides, notwithstanding the repeated assertions of Bandello, that all his stories have some foundation in fact, and the light which his eulogists suppose that they throw on the history of the Italian Republics, it cannot be denied, that the greater proportion of them are derived from the Fablieux of the French Trouveurs, and the works of preceding Italian novelists, with an alteration of the names, and some slight variations in the incidents. But while Bandello has thus copied largely from preceding fablers, none of their works have suggested more to others, or are more curious for illustrating the genealogy of fiction, and the transmission of fabu lous incident, from the novelist to the dramatic poet. Many of the tales of Bandello were translated by 'Belleforest in his Histoires Tragiques, whence they found their way into Paynter's Palace of Pleasure, and other works gif a similar description which ap peared in England, during the reign of Queen Eliza beth. In this manner they furnished the plots of many tragedies and comedies, to the most numerous and noble race of the English dramatic poets. That part of Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing,