The Palace of Pleasure | Page 5

di Scrivia near Tortona. He
lived mainly in Milan, at the Dominican monastery of Sta. Maria delle
Grazie, where Leonardo painted his "Last Supper." As he belonged to
the French party, he had to leave Milan when it was taken by the
Spaniards in 1525, and after some wanderings settled in France near
Agen. About 1550 he was appointed Bishop of Agen by Henri II., and
he died some time after 1561. To do him justice, he only received the
revenues of his see, the episcopal functions of which were performed
by the Bishop of Grasse. His novelle are nothing less than episcopal in
tone and he had the grace to omit his dignity from his title-pages.
Indeed Bandello's novels[7] reflect as in a mirror all the worst sides of
Italian Renaissance life. The complete collapse of all the older
sanctions of right conduct, the execrable example given by the petty
courts, the heads of which were reckless because their position was so
insecure, the great growth of wealth and luxury, all combined to make
Italy one huge hot-bed of unblushing vice. The very interest in
individuality, the spectator-attitude towards life, made men ready to
treat life as one large experiment, and for such purposes vice is as
important as right living even though it ultimately turns out to be as
humdrum as virtue. The Italian nobles treated life in this experimental
way and the novels of Bandello and others give us the results of their
experiments. The Novellieri were thus the "realists" of their day and of
them all Bandello was the most realistic. He claims to give only
incidents that really happened and makes this his excuse for telling
many incidents that should never have happened. It is but fair to add
that his most vicious tales are his dullest.
[Footnote 7: The Villon Society is to publish this year a complete
translation of Bandello by Mr. John Payne.]
That cannot be said of Queen Margaret of Navarre, who carries on the
tradition of the Novellieri, and is represented in Painter by some of her
best stories. She intended to give a Decameron of one hundred
stories--the number comes from the Cento novelle antichi, before
Boccaccio--but only got so far as the second novel of the eighth day.

As she had finished seven days her collection is known as the
Heptameron. How much of it she wrote herself is a point on which the
doctors dispute. She had in her court men like Clement Marot, and
Bonaventure des Périers, who probably wrote some of the stories.
Bonaventure des Périers in particular, had done much in the same line
under his own name, notably the collection known as Cymbalum Mundi.
Marguerite's other works hardly prepare us for the narrative skill, the
easy grace of style and the knowledge of certain aspects of life shown
in the Heptameron. On the other hand the framework, which is more
elaborate than in Boccaccio or any of his school, is certainly from one
hand, and the book does not seem one that could have been connected
with the Queen's name unless she had really had much to do with it.
Much of its piquancy comes from the thought of the association of one
whose life was on the whole quite blameless with anecdotes of a most
blameworthy style. Unlike the lady in the French novel who liked to
play at innocent games with persons who were not innocent, Margaret
seems to have liked to talk and write of things not innocent while
remaining unspotted herself. Her case is not a solitary one.
The whole literature of the Novella has the attraction of graceful
naughtiness in which vice, as Burke put it, loses half its evil by losing
all its grossness. At all times, and for all time probably, similar tales,
more broad than long, will form favourite talk or reading of adolescent
males. They are, so to speak, pimples of the soul which synchronise
with similar excrescences of the skin. Some men have the art of never
growing old in this respect, but I cannot say I envy them their eternal
youth. However, we are not much concerned with tales of this class on
the present occasion. Very few of the novelle selected by Painter for
translation depend for their attraction on mere naughtiness. In matters
of sex the sublime and the ridiculous are more than usually close
neighbours. It is the tragic side of such relations that attracted Painter,
and it was this fact that gave his book its importance for the history of
English literature, both in its connection with Italian letters and in its
own internal development.
The relations of Italy and England in matters literary are due to the
revivers of the New Learning. Italy was, and still is, the