Giovanni da Prato, author of _Il Paradin degli Alberti_ (about 1420) also deserves mention here, on account of the short stories inserted into his ethical dialogues; but the first novelist of much importance after Giovanni Fiorentino is MASSUCCIO of Salerno, a Neapolitan, who seems to have been a man of rank, and to have been for some time in the service of the Duke of Milan. He wrote about 1470, and his tales were first printed in 1476. The celebrity which he continues to enjoy is, it may be feared, mainly owing to his character as the most licentious of the Italian novelists in fact, although, if we may trust his own assurance, the most virtuous in intention. His tales are divided into five parts, each of the first three of which has what the writer considers to be a distinct moral purpose. In the first, in Dunlop’s words, “the scope of the stories is to show that God will sooner or later inflict vengeance on dissolute monks.” The second “proves that the monks of those days invented many frauds.” The third “is intended to show that the greatest and finest ladies of Italy indulged in gallantries of a nature which did them very little honour.” All these propositions might have been thought susceptible of demonstration without the _Novellino_, and much better established than Massuccio’s claim to a place among moralists or reformers. He protests that his tales are “ower true,” and for the most part founded on recent transactions; and, in fact, he appears less indebted than any predecessor to folk-lore and the French fabliaux. The last two sections of his work, however, contain love adventures of too exceptional a nature to be founded upon actual incidents. Some of these manifest, not merely ingenuity of invention, but considerable tragic power. The style is somewhat barbarous; and the same remark applies to the lighter fiction, generally of the nature of anecdote, of his contemporary Sabadino degli Arienti, a native and historian of Bologna. Sabadino’s tales are much less objectionable than Massuccio’s, though no less than his in the author’s opinion _moralissimi documenti_. They are entitled _Porrettane_, from their having been composed for the amusement of the visitors to the baths of Porretta, which gives them some importance as an index to the taste of the more opulent and leisured classes of society.