The novels of the following century are exceedingly numerous, but in general too much upon one pattern to deserve especial notice until we arrive at those of Bandello, Cinthio, and Grazzini, each of whom is eminent for some special characteristic. Of Firenzuola, one of the most typical writers of his day, we have already spoken, his novelettes being generally interwoven with his other prose works. Two single novelettes by separate authors deserve special notice as world-famous, though not by the genius of their authors. The _Romeo and Giulietta_ of Luigi da Porto, a gentleman of Vicenza who died in 1529, is a powerful and well-told story, although it would have been little heard of but for Shakespeare, who nevertheless seems to have been unacquainted with it, having founded his tragedy upon the inferior version made by Arthur Brooke after the French of Boistuau. The other story which has become a portion of the world’s repertory of fiction is the _Belphegor_ of Giovanni Brevio, a subject also treated by Machiavelli, and revived in our own day by Thackeray. The idea of the devil’s aversion to matrimony, not as a divine ordinance, but as a nuisance inconsistent with his own peace and comfort, is so irresistibly comic that one is surprised to find it originally Slavonian. The celebrity of Pietro Aretino requires the mention of his novels, which, however, possess no very distinctive features. To find these we must turn chiefly to Straparola, whose genre requires a distinct notice; and, among those who diverged less from the beaten track, Bandello, Cinthio, and Grazzini. Bandello, says Settembrini, depicts the Italian, Grazzini the Florentine, Cinthio humanity at large.