[Footnote 14: The Dedication is dated near the Tower of London 1 January 1566, which must have been new style (introduced into France two years before).] The success of the book seems to have been immediate. We have seen above Ascham’s indignant testimony to this, and the appearance of the Second Tome, half as large again as the other, within about eighteen months of the First, confirms his account. This Second Tome was practically the Bandello volume; more than half of the tales, and those by far the longest, were taken from him, through the medium of his French translators, Boaistuau and Belleforest. Within a couple of years another edition was called for of the First Tome, which appeared in 1569, with the addition of five more stories from the Heptameron, from which eleven were already in the first edition. Thus the First Tome might be called the Heptameron volume, and the second, that of Bandello. Boccaccio is pretty evenly divided between the two, and the remainder is made up of classic tales and anecdotes and a few _novelle_ of Ser Giovanni and Straparola. Both Tomes were reprinted in what may be called the definitive edition of the work in 1575. Quite apart from its popularity and its influence on the English stage, on which we shall have more to say shortly, Painter’s book deserves a larger place in the history of English Literature than has as yet been given to it. It introduced to England some of the best novels of Boccaccio, Bandello, and Queen Margaret, three of the best _raconteurs_ of short stories the world has ever had. It is besides the largest work in English prose that appeared between the _Morte Darthur_ and North’s Plutarch.[15] Painter’s style bears the impress of French models. Though professing to be from Italian _novellieri_, it is mainly derived from French translations of them. Indeed, but for the presence of translations from Ser Giovanni and Straparola, it might be doubtful whether Painter translated from the Italian at all. He claims however to do this from Boccaccio, and as he owns the aid of a French “crib” in the case of Bandello, the claim may be admitted. His translations from the French are very accurate, and only err in the way of too much literalness.[16] From a former dominie one would have expected a far larger proportion of Latinisms than we actually find. As a rule, his sentences are relatively short, and he is tolerably free from the vice of the long periods that were brought into vogue by “Ciceronianism.” He is naturally free from Euphuism and for a very good reason, since _Euphues and his Englande_ was not published for another dozen years or so. The recent suggestion of Dr. Landmann and others that Euphuism came from the influence of Guevara would seem to be negatived by the fact that the “Letters of Trajan” in the Second Tome of Painter are taken from Guevara and are no more Euphuistic than the rest of the volume.