Having advanced so far as to speak in this chapter of Corio and Matarazzo, I shall take occasion to notice a book which, appearing for the first time in 1476, may fairly be styled the most important work of Italian prose-fiction belonging to the fifteenth century. This is the _Novellino_ of Masuccio Guardato, a nobleman of Salerno, secretary to the Prince Roberto Sanseverino, and resident throughout his life at the Court of Naples.[200] The _Novellino_ is a collection of stories, fifty in number, arranged in five parts, which treat respectively of hypocrisy and the monastic vices, jealousy, feminine incontinence, the contrasts of pathos and of humor, and the generosity of princes. Each _Novella_ is dedicated to a noble man or woman of Neapolitan society, and is followed by a reflective discourse, in which the author personally addresses his audience. Masuccio declares himself the disciple of Boccaccio and Juvenal.[201] Of the Roman poet's spirit he has plenty; he gives the rein to rage in language of the most indignant virulence. Of Boccaccio's idiom and style, though we can trace the student's emulation, he can boast but little. Masuccio never reached the Latinistic smoothness of his model; and while he wrote Italian, his language was far from being Tuscan. Phrases culled from southern dialects are frequent; and the structure of the period is often ungrammatical. Masuccio was not a member of any humanistic clique. He lived among the nobles of a royal Court, and knew the common people intimately. This double experience is reflected in his language and his modes of thought. Both are unalloyed by pedantry, and precious for the student of contemporary manners.
The interest of the _Novellino_ is great when we regard it as the third collection of _Novelle_, coming after Boccaccio's and Sacchetti's, and, from the point of view of art, occupying a middle place between them. The tales of the Decameron were originally recited at Naples; and though Boccaccio was a thorough Tuscan, he borrowed something from the south which gave width, warmth and largeness to his writing. Masuccio is wholly Neapolitan in tone; but he seeks such charm of presentation and variety of matter as shall make his book worthy to take rank in general literature. Sacchetti has more of a purely local flavor. He is no less Florentine than Masuccio is Neapolitan; and, unlike Masuccio, he has taken little pains to adapt his work to other readers than his fellow-citizens. Boccaccio embraces all human life, seen in the light of vivid fancy by a _bourgeois_ who was also a great comic romantic poet. Sacchetti describes the _borghi_, _contrade_, and _piazze_ of Florence; and his speech is seasoned with rare Tuscan salt of wit. Masuccio's world is that of the free-living southern noble. He is penetrated with aristocratic feeling, treats willingly of arms and jousts and warfare, telling the tales of knights and ladies to a courtly company.[202] At the same time, the figures of the people move with incomparable vivacity across the stage; and his transcripts from life reveal the careless interpenetration of classes to which he was accustomed in Calabria.[203] Some of his stories are as simply _bourgeois_ as any of Sacchetti's.[204]