Matteo, an celebrated Italian novelist, born at Castelnuovo, near Tortona, about the year 1480. In his youth he studied both at Rome and at Paris; and his education being completed, he went to reside at Mantua. There he remained for several years, much esteemed by Pirro Gonzaga, who intrusted him with the education of his daughter, the celebrated Lucrezia Gonzaga. The incidents in the lives of the literary men who flourished in Italy during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have in many respects a strong similarity. Like most of his literary contemporaries, Bandello passed from one petty court to another, and was frequently employed in political missions by the patron whom he served at the time. At this period the small states of Italy were divided between the French and Spanish interests. Bandello had chiefly attached himself to those princes of Lombardy who favoured the French party; and, in consequence, when the decisive battle of Pavia put the Spaniards in possession of Milan, where Bandello at that time resided, his paternal mansion was burned, and the property of his family confiscated. He fled in disguise from Milan, and after wandering from town to town, he placed himself under the protection of Cesar Fregoso, a celebrated captain of that age, who had recently quitted the Venetian for the French service. With this general Bandello resided in Piedmont, till a truce was concluded, when he accompanied his patron to France. After the death of Cesar he continued to live with his widow and family at Agen, to the bishopric of which he was raised by Francis I. in 1550, and continued to reside in the vicinity of that town till his death, which happened about 1562.

During his residence at Agen, Bandello revised and added to the novels which he had written in Italy during his youth, and which some of his friends had recovered from the hands of the Spanish soldiers who burned his house at Milan. His Tales were first published at Lucca in 1554, 4to. In the complete editions of Bandello, the work is divided into four parts; the first, second, and third parts containing fifty-nine stories, and the fourth comprehending twenty-eight. The whole are dedicated to Ippolita Sforza, though she died before their publication, because it was at her desire that the work was originally undertaken. Besides this general dedication, each novel is addressed to some Valoroso Signore, or Charissima Signora; and in these introductions the novelist generally explains how he came to a knowledge of the event he is about to relate. He usually declares that he heard it told in company, details the conversation by which it was introduced, and pretends to report it, as far as his memory serves, in the exact words of his authority.

Bandello is chiefly indebted for his celebrity to these novels, which belong to a class of composition that enjoyed for many centuries the utmost popularity in Italy. The tales of the French Trouveurs, having passed into Italy towards the close of the thirteenth century, were first imitated in the Cento Novelle Antiche; which also contains stories formed from episodes in the romances of chivalry, the ancient chronicles of Italy, and jests or repartees preserved by oral tradition. Boccaccio, whose Decameron appeared shortly after, identified this species of composition with the history of Italian literature and the progress of the Italian language. That celebrated writer was followed by Sacchetti, Ser Giovanni, Centhio, and a numerous tribe of imitators, of whom Bandello is by much the best known and most celebrated, at least in this country. His popularity, however, has not been so great in Italy, which may probably be attributed to the negligence and impurity of his style; a fault of which the author himself appears to have been conscious, as he repeatedly apologizes for his defects in elegance of diction.

Io non sono Toscano, né bene intendo la proprietà di quella Bandinelli, linguist; and I confess Lombardo. Napoleon, in his eulogy of Bandello, confesses that he is not remarkable for that harmony of periods, and delightful variety of expression, for which Boccaccio and others of his predecessors were so distinguished; but he adds, that none of the Italian novelists is so interesting for the development and illustration of minute historical facts, which would in vain be sought for in the histories of the revolutions of the Italian states. Some of the novels of Bandello, however, it must be admitted, are little edifying; and it is curious that one of his stories, which is perhaps the most obscene in the whole series of Italian novels, should be declared, in the introduction, to have been related by the celebrated Navagero to the Princess of Mantua and Duchess of Urbino. Besides, notwithstanding the repeated assertions of Bandello, that all his stories have some foundation in fact, and the light which his eulogists suppose that they throw on the history of the Italian republics, it cannot be denied that the greater proportion of them are derived from the Fabliaux of the French Trouveurs, and the works of preceding Italian novelists, with an alteration of the names, and some slight variations in the incidents. But while Bandello has thus copied largely from preceding fables, none of their works has suggested more to others, or is more curious for illustrating the genealogy of fiction, and the transmission of fabulous incident from the novelist to the dramatic poet. Many of the tales of Bandello were translated by Belleforet in his Histories Tragiques, whence they found their way into Paynter's Palace of Pleasure, and other works of a similar description which appeared in England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. In this manner they furnished the plots of many tragedies and comedies to the most numerous and noble race of the English dramatic poets.

That part of Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing which relates to Don John, Claudio, and Hero, is taken, with little variation in the incidents, from the twenty-second tale of the first part of Bandello; The Twelfth Night is borrowed from the thirty-sixth of the second part; and his Romeo and Juliet is derived from the same source (vol. ii. novel ix.). Massinger has been indebted for his Picture, which is, perhaps, the most agreeable and fanciful of his dramas, to the twenty-first of the first part; while Beaumont and Fletcher have derived from the same source their comedy of the Maid in the Mill, and the Triumph of Death, which is the third of their "Four Plays in One." The thirty-fifth of the second part of Bandello is the same story as the plot of Horace Walpole's Mysterious Mother; and the thirtieth tale of the Queen of Navarre. As the works of Bandello and the Queen of Navarre were printed nearly at the same period, it is not probable that they copied from each other; and it may be presumed, that some current tradition furnished both with the horrible incident they relate. Mr. Walpole, however, disclaims having had any knowledge of the tale of the Queen of Navarre or Bandello at the time he wrote this drama. Its plot, he says, was suggested by a story he heard when very young, of a lady, who, under uncommon agonies of mind, had waited on Archbishop Tillotson, and besought his counsel in what manner she should act under the fatal circumstances that had occurred.

Besides his Tales, Bandello is author of a poem in eleven cantos, which was his first work, and is now very scarce, entitled Delle Lodi della Signora Lucrezia Gonzaga, printed at Agen, 1545, in 8vo. He also wrote a complimentary poem, in three cantos, on the birth of a son of his patron, Cesar Fregoso. Both these productions are written without taste or spirit; but it is said that some good verses, composed by Bandello, on different subjects, are still preserved in manuscript in the library of the Academy of Turin. (J. C. D.)