Note 189 — Chapter XXXVI

Italy is the only country that can enter into competition with Spain in the department of tales, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Indeed, I am not certain, considering the short period (a little more than a century) during which Spanish tales were fashionable, that as many in proportion were not produced as were produced of Italian tales in Italy during the long period—four centuries and a half—in which they have now been prevalent there. And if, to the Spanish tales found in books professing and not professing to be collections of them, we add the thousands used up in Spanish dramas, to which the elder Italian theatre offers no counterpart, I suppose there can hardly be a doubt that there are really more Spanish fictions of this class in existence than there are Italian. If, however, we were to settle the point only by a comparison of the meagre and imperfect catalogues of Spanish stories in Antonio’s Bibliotheca with the admirably complete one of Italian stories in the “Bibliografia delle Novelle Italiane,” by Gamba, we should settle it differently. But, in any event, when speaking of the Italian novelle, we should remember, that, until very lately, the whole spirit and power of fiction in Italy, so to speak, have been taken from the theatre and romances, and cast into these short tales.