on forgotten,--an unjust oblivion, for to him
belongs the honor of having introduced the Fairy Tale into modern
European literature. He has been criticised for his style and blamed for
his immorality. The former, it seems to us, is not bad, and the latter
no worse than that of many contemporaneous writers who have escaped the
severe judgment meted out to Straparola.

We find no further traces of popular tales until nearly a century later,
when the first edition of the celebrated _Pentamerone_ appeared at
Naples in 1637. Its author, Giambattista Basile (known as a writer by
the anagram of his name, Gian Alesio Abbattutis), is but little better
known to us than Straparola. He spent his youth in Crete, became known
to the Venetians, and was received into the _Academia degli
Stravaganti_. He followed his sister Adriana, a celebrated cantatrice,
to Mantua, enjoyed the duke's favor, roamed much over Italy, and finally
returned to Naples, near where he died in 1632.[6] The _Pentamerone_, as
its title implies, is a collection of fifty stories in the Neapolitan
dialect, supposed to be narrated, during five days, by ten old women,
for the entertainment of the person (Moorish slave) who has usurped the
place of the rightful princess.[7] Basile's work enjoyed the greatest
popularity in Italy, and was translated into Italian and into the
dialect of Bologna. It is worthy of notice that the first fairy tale
which appeared in France, and was the _avant-coureur_ of the host that
soon followed under the lead of Charles Perrault, "_L'Adroite
Princesse_," is found in the _Pentamerone_.[8] We know nothing of the
sources of Basile's work, but it contains the most popular and extended
of all European tales, and must have been in a great measure drawn
directly from popular tradition. The style is a wonderful mass of
conceits, which do not, however, impair the interest in the material,
and it is safe to say that no people in Europe possesses such a monument
of its popular tales as the _Pentamerone_. Its influence on Italian
literature was not greater than that of Straparola's _Piacevoli Notti_.
From the _Pentamerone_ Lorenzo Lippi took the materials for the second
_cantare_ of his _Malmantile Racquistato_, and Carlo Gozzi drew on it
for his curious _fiabe_, the earliest dramatizations of fairy tales,
which, in our day, after amusing the nursery, have again become the
vehicles of spectacular dramas. Although there is no proof that Mlle.
Lheritie