"This collection (Basile's Pentamerone) was for a long time the best and richest that had been found by any nation.  Not only were the traditions at that time more complete in themselves, but the author had a special talent for collecting them, and besides that an intimate knowledge of the dialect.  The stories are told with hardly any break, and the tone, at least in the Neapolitan tales, is perfectly caught . . . . We may therefore look on this collection of fifty tales as the basis of many others; for although it was not so in actual fact, and was indeed not known beyond the country in which it appeared, and was never translated into French, it still has all the importance of a basis, owing to the coherence of its traditions.  Two-thirds of them are, so far as their principal incidents are concerned, to be found in Germany, and are current there at this very day.  Basile has not allowed himself to make any alteration, scarecely even any addition of importance, and that gives his work a special value."