Page:The Pentamerone, or The Story of Stories.djvu/20

xii press nearly at the same time,—one into German by Mr. Felix Liebrecht, and the present one into English.

My attention was first particularly drawn to the Pentamerone in the year 1834, by the publication of Mr. Keightley's Tales and Popular Fictions, in which, and in his Fairy Mythology, he has given a translation of several of these stories. I had great difficulty in obtaining a copy of the work, which is very scarce in this country; but at length, through the kindness of a friend, I procured one from Naples. From that time to the present I have continued the translation of it at intervals of leisure, as inclination prompted, and have had about twenty of the stories lying by me nearly completed for several years. I had however no definite intention of giving them to the press, until the publication of my selection from the Kinder- und Haus-Märchen suggested to me the wish to give this volume of Neapolitan tales as a companion to the German collection. When I first began to translate, unaided by any vocabulary, the difficulties appeared insurmountable, not only from the peculiarities of the dialect,