INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST FRENCH EDITION.

I SHALL neither write a dedicatory epistle, nor solicit protection for this work; if it is good, it will be read, if bad, I am not anxious that it should be read by any. I have adventured the first of these letters to try the public taste; I have a great number more, which I may hereafter give. But this depends upon my not being known, for from the moment that happens, I am silent. I know a lady who walks very well, but limps if observed. There are faults enough in the work for the critics, without subjecting myself to them. If I was known, it would be said, his book is his true character; he might have engaged himself to a better purpose; it is unworthy of a grave man. The critics are never deficient in these kinds of reflections, because little wit is necessary to make them.

The Persians, who wrote these letters, lodged with me, and we passed our time together; as they regarded me as one of another world, they hid nothing from me. In fact, persons removed to such a considerable distance, could have no secrets. They communicated to me the most of their letters, which I copied; others I took which they were desirous not to entrust me with, as they exposed the jealousy and vanity of the Persian. I am no more than a translator: my whole care has been to suit this work to our manners. I have relieved the reader, as much as I could, from the Asiatic stile, and have exonerated him from the trouble of an infinite number of sublime and elevated expressions. But this is not all the service I have rendered him; I have retrenched those long compliments, of which the orientals are not less profuse than ourselves, and have passed over a great

many particulars too trifling to be made public, and which ought only to live from friend to friend. If this had been observed by most of those who have published epistolary collections, many of their works would have disappeared. There is one circumstance which has often excited my admiration; that these Persians were frequently as well instructed as myself in the manners and customs of our nation, even to a knowledge of the most minute particulars, taking notice of some things which I am sure have escaped many of the Germans who have visited France. This I attribute to the long stay they made here, without considering that it is less difficult to an Asiatic to inform himself of the manners of the French in one year, than it would be to a Frenchman to acquire a knowledge of those of Asia in four years; because the one are as open as the other are reserved. Translators have been indulged by custom, even the most barbarous commentators, to decorate the head of their version, or glossary, with a panegyric on the original, and to expatiate on the usefulness, merit, and excellency of it; but this I have not done. The reasons are obvious; one of the best is, that it would be tedious, in a part of a work already too much so; I would say in a preface.