THE interest with which I used to look forward to the publication of this work, the preparation of which afforded us innumerable happy hours, has been saddened for me of late by the death of my elder brother and senior partner in the undertaking. It was begun some twenty years ago when he was the Incumbent of St. Mary's, Tothill Fields, Westminster, and had but scanty leisure. It was continued and carried far toward completion in more favourable circumstances after his presentation by the Grocers' Company to the living of St. Mary le Bow, Cheapside, in 1887.

From early days my brother was devoted to the study of Oriental languages. His proficiency in Hebrew won him at Oxford the Pusey and Ellerton Scholarship in 1862 and the Kennicott in 1863. He was also a good Arabic and Syriac scholar. During his twenty-one laborious years first as Curate and then Incumbent at Westminster he never, I think, forewent for long his favourite branch of study, and I may add that we were engaged in revising a passage in our joint translation almost to within an hour of his sudden death from a wholly unsuspected heart-affection in April 1903.

He is, I think, fondly remembered by many. Such memories are in the nature of things but fleeting; but the written word remains, and I am fain to hope that by the publication of this work I may be raising to him an inconspicuous perhaps but lasting monument.

To the vast majority of English readers the Sháh-náma seems hardly to be known even by name—a fact not to be wondered at, considering how few references are made to it in current literature, and that this is actually the first attempt to give the subject-matter of the great Persian Epic at large in English. It has therefore seemed desirable that the translation should be accompanied by explanatory matter in the forms of Introduction, Note, and Argument. To prepare these has fallen to my lot, and I am accordingly responsible for the many faults of commission and omission that will be only too obvious to the eyes of scholars and experts in this branch of the subject. I am also responsible with my brother for the translation generally, and for its final form throughout. His share, had he lived, would have been larger and more important than mine, but his untimely death will tend to equalise our labours. On reviewing our work as a whole, I venture to hope that the English reader will gain from it a very fairly correct idea of the subject-matter of Firdausí's greatest achievement, and will at least learn from the Introduction and Introductory Notes where to turn for more scholarly and authoritative informa­tion on the subject.

I take this opportunity of thanking the Delegates of the Clarendon Press for their kind permission to make such illustrative extracts as I needed from those volumes of the Sacred Books of the East Series which contain the translations of the Zandavasta and Pahlaví Texts by the late Professor Darmesteter and the late Dr. E. W. West respectively. These transla­tions, with their introductions and notes, are most valuable to the student of the Sháhnáma. I have also to thank my sister, Caroline Warner, and my nephew, George Redston Warner, for occasional help.

I hope to publish our translation a volume at a time, as circumstances permit.

EDMOND WARNER.

ELTHAM, February 1905.