TO THE READER.

SIR WILLIAM JONES has justly observed, that prefatory introductions have been generally omitted by translators, though they always contain the richest stores of language, as Persian authors generally exert in them their utmost powers of rhetoric. The orientalist who may have read the originals of the Prefaces and Introduction to the BAHAR-DANUSH, knows, that they are esteemed as models of composition, and very difficult to translate.