The Adventures Of Hajji Baba Of Ispahan In England PDF Download

Excerpt from The Adventures of Hajji Baba, of Ispahan, in England To the Gentle Reader, Should you perchance have perused a certain history, called The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan, and had the patience to reach the last page, you will there have seen a sort of declaration, that if the translator were to meet with encouragement, he would inform you how his hero (if such he may be called) accompanied a great ambassador from Persia to England, and of their subsequent adventures. In all humility I beg to inform you that I am that translator; but in making the said declaration, I found that I had placed myself in a dilemma; for what is encouragement? let me ask. Is it the applause of friends? No; they are partial. The notice of the daily press? Puffing is no encouragement. The criticism of reviewers? They lose sight of the work, and write their own essays. Not even the several editions through which a book may pass can be appealed to as a decided test; for now-a-days, in England, reading societies are as numerous as reading men in other countries, and they alone exhaust a first edition, whether the book is read or not; whilst the second generally remains to lumber the booksellers' shelves; therefore, unless the copies sold be counted, not by hundreds, but by thousands, an author can scarcely be said to have acquired decided success. Such being the case, to use Hajji's language, I folded the arms of idleness over the breast of resignation; and since my book had scarcely exhausted a second edition, I was determined to bid adieu to ambition, and to seat myself amongst the obscure class of second or third-rate scribblers. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."