Publisher's Synopsis
To myself I reserve the duty of filling up all the gaps and chinks which may be left in the narrative. By this arrangement I have sunk from the position of an author to that of a compiler, but on the other hand my work has ceased to be a story and has expanded into a series of affidavits. My Father, John Hunter West, was a well known Oriental and Sanskrit scholar, and his name is still of weight with those who are interested in such matters. He it was who first after Sir William Jones called attention to the great value of early Persian literature, and his translations from the Hafiz and from Ferideddin Atar have earned the warmest commendations from the Baron von Hammer-Purgstall, of Vienna, and other distinguished Continental critics. In the issue of the Orientalisches Scienzblatt for January, 1861, he is described as -Der beruhmte und sehr gelhernte Hunter West von Edinburgh--a passage which I well remember that he cut out and stowed away, with a pardonable vanity, among the most revered family archives.
