preface
 

many people will be inclined to accuse me of pre -
sumption, for this attempt to exhibit tiie rudimentai
principles of persian grammar, after the elegant
elementary nosegay, long since presented to the public^
by the great orientalist jones, and the more recent in¬
valuable work on this theme, by the most accomplished
eastern scholar of the present day, the amiable lums-
den. to this last writer i may safely refer, for his can¬
did sentiments on the flowery performance of his pre¬
decessor, which, in the present advanced stage of
asiatic literature, has lost much of its pristine worth
and utility, for every student of the persian tongue,
who is more bent on reaping the solid fruits of practi¬
cal instruction from any grammar, than upon merely
sipping the blossoms of a poetical garland, however
sweetly perfumed or harmoniously strung, had it
been my intention merely to encroach on this depart¬
ment of oriental lucubrations, my first essay would
have undoubtedly been, either a condensed view of the
one author's voluminous work, or an expanded exhi¬
bition of the other's splendid plaything for alluring
babes and sucklings into the study of a roseate tongue,
through the medium of a foreign but thorny character,
the persi-arabic alphabet, my object is, however^
very different, and this field is still left open to those
who have the best right to cultivate it, undisturbed
by me, for their own private benefit, or the public