book, because the preface, if well written, may serve also as a sort of
appendix. Authors are said to bestow particular pains on their prefaces.
Cervantes, for instance, tells us that the preface to the first part of
_Don Quixote_ cost him more thought than the writing of the entire work.
"It argues a deficiency of taste," says Isaac D'Israeli, "to turn over
an elaborate preface unread; for it is the essence of the author's
roses--every drop distilled at an immense cost." And, no doubt, it is a
great slight to an author to skip his preface, though it cannot be
denied that some prefaces are very tedious, because the writer "spins
out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument,"
and none but the most _hardy_ readers can persevere to the distant end.
The Italians call a preface _salsa del libro_, the _salt_ of the book. A
preface may also be likened to the porch of a mansion, where it is not
courteous to keep a visitor waiting long before you open the door and
make him free of your house. But the reader who passes over the preface
to the _Gulistán_ unread loses not a little of the spice of that
fascinating and instructive book. He who reads it, however, is rewarded
by the charming account which the author gives of how he came to form
his literary Rose-Garden:

"It was the season of spring; the air was temperate and the rose in full
bloom. The vestments of the trees resembled the festive garments of the
fortunate. It was mid-spring, when the nightingales were chanting from
their pulpits in the branches. The rose, decked with pearly dew, like
blushes on the cheek of a chiding mistress. It happened once that I was
benighted in a garden, in company with a friend. The spot was
delightful: the trees intertwined; you would have said that the earth
was bedecked with glass spangles, and that the knot of the Pleiades was
suspended from the branch of the vine. A garden with a running stream,
and trees whence birds were warbling melodious strains: that filled with