Cazotte printed many works, some of great length, as the OEuvres
Morales, which filled 7 vols. 8vo in the complete edition of
1817; and the biographers give a long list of publications,
besides those above-mentioned, romantic, ethical, and spiritual,
in verse and in prose. But he wrote mainly for his own pleasure,
he never sought fame, and consequently his reputation never
equalled his merit. His name, however, still smells sweet,
passing sweet, amid the corruption and the frantic fury of his
day, and the memory of the witty, genial, and virtuous
litterateur still blossoms in the dust.

During my visit to Paris in early 1887, M. Hermann Zotenberg was
kind enough to show me the MS., No. 1723, containing the original
tales of the "New Arabian Nights." As my health did not allow me
sufficient length of stay to complete my translation, Professor
Houdas kindly consented to copy the excerpts required, and to
explain the words and phrases which a deficiency of dictionaries
and vocabularies at an outlandish port-town rendered
unintelligible to me.

In translating a MS., which has never been collated or corrected
and which abounds in errors of omission and commission, I have
been guided by one consideration only, which is, that my first
and chiefest duty to the reader is to make my book readable at
the same time that it lays before him the whole matter which the
text offered or ought to have offered. Hence I have not hesitated
when necessary to change the order of the sentences, to delete
tautological words and phrases, to suppress descriptions which
are needlessly reiterated, and in places to supply the connecting