The English translation of the Dabistán was begun some time before the year 1835, by David Shea, one of the professors of Oriental languages at Hayleybury. He was in his early years distinguished in the university of Dublin for his classical attainments, and remained devoted to literature in all the various circumstances of his life. It was not for, nor in, India――the great object and school of English students――but in Malta, from peculiar inducement, that, by uncommon application, he acquired the Arabic and Persian languages. After his return to England, having been attached to the Hayleybury college――I should not fail to add to his eulogy by saying, that he had before won the kind interest and recommendation of sir Graves Haughton――and having become a member of the committee of the Oriental Translation Fund, he earned the applause of Orientalists in England, and on the continent of Europe, by his faithful and spirited translation of Mirkhond’s history of the early kings of Persia. Undertaking the translation of the Dabistán, he was undoubtedly preparing to himself a new success, the full realisation of which he was not permitted to enjoy; the last date in his manuscript copy, in which he was wont to mark the progress of his labor, was April 22, 1835. From this day he appears to have withdrawn his hand from the Dabistán, and too soon after――I shall be permitted to use the very words of the author whom he was translating:[216] “He sought the stores of holy liberty, A resting place on high, and soar’d from hence Beyond the bounds of heaven, earth, and time.” It was in the beginning of the year 1837 that I was honored by the earl of Munster, the vice president of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, with the proposal of completing and editing the English Dabistán. Having already several years before been occupied with the same work whilst pursuing my Indian studies, I was so much the more prompted to accept the proffered honor. Engaged however as I then was in publishing my French translation of the first six books of the _Rajatarangini_ from the Sanscrit, I could not begin the new work before 1841. This delay was the cause of my being deprived of the desired honor and satisfaction of presenting my translation to the earl of Munster, who while in the full enjoyment of life, welcomed with a benevolent interest every contribution, however small, to the general diffusion of Oriental history and literature; he had accepted in Paris my Dedication a short time before his death; it remains to me to consecrate, with a profound feeling of regret and veneration for departed worth, the English Dabistán to his memory.