Siyar al-mutaʾakhkhirin 42.32.4

42.32.4

Those books amount to full eight hundred; they are already lumber upon my hands, and lumber that encroaches so much upon the dimensions of my habitation, and moreover requires so much care and solicitude, that by keeping those books out of my view, they shall really confer a favour upon me, and render me a service. This, Sir, is all that I can do, to give satisfaction to my Subscribers, and to make myself easy. I have forgot, Sir, to answer one of your questions : In how much time has the book been finished printing ? In no less than nineteen months. I inform you, that although to expedite the work, I have not carried so strict a hand over the printers, as I might and I ought, and I have moreover distributed of late, the several numbers to four several printers, who of course have been obliged to numerote the pages long after they had been printed ; yet for all that, I do not expect to see the last sheets of the work, but by the middle of July next. And this has so disgusted me with printers and books, that make sure of my own resolution, I have thrown into the fire about 600 pages, which were part of an History of Cashmir, which was very curious, and which I had undertaken. Printing in this country requires a young man, and a rich one, and I am neither. As to what you have heard of my assimilating so many Persian words to English ones, the list I gave, is neither whimsical, nor extravagant, as you have been told. Here it is.