I have also to express my best thanks to all who have supported this humble attempt to popularise Arabian Poetry among English readers. By members of the Royal Asiatic Society generally the project has been warmly encouraged; and—although it can add nothing to their reputation—it affords me great pleasure to record that Mr. William Piatt, Colonel W. Nassau Lees, Sir William Muir, Professor E. B. Cowell, of Cambridge, Rev. Professor R. Gandell, of Oxford, Professor W. Wright, of Cambridge, Rev. Professor W. P. Dickson, and Rev. Professor James Robertson, both of Glasgow University, were among the foremost to kindly express an interest in this little enterprise. I can but regret that the result, as here presented, should fall so far short of what it might have been in abler hands.
It only remains to add, that, in die course of this work, much out-of-the-way information had to be sought for, and I must have sorely tried the courtesy of my obliging friends: Mr. J. T. Clark, of the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh; Mr. James Lymbum, of the Glasgow University Library; and Mr. F. T. Barrett, of the Mitchell Publift Library, Glasgow; who afforded me all the assistance in their power—directing my attention to little-known works, and furnishing me with useful bibliographical notes.
W. A. CLOUSTON.
Glasgow, December y 1880.
