The Editor to the Reader. Kind reader, though Sir Charles Morell has been long since dead, yet it is not in the least wonderful that this work has been kept from the public eye, as his papers were left to relations, who neither knew, nor enquired into the value of his works. Nor had they now seen the light, unless they had been put into my hands, with many other papers and parchments, to settle some differences which have arisen in the family. Having a full liberty to use his literary works as I pleased, I have made it my business to become master of them by degrees; and I should have published his account of India long ago, had I not found that work already done to my hands, though not in so masterly a manner, yet sufficient to spoil the sale of any second work. But although this was a very curious performance, and I was vexed that pecuniary prudence should oblige me to withhold it for some time longer from the public, as his elegant drawings alone, relative to the subject he wrote upon, would cost five hundred pounds to engrave. Yet I hope to make it up to the world, by offering them a book, which if it is less useful to commerce, yet it may be of far more entertainment and instruction to all degrees of men; and this is a translation, in his own hand writing, of the works, or, as they are called in the title page, The delightful lessons of Horam, the son of Asmar. Delightful indeed! whether we consider the manner, or the moral of the work. These lessons are divided into tales, wherefore, in compliment to the taste of the age, I have called them The tales of the genii; and at several times I have inserted some small detached parts of them in the publick papers, to try what success they were likely to challenge from the world; which was so just and so great, that I have now been at the expense of printing the whole in octavo, and of employing several very able engravers, to prepare twelve copper plates, as frontispieces to the twelve numbers. And, now, reader, I hope, that these tales will be as successful in Europe, as my friend, Sir Charles Morell, testifies they have been in India; that they will be the means of delighting and instructing the noble youth of both sexes, and that they will give that satisfaction to the learned, which every good work of genius, art, and morality, doth always excite.