"My dear friend Paulino Keynes, who obtained for me the first volume of the Arabian Nights (London, 1840) in Lane's translation, and I discovered the manuscript which I am now going to translate into Castilian. The fine handwriting—an art which the writing instruments teach us to lose—shows that the manuscript was edited about that date. Lane, who, as is known, was lavish in long explanatory notes; the marginal notes are abundant with additions, question marks, and sometimes with a few corrections, whose handwriting is the same as the manuscript. The reader of the manuscript, it will be said, was less interested in the marvels of Scheherazade's tales than in the customs of Islam. As for David Brodie, whose signature beautifies the text below with a mark, nothing "I could verify this from him, except that he was a Scottish missionary, originally from Aberdeen, and that he taught the Christian faith in central Africa, and later in some jungle regions of Brazil, a land to which his knowledge of Portuguese led him. I do not know the date and place of his death. As far as I know, the manuscript was never submitted to the printer....."