Claims of authenticity

For anyone who is fascinated by Aphra Behn's resort to the convention of truth-claims -- that is, her claims about the authenticity of her text -- here is another example of such a claim from the later fictionalized travel narrative "Persian Letters" (1721) by the great Enlightenment philosophe Montesquieu. See especially the fourth paragraph. In this narrative, it is the Persians who visit Europe (Paris), and not the other way around. (A "seraglio," by the way, is a harem.) --Lincoln