Page:History of India Vol 3.djvu/246

 200 THE EMPEROR BABAR and fastidious critical perception. In Persian, the lan- guage of culture, the Latin of Central Asia, as it is of India, he was an accomplished poet, and in his native Turkish he was master of a pure and unaffected style alike in prose and verse. The Turkish princes of his time prided themselves upon their literary polish, and to turn an elegant ghazal, or even to write a beautiful manuscript, was their peculiar ambition, no less worthy or stimulating than to be master of sword or mace. Wit and learning, the art of improvising a quatrain on the spot, quoting the Persian classics, writing a good hand, or singing a good song, were highly appreciated in Babar's world, as much perhaps as valour, and infi- nitely more than virtue. Babar himself often breaks off in the midst of a tragic story to quote a verse, and he found leisure in the thick of his difficulties and dan- gers to compose an ode on his misfortunes. His battles as well as his orgies were humanized by a breath of poetry. Hence his Memoirs are no rough soldier's chronicle of marches and countermarches, " saps, mines, blinds, gabions, palisadoes, ravelins, half-moons, and such trumpery "; they contain the personal impressions and acute reflections of a cultivated man of the world, well read in Eastern literature, a close and curious observer, quick in perception, a discerning judge of persons, and a devoted lover of nature one, moreover, who was well able to express his thoughts and observations in clear and vigorous language. The man's own character is so fresh and buoyant, so free from convention and cant,