fell so deep as to bury it, so that
of the whole only two persons escaped; he no sooner received information
of the occurrence than he dispatched overseers to take charge of all the
property, and he placed it under guard and preserved it untouched, till
in the course of one or two years, the heirs coming from Khorasan, he
delivered back the goods safe into their hands. His generosity was
large, and so was his whole soul; he was of an excellent temper,
affable, eloquent, and sweet in his conversation, yet brave withal
and manly.

[Footnote 7: The 'Book of Kings,' by the Persian poet Firdausi.]

The early portion of Baber's 'Memoirs' is given to portraits of the
officers of his court and country. A few of these may be quoted.

Khosrou Shah, though a Turk, applied his attention to the mode of
raising his revenues, and he spent them liberally. At the death of
Sultan Mahmud Mirza, he reached the highest pitch of greatness, and his
retainers rose to the number of twenty thousand. Though he prayed
regularly and abstained from forbidden foods, yet he was black-hearted
and vicious, of mean understanding and slender talents, faithless and a
traitor. For the sake of the short and fleeting pomp of this vain world,
he put out the eyes of one and murdered another of the sons of the
benefactor in whose service he had been, and by whom he had been
protected; rendering himself accursed of God, abhorred of men, and
worthy of execration and shame till the day of final retribution. These
crimes he perpetrated merely to secure the enjoyment of some poor
worldly vanities; yet with all the power of his many and populous
territories, in spite of his magazines of warlike stores, he had not the
spirit to face a barnyard chicken. He will often be mentioned in
these memoirs.

Ali Shir Beg was celebrated for the elegance of his manners; and this
elegance and polish were ascribed to the conscious pride of high
fortune: but this was not the case; they were natural to him. Indeed,
Ali Shir Beg was an incomparable person. From the time that poetry was
first written in the Turki language, no man has written so much and so
well. He has also left excellent pieces of music; they are excellent
both as to the airs themselves and as to the preludes. There is not upon
record in history any man who was a greater patron and protector of men
of talent than he. He had no son nor daughter, nor wife nor family; he
passed through the world single and unincumbere