Ix	PREFACE
	accorded to him. His " I " is. individual. The Memoirs varies much from these uses. (2)  The value of reproducing impersonal statements is seen by the following example, one of many similar : Wl en Babur and a body of men, making a long saddle-journey, halted for rest and refreshment by the road-side ; " There was drinking," he writes, but Erskine," I drank " ; what is likely being that all or all but a few shared the local vin du pays. (3)   The importance of observing Babur's limits of vocabulary needs no stress, since any man of few words differs from any man of many. Measured by the Babur-nama standard, the diction of the Memoirs is redundant throughout, and frequently over-coloured. Of this a pertinent example is provided by a statement of which a minimum of seven occurrences forms my example, namely, that such or such a man whose life Babur sketches was vicious or a vicious person (fisq, fdsiq). Erskine once renders the word by " vicious " but elsewhere enlarges to " debauched, excess of sensual enjoyment, lascivious, libidinous, profligate, voluptuous". The instances are scattered and certainly Erskine could not feel their collective effect, but even scattered, each does its ill-part in distorting the Memoirs portraiture of the man of the one word.1
	Postcript of Thanks. I take with gratitude the long-delayed opportunity of finishing my book to express the obligation I feel to the Council of the Royal Asiatic Society for allowing me to record in the Journal my Notes on the Turki Codices of the Babur-nama begun in 1900 and occasionally appearing till 1921. In minor convenience of work, to be able to gather those progressive notes together and review them, has been of ' A Correspondent combatting my objection to publishing a second edition of the Memoirs, backed his favouring opinion by reference to 'Umar Khayyam and Fitzgerald. Obviously no analogy exists ; Erskine's redundance is not the flower of a deft alchemy, but is the prosaic consequence of a secondary source.