This is the poetical name of Mīr Maḥmūd the Munshī, who was for twenty-five years chief secretary to the empire of Hindūstān. His daughter married Naqīb Khān.* He had some poetical talent, and wrote poetry like a secretary. The following quatrain is one which he wrote at the beginning of the dīvān of Bairam Khān:—

“Of being and of a place of existence there was in the begin-
ning no trace,
For all things came into being by virtue of the two letters
of the command ‘Be.’
Since these two letters were the key of existence
They have become the opening couplet of the preface to the
dīvān of things seen.”*

The following is another quatrain of his, an enigma on the name ‘Qāsim’:—

“There is a capricious one the dust of whose door-step is my
lodging,
From whom I have gained naught but cruelty and oppres-
sion.
When I see her face over the corner of the roof
Her eye shoots the arrow of cruelty at my heart.”

This is a couplet of his:—

“Perfume not the jasmine with musk,
Draw not a line of ambergris around the sun.”

He wrote the following quatrain to describe a horse which had been given to him by the emperor Humāyūn:—

“O King with an army like that of Jamshīd, monarch of
boundless power,
I have a horse which is exceedingly lean and weak;
When I mount him, at every two or three steps which he
takes
He falls, saying, ‘Now you carry me for two or three steps.’”

The source of this quatrain is certainly that well-known couplet, by whom I know not:—

“He goes one or two steps and then says,
‘Now do you carry me for an hour or so?’”

Following the idea expressed in the following couplet by a master of poetry,

“O lovely one with heart of stone and body of silver,*
Whose lip is comfort and whose glance is destruction”

he wrote the following ode in two metres:—*

“O thou whose lovely face is the envy of the jasmine,
Whose comely stature is the cypress of the meadow

323 Whose laughing lip is a load of sugar,
Whose row of teeth is a string of pearls from ‘Adan,
Whose musky locks are a net of calamity,
Whose narcissus-like bewitching eye is seduction's self;
Thy fawn's eyes are hunters of men,
Thy glance, drawing blood from the heart, shoots sharp
arrows,
Thy ringlets work naught but magic,
The glances of thy eyes seek but to draw blood from the
heart,
The down newly sprung draws on the jasmine of thy cheek
a life-giving line of musk,
Of thy grace cast a glance towards Maḥwī
O lovely one with heart of stone and body of silver!”

Shaikh Faiẓī also, in the days of his ignorance and while he was yet a boy, practised the same metrical trick, and wrote the following ode in four metres:—*

“O thou, whose goodly figure resembles a moving cypress,
Whose arched eyebrow is bent like a bow,
The curl of whose locks is a snare of love's madness,
Whose dark ringlet is the desire of Paradise,
Thy bewitching lip is the water of life,
The lovely down on thy cheek is the Khiẓr of these days,
Thy fawn's eyes are calamity's self,
Even a raging tiger would fall before the eyes of such a
fawn,
The wretched Faiẓī is bound in the bonds of thy locks,
All the world is smitten with thy dark ringlets.”

One day, about the time when this hasty essay was being written, Shaikh Faiẓī saw in my hand the Taẕkirah of Mīr ‘Alā'u-d-daulah. He snatched it from me, and, tearing out the leaf containing an account of himself, tore it to pieces, just as the book of his life was torn to pieces.* I also, in those days when I had not repented of such vain conceits, composed the opening couplet of an ode in four metres, a mere piece of trash which is not worthy of mention. I hope that the generous record­ing angels have blotted it from the record of my deeds with the water of forgetfulness.