Note 332 — Chapter IV

Malcolm (History of Persia, vol. i. p. 204) says of the Tartars, ‘There is only one path to eminence, that of military renown.’ Thus, too, in the Institutes of Timour, p. 269: ‘He only is equal to stations of power and dignity, who is well acquainted with the military art, and with the various modes of breaking and defeating hostile armies.’ The same turn of mind is shown in the frequency and evident delight with which Homer relates battles—a peculiarity noticed in Mure's Greek Literature, vol. ii. pp. 63, 64, where an attempt is made to turn it into an argument to prove that the Homeric poems are all by the same author; though the more legitimate inference would be that the poems were all composed in a barbarous age.