Note 287 — No. 95.
Reading edition
A strain of martial music. "Turning your books to greaves, your ink to blood, your pens to lances; and your tongue divine to a loud trumpet, and a point of war" ("2 Henry IV.," act iv. sc. I).
The term was still current in Steele's day, as appears from the following extract, quoted by Mr. Dobson from Mackinnon's "History of the Coldstream Guards," ii. 332: "1717.—A party of drummers of the Guards were committed to the Marshalsea for beating a point of war before the Earl of Wexford's house on his acquittal of charges brought against him."