Muntakhab al-tawarikh 210.4

210.4

and all the poets of the present age together, both small and great, are, with the exception of three or four aged men, adherents of the Jaurati and Haidari sects, yet these two whom I have just mentioned were the guides and leaders of all the rest and left the heritage of their baseness to their followers and dependants, dividing it among them in due proportion to their natural fitness. and ability of each one to avail himself of it, and with due regard to the claims which each had acquired by former companionship with them. When I regard this vile gang I am oppressed by the fear that the poets of old (may God protect us from them !) may perhaps have resembled them. God forbid that it should have been so ! Yet the experience of ages tells us that worldly people in each particular period follow closely in one another’s footsteps and that there are no radical differences of disposition among them.