PREFACE
IN attempting to present a short biographical sketch of
Nawab Sir Nizamat Jung, one of the most eminent
sons of Hyderabad, my object is not to write an account
of the career of an official who, in the service of His Exalted
Highness the Nizam, rose quickly and rose high but to write
the life-story of a great gentleman who to me is the symbol
of all that was best in the generation that has almost
disappeared, a symbol too, of great and worthy traditions
which seem only to belong to " life's yesterdays. " A man
of extraordinarily wide culture and refinement, jijscholar
and a poet of rare distinction, Sir Nizamat Jung's qualities
of head and heart, are almost unknown outside of a very
limited circle ; and this is because he deliberately avoided
the limelight' of publicity and kept himself in, what I may
call, splendid isolation.
I had been intending for some years past to write an ac-
count of the life of Nizamat Jung—in the words of Boswell—
" Not only to relate all the most important events of his life
in their order, but interweaving what he privately wrote
and said and thought; by which mankind are enabled, as it
were, to see him live." I wanted to portray the character and
personality of a man who so deeply impressed all those who
came in contact with him. But official preoccupations
always prevented me from undertaking this work. It was
only two years ago that I wrote to Nizamat Jung asking him
to be good enough to let me have some appropriate material
helpful in writing a sketch of him such as might bring out
what he had felt, thought and written during his long years
of inward peace. In the course of my letter, I said :—
" I wish to bring out that side of your life, which shall
stimulate the mind of the younger generation to purity
of thought and action and I want the account to be inter-
esting to those who follow. A few striking details
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