I.
Socii cratera coronant.
IT was the afternoon; and the sports were all but over.
Long had the stone been put, tree cast, and thrown the hammer;
Up the perpendicular hill, Sir Hector so called it,
Eight stout shepherds and gillies had run, two wondrous quickly;
Run too the course on the level had been; the leaping was over:
Last in the show of dress, a novelty recently added,
Noble ladies their prizes adjudged for costume that was perfect,
Turning the clansmen about, who stood with upraised elbows;
Bowing their eye—glassed brows, and fingering kilt and sporran.
It was four of the clock, and the sports were all but over,
Therefore the Oxford party went off to adorn for the dinner.
Be it recorded in song who was first, who last, in dressing.
Hope was the first, black-tied, white-waistcoated, simple, His Honour;
For the postman made out he was son to the Earl of Ilay,
(As indeed he was, to the younger brother, the Colonel,)
Treated him therefore with special respect; doffed bonnet, and ever
Called him his Honour: his Honour he therefore was at the cottage.
Always his Honour at least, sometimes the Viscount of Ilay.
Hope was first, his Honour, and next to his Honour the Tutor.
Still more plain the Tutor, the grave man, nicknamed Adam,
White-tied, clerical, silent, with antique square-cut waistcoat
Formal, unchanged, of black cloth, but with sense and feeling beneath it;
Skilful in Ethics and Logic, in Pindar and Poets unrivalled;
Shady in Latin, said Lindsay, but topping in Plays and Aldrich.
Somewhat more splendid in dress, in a waistcoat work of a lady,
Lindsay succeeded; the lively, the cheery, cigar-loving Lindsay,
Lindsay the ready of Speech, the Piper, the Dialectician,
This was his title from Adam because of the words he invented,
Who in three weeks had created a dialect new for the party,
Master in all that was new, of whate'er was recherché and racy,
Master of newest inventions, and ready deviser of newer;
