“My-y Lord! Have you ever seen the guv’nor?” Stalky collapsed shrieking among the piles of bread and butter. “Well, look here. Taffy goes in to-morrow about those drinkin’ horns an’ Tom-a-Bedlams. You cut up to the library after tea, Beetle. You know what King’s English papers are like. Look out useful stuff for answers an’ we’ll divvy at prep.”
At prep, then, Beetle, loaded with assorted curiosities, made his forecast. He argued that there were bound to be a good many “what-do-you-know-abouts” those infernal Augustans. Pope was generally a separate item; but the odds were that Swift, Addison, Steele, Johnson, and Goldsmith would be lumped under one head. Dryden was possible, too, though rather outside the Epoch.
“Dryden. Oh! ‘Glorious John!’ ’Know that much, anyhow,” Stalky vaunted.
“Then lug in Claude Halcro in the Pirate,” Beetle advised. “He’s always sayin’ ‘Glorious John.’ King’s a hog on Scott, too.”
“No-o. I don’t read Scott. You take this Hell Crow chap, Taffy.”
“Right. What about Addison, Beetle?” Howell asked.
“’Drank like a giddy fish.”
“We all know that,” chorused the gentle children.
“He said, ‘See how a Christian can die’; an’ he hadn’t any conversation, ’cause some one or other——”
“Guessin’ again, as usual,” McTurk sneered. “Who?”