“Upon my word, Whitaker,” said Frank, with a ludicrous intonation of voice, between real anger and distress, “this is too hard on one who has filled fairly from the first—to punish him without an inquiry into the justice of the case.”
“Jeddart justice—hang first, and judge after!” roared a student from the sylvan banks of the Jed.
“No freeman can, under any pretence,” hiccupped a young advocate, who was unable to rise from his chair, “be condemned, except by the legal decision of his peers, or by the law of the land. So sayeth the Magna Charta—King John—(hic)—right of all free-born Englishmen—including thereby all inhabitants of Great Britain, incorporated at the Union—hic—and Ireland.”
Whitaker set the tumbler down in despair, finding that his companions, like the generality of raw students, were so completely wedded to their pedantry, that the fine, if insisted on, would have to go all round.
“Let’s have a song, Rhimeson,” cried Frank, very glad to escape from his threatened bumper, and still fearful that it might be insisted upon, “a song extempore, as becomes a poet in his cups, and in thine own vein; for what says Spenser?—
‘For Bacchus’ fruit is friend to Phœbus wise;
And when, with wine, the brain begins to sweat,
The numbers flow as fast as spring doth rise.’”
“By Jove, boys! you shall have it,” cried Rhimeson, filling his glass with unsteady hand, and muttering, from the same prince of poets—
“‘Who can counsell a thirstie soule,
With patience to forbeare the offred bowle?’”
“That is the pure well of English undefiled, old fellows, and so here goes—‘The Lass we Love!’
Tune—‘Duncan Davison.’