In the first of these lines, the omission of the former “which,” would remove all objection; and there are others where a final syllable appears clearly deficient; as thus:—
“Only the road and larches and ruinous millstead between” [them]:— “Always welcome the stranger: I may say, delighted to see [such] Fine young men:”— “Nay, never talk: listen now. What I say you can't apprehend” [yet]:— “Laid her hand on her lap. Philip took it. She did not resist” [him]:—
Yet the following would be scarcely improved by greater exactness:
“Roaring after their prey, do seek their meat from God;”
Nor, perhaps, ought this to be made correct:
“Close as the bodies and intertwining limbs of athletic wrestlers.”
The aspect of fact pervading “the Bothie of Toper-na-fuosich,”—(in English, “the hut of the bearded well,” a somewhat singular title, to say the least,) is so strong and complete as to render necessary the few words of dedication, where, in inscribing the poem, (or, as the author terms it, “trifle,”) to his “long-vacation pupils,” he expresses a hope, that they “will not be displeased if, in a fiction, purely fiction, they are here and there reminded of times enjoyed together.”
As the story opens, the Oxford party are about to proceed to dinner at “the place of the Clansmen's meeting.” Their characters, discriminated with the nicest taste, and perfectly worked out, are thus introduced:
“Be it recorded in song who was first, who last, in dressing. Hope was the first, black-tied, white-waistcoated, simple, his Honor; For the postman made out he was a 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 Honor: his Honor he therefore was at the cottage; Always his Honor at least, sometimes the Viscount of Ilay.
“Hope was the first, his Honor; and, next to his Honor, 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.