Languish and Dick Dimple indeed say, the ‘verses on the grotto’ are better; and Dick (who you know is a wit as well as a beau) gave us off hand a translation of them, but I have indeed since found out where he borrows it.--I am yours, HARRY DIDAPPER.” The _habitués_ of the unknown coffee-house, all pretty fellows, looked upon _The Student_ as a “monthly feast of entertainment!” For all their soaking and “wenching” and slacking they would seem to have had a certain amount of brain and appreciative capability left to them. In a subsequent chapter I shall set down the methods by which these men obtained their degrees after having spent some six or seven years inside the old walls of the university. They had as little time for work as the “bloods” of to-day whose every moment is claimed by matters of far greater moment than mere study! To a certain extent the Smarts, though they perhaps did not know it, were philosophers. They said to themselves that life was short and youth shorter still, that therefore it behoved them to cram in to the six years of their university career as much pleasure, excitement, and amusement as was possible. The eighteenth century lent itself whole-heartedly to this programme. The Dons, who should have been intent on governing Oxford, had other game afoot. The Undergraduates were thus left to their own devices, and the Smarts were the first to take advantage of such Arcadian conditions. They delayed the hour of rising until the sun grew weary of calling them out. There was no stern shepherd to round them into chapel at the ungodly hour of eight o’clock. Like butterflies they flitted from place to place at the caprice of the moment. They held Bacchanalian revels in and out of college without regard to Dons and statutes. Their paramours, far from being ejected from the city, were shared with the authorities, thus proving that they had a better understanding of real socialism than the exponents of to-day. The same cobbled streets that hear us shouting our way home in the small hours, saw the Georgian men staggering along with tight-linked arms in the silvery moonlight, while Big Tom boomed out the birth of a new day. As year after year slipped relentlessly off the calender they absorbed the unique atmosphere of Oxford, fully appreciating under their mask of _blasé_ scorn the traditions and the unforgettable charm of _Alma mater_. They carried their love and reverence for her to the grave, and gave proof of it by sending their sons and grandsons to swell the never-ending procession of men who sing the praises of Oxford. CHAPTER V THE TOAST Terrae Filius sums her up--Merton Wall butterflies--Hearne comments--Flavia and the orange tree--Dick, the sloven--The President under her thumb--Amhurst’s table of cons.--King Charles and the other place.