“‘Why, gentlemen,’ said he,--‘ha! ha! ha!--why, gentlemen, I say the prettiest Epigram! ha! ha! ha! I cannot tell you for my life--I have made, I say, upon this ball of wax here, ha! ha! ha!--that you ever heard in your lives. Shall I repeat it, Mr President?’ “‘By all means, doctor,’ said he; ‘no body more proper to open the assembly than Doctor Crassus!’ “Then the doctor compos’d his countenance, and standing up, with the ball of wax in his right hand, pronounc’d the following distich with an heroick emphasis. “‘This wax, d’ye see, with which my pipe I glaze, Is the best wax I ever us’d in all my days.’ “‘Ha! ha! ha! How d’ye like it, gentlemen ha! ha! ha! Is it not very pretty gentlemen?’ “‘Very pretty, without flattery, doctor,’ said they all; ‘very excellent, indeed.’ “Upon which the doctor smiled pleasantly, and lighted his pipe.... During the first part of the night their thoughts were something gloomy and run upon elegies and epitaphs upon living as well as dead men; but you will find them brighten up as the night advance and the bottles increase. They begin with satire and funeral lamentation; but end with love, smuttiness and a song”--and there I will leave them. The High Borlace was a Tory club which, says Christopher Wordsworth, “had a convivial meeting held annually at the King’s Head Tavern in Oxford, on the 18th of August (or, if that fell on a Sunday, on the 19th, as in 1734), on which occasion Dr Leigh, Master of Balliol, was of the High Borlace and the first clergyman who had attended. It seems to have been patronised by the county families, and it is not improbable that there was a ball connected with it. The members chose a Lady Patroness: in 1732 Miss Stonhouse; 1733, Miss Molly Wickham of Garsington; 1734 Miss Anne Cope, daughter of Sir Jonathan Cope of Bruern.” In the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ in the year 1765 there was the following reference: “Monday Aug. 19, was held at the Angel inn, at Oxford, the High Borlase, when Lady Harriott Somerset was chosen Lady Patroness for the year ensuing.”