Gladstone’s arrival, the debating society doubled and trebled itself in point of numbers, and the discussions became much fuller of interest and animation. Hallam and Mr. Gladstone took the lead.’ Not content with the regular debating society, Mr. Gladstone and a few others, such as Miles Gaskell and Canning, established an inner one, held on certain summer afternoons in the garden of one Trotman. Sir Francis continues: ‘It happened that my tutor, Mr. Okes, rented a small garden at the rear of Trotman’s, and by some chance found himself there on the occasion of one of these debates. To his surprise, he heard three or four boys on the other side of the wall sneering, shouting, and boohooing in the most unaccountable manner. There seemed but one conclusion to him as an experienced Eton tutor—viz., that they were what we at the Custom-House used somewhat euphemistically to term under the influence of liquor. He thereupon summoned Mr. Gladstone to his study, listened gloomily and reluctantly to his explanations and excuses, and all but handed over our illustrious Premier, with his subordinate orators, to be flogged for drunkenness.’ Dr. Wilkinson, in his ‘Reminiscences of Eton,’ gives a couplet and its translation by Mr. Gladstone, when a boy at Eton: ‘Ne sis O cera mollior, Grandiloquus et vanus; Heus bone non es gigas tu, Et non sum ego nanus.’ ‘Don’t tip me now, you lad of wax, Your blarney and locution; You’re not a giant yet, I hope, Nor I a Liliputian.’