hirteenth
year, a boy in the rector's class. However elevated above the
other boys in genius, though generally in the list of the duxes,
he was seldom, as far as I recollect, the leader of the school:
nor need this be deemed surprising, as it has often been observed
that boys of original genius have been {p.095} outstripped, by
those that were far inferior to themselves, in the acquisition of
the dead languages. Dr. Adam, the rector, celebrated for his
knowledge of the Latin language, was deservedly held by Mr.
Walter in high admiration and regard; of which the following
anecdote may be adduced as a proof. In the High School, as is
well known, there are four masters and a rector. The classes of
those masters the rector in rotation inspects, and in the mean
time the master, whose school is examined, goes in to take care
of the rector's. One of the masters, on account of some grudge,
had rudely assaulted and injured the venerable rector one night
in the High School Wynd. The rector's scholars, exasperated at
the outrage, at the instigation of Master Walter, determined on
revenge, and which was to be executed when this obnoxious master
should again come to teach the class. When this occurred, the
task the class had prescribed to them was that passage in the
AEneid of Virgil, where the Queen of Carthage interrogates the
court as to the stranger that had come to her habitation--

'Quis novus hic hospes successit sedibus nostris?'[56]

[Footnote 56: This transposition of _hospes_ and _nostris_
sufficiently confirms his pupil's statement that Mr. Mitchell
"superintended his classical themes, but not classically."
The "obnoxious master" alluded to was Burns's friend Nicoll,
the hero of the song--

"Willie brewed a peck O' maut,
And Rob and Allan cam' to see," etc.]

Master Walter, having taken a piece of paper, inscribed upon it
these words, substituting _vanus_ for _novus_, and pinned it to
the tail of the master's coat, and turned him into ridicule by
raising the laugh of the whole school against him. Though this
juvenile action could not be justified on the footing of
Christian principles, yet certainly it was so far honorable that
it was not a dictate of personal revenge, but that it originated