Memoir of Archibald Camphell Swinton. 369 



Lays of the Cavaliers, and afterwards Professor of Rhetoric in 

 the University of Edinburgh ; George Makgill of Kemback ; 

 John Balfour Melville of Mount Melville ; and John Thomson 

 Gordon, who was afterwards Sheriff of Edinburgh. Archibald 

 Campbell Tait, a cousin of Swinton's, and the future Archbishop 

 of Canterbury, was his class-fellow at the Edinburgh Academy, 

 but went to Glasgow University, though he afterwards rejoined 

 the circle, in the summer, in the ranks of the debating club 

 entitled the Classical Society. Among other comrades was 

 numbered a man of some subsequent reputation, and quite as 

 good company as any of them — Samuel Warren, the author of 

 Ten Thousand a Year. He remained for two years among us, 

 and then disappeared, but had not been long gone, when the 

 ^' Diary of a Late Physician^'' burst upon us. I do not know 

 whether admiration or exasperation at our companion's sudden 

 fame was the prevalent feeling ; we were indeed raised in our 

 own esteem to have lived so near the rose, but exasperated also 

 by not having found him out. But he was a man worth 

 knowing, and we met elsewhere afterwards. 



The Classical Society was founded by a knot of students in 

 the Latin Class in Edinburgh about the year 1827. Swinton, 

 I think, joined it during its second year. They were an 

 unassuming but resolute band of students, who cultivated 

 oratory under some disadvantage in a dingy class-room of the 

 old High School, by the light of a single tallow candle. It had 

 been originally intended by the founders that the debates 

 should be in Latin, but, after two or three attempts, the efforts 

 were too spasmodic to witness, and the vernacular was resumed. 

 At the risk of some anticipation, I must quote some lines from 

 Swinton's pen on the origin of this primitive parliament, partly 

 because they show the historian at his best, and partly from 

 their thorough fidelity. I am indebted to the family for the 

 manuscript book which contains, among others, the performance 

 from which I am about to quote. Thus sings the classic bard 

 of our first beginnings in the Classical : — 



"'Twere vain to take the task from history's page, 

 And tell oar progress on from youth to age ; 

 Bat oft by fature poets shall be sung 

 The time when e'en the Classical was young ; 

 When closely ranged on dusky benches sate 

 The beardless arbiters of Britain's fate, 

 VV 



