Page:Waverley Novels, vol. 22 (1831).djvu/193

 me forward—out of hearing of your learning.” The last words he muttered to himself.

“Ocœca mens mortalium!” said the learned man; “well was it sung by Junius Juvenalis, ‘numinibus vota exaudita malignis!”

“Learned Magister,” said Tressilian, “your erudition so greatly exceeds my poor intellectual capacity, that you must excuse my seeking elsewhere for information which I can better understand.”

“There again now,” replied the pedagogue, “how fondly you fly from him that would instruct you! Truly said Quintilian”

“I pray, sir, let Quintilian be for the present, and answer, in a word and in English, if your learning can condescend so far, whether there is any place here where I can have opportunity to refresh my horse, until I can have him shod?”

“Thus much courtesy, sir,” said the schoolmaster, “I can readily render you, that although there is in this poor hamlet (nostra paupera regna) no regular hospitium, as my namesake Erasmus calleth it, yet, forasmuch as you are somewhat embued, or at least tinged as it were, with good letters, I will use my interest with the good woman of the house to accommodate you with a platter of farmity—an wholesome food for which I have found no Latin phrase—your horse shall have a share of the cow-house, with a bottle of sweet hay, in which the good woman Sludge so much abounds; that it may be said of her cow, fœnum habet in cornu; and if it please you to bestow on me the pleasure of your company, the banquet shall cost you ne semissem quidem, so