TAYLOR--or was it JAMES BRAID?--begins one of his classic and illuminating
chapters with the quotation "_Ex pede Herculem_," nor can even we of the
Oxford and Cambridge Golfing Society venture to differ from so eminent an
authority or grudge him so apt a phrase. _Verb. sap._ and, let me add,
_sat_. To those, few perhaps in actual reckoning (though I, wearing of
right the wine-dark vesture--were there half Blues in HOMER'S time?--cannot
compete with JOHN LOW _et hoc genus omne_, Cantabs confessed, in the
prestidigitation of numerals and weird signs of values)--to those, then,
few, but of many parts appreciative, who followed a certain foursome at
Addington last week, my premiss should be intrinsically incontrovertible.
Partner, whom I had "made" with a drive well and truly apportioned--_ex
carne ictum_--partner, after much self-searching and mental recursion to
the maxims of TOM MORRIS and LA ROUCHEFOUCAULD, took his ball on the--_O
horribile dictu_ (or shall I say _horresco referens_?)--well, to be
meticulously exact, partner shanked it. And it is just here that those who
have also enjoyed a University education will pick up--even as partner
failed to do--what I, who write, am driving at.
Remembering how dear old W.G.--in those halcyon days when Gloucester was
worthy of the cheese whereof she is now so chary a producer--used to score
with that heavy cut between point and cover, I too, greatly daring, cut it
and laid it (the ball, not the cheese) dead. _De mortuis_ ... For assuredly
it _was_ good.
The one adornment of this episode should have been a quotation from
ARISTOPHANES. It is not, however, given to all men always to remember. _Non
cuivis_, in fact.