e foundation or significance of which the respondent and
opponent seldom know more than an infant in swaddling cloaths.
The next step is to go for a _liceat_ to one of the petty
officers, called the Regent-Master of the Schools, who subscribes
his name to the questions and receives sixpence as his fee. When
the important day arrives, the two doughty disputants go into a
large dusty room, full of dirt and cobwebs.... Here they sit in
mean desks, opposite to each other from one o'clock till three.
Not once in a hundred times does any officer enter; and, if he
does, he hears a syllogism or two, and then makes a bow, and
departs, as he came and remained, in solemn silence. The
disputants then return to the amusement of cutting the desks,
carving their names, or reading Sterne's Sentimental Journey, or
some other edifying novel. When the exercise is duly performed by
both parties, they have a right to the title and insignia of
_Sophs_: but not before they have been formally _created_ (p. 151)
by one of the regent-masters, before whom they kneel, while he
lays a volume of Aristotle's works on their heads, and puts on a
hood, a piece of black crape, hanging from their necks, and down
to their heels.... There remain only one or two trifling forms,
and another disputation almost exactly similar to _doing
generals_, but called _answering under bachelor_ previous to the
awful examination. Every candidate is obliged to be examined in
the whole circle of the sciences by three masters of arts _of his
own choice_.... _Schemes_, as they are called, or little books
containing forty or fifty questions on each science, are handed
down from age to age, from one to another. The candidate employs
three or four days in learning these by heart, and the examiners,
having done the same before him, know what questions to ask, and
so all goes on smoothly. When the candidate has displayed his
universal knowledge of the sciences, he is to display his skill
in philology. One of the masters therefore asks him to construe a
passage in some Greek or Latin classic, which he does with no
interruption, just as he pleases, and as well as he can. The
statutes next require that he should translate familiar English
phrases into Latin. And now is the time when the masters show
thei