tom prevails of placing before the examinee a list of isolated texts,
and requiring him to supply the name of the speaker, the occasion, and
the context.

_Question_.--"'My punishment is greater than I can bear.' Who said this?
Under what circumstances?"

_Answer_.--"Agag, when he was hewn in pieces."

One wonders at what stage of the process he began to think it was going
a little too far.

"What is faith?" inquired an examiner in "Pass-Divinity." "Faith is the
faculty by which we are enabled to believe that which we know is not
true," replied the undergraduate, who had learned his definition by
heart, but imperfectly, from a popular cram-book. A superficial
knowledge of literature may sometimes be a snare. "Can you give me any
particulars of Oliver Cromwell's death?" asked an Examiner in History in
1874. "Oh yes, sir," eagerly replied the victim: "he exclaimed, 'Had I
but served my God as I have served my King, He would not in mine age
have left me naked to mine enemies.'"

"Things one would rather have expressed differently" are, I believe, a
discovery of Mr. Punch's. Of course he did not create them. They must be
as old as human nature itself. The history of their discovery is not
unlike that of another epoch-making achievement of the same great
genius, as set forth in the preface to the _Book of Snobs_. First, the
world was made; then, as a matter of course, snobs; they existed for
years and years, and were no more known than America. But
presently--_ingens patebat tellus_--people became darkly aware that
there was such a race. Then in time a name arose to designate that race.
That name has spread over England like railroads. Snobs are known and
recognised throughout an Empire on which the sun never sets. _Punch_
appeared at the ripe season to chronicle their history, and the
individual came forth to write that history in _Punch_. We may apply
this historical method to the origin and discovery of "Things one would
rather have expressed differently." They must have existed as long as
language; they must have flourished wherever men and women encountered
one another in social intercourse. But the glory of having discovered
them, recognized them, classified them, and established them among the
permanent sources of human enjoyment belongs to Mr. Punch alone.

"He was the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea."

Let us humbly follow in his wake.

We shall see later on that no department of huma