Calverley
pinned up his report on the board at the door just like one of the usual
University reports, and there was read the result:--

Besant . . . 1st Prize

Skeat . . . 2nd Prize

The authorities were not a little shocked at a liberty which assumed the
aspect of a burlesque of their own proceedings, and Calverley was spoken
to gently by a Don of the older school. The paper of questions certainly
shows what ability may be brought to bear on so trifling a matter; for
there is really a power of analysis and a grasp of "inner meaning" that
is most remarkable. Sir Walter has very acutely commented on this little
"exercise," and has shown that it reached much higher than a mere jest.
It brought out the extraordinary capacities of the book which have
exercised so many minds. For "The Pickwick Examination," he says, "was
not altogether a burlesque of a college examination; it was a very real
and searching examination in a book which, brimful as it is of merriment,
mirth, and wit, is just as intensely human as a book can be. The
characters are not puppets in a farce, stuck up only to be knocked down:
they are men and women. Page after page, they show their true characters
and reveal themselves; they are consistent; even when they are most
absurd they are most real; we learn to love them. It is a really serious
test paper; no one could answer any of it who had not read and re-read
the Pickwick Papers, and acquired, so to speak, a mastery of the subject.
No one could do well in the examination who had not gone much further
than this and got to know the book almost by heart. It was a most
wonderful burlesque of the ordinary College and Senate House examination,
considering the subject from every possible point of view. Especially is
it rich in the department then dear to Cambridge: the explanation of
words, phrases, and idioms."

Some of these cruxes, Sir Walter tells us, could not be solved by the
examiner, and were laid before Boz himself, with a copy of the questions.
Needless to say, Boz was infinitely amused, but, to the general
disappointment, could or would give no information. The answer of
Browning on a similar appeal is well known--he referred his questioners
to the Browning Society, as knowing as much as he did on the point. There
is no doubt that this is the true philosophy of the thing: that, once his
ideas are in print, the author has no more to do with them or their
meaning than anyone else has. Th