ty
like a wound. The examination craze has destroyed the classical dominie,
and the intrusion of science, falsely so-called, has well-nigh
asphyxiated the Napaeae of the dells. It was formerly possible for the
teacher to develop to the full his literary taste and declaim the
sonorous tit-bits of Virgil till the tears started from his eyes. Now
the instructors of youth seem to regard the works of the tuneful Mantuan
as composed for the purpose of illustrating the use of the Latin
subjunctive. Youths cannot get at the Aeneid, the spirit and majesty of
it, I mean, owing to the pestilential numbers of grammatical
reminiscences recalled by almost every line. When once you begin to set
examination papers on a subject, the romance seems to evaporate. There
is something withering about test-questions. This modern disease of
grammatical annotation, engendered largely by prosaic examiners, who
have published grammars, is spreading to the English Classics, and we
may soon expect Burns to furnish a text for exceptional scansion,
bob-wheel metrics and general philological catechising. Items which
glide effortless into the brain in desultory reading are not so easily
remembered if the examination is in store. Certain gentlemen have
recently been reading Milton with a pair of compasses in order to
discover the exact point of the caesural pause in every line: they give
figures, strike percentages, and set questions which even the leading
character in "Paradise Lost" couldn't answer. Literary microscopy is
likely to ruin Shakespeare's reputation in school and would have done so
long ago but for Lamb's _Tales_--a darling compilation and by far the
best introduction to the poet. "_Shakespeare is a horrid man_" is the
deliberate verdict of the schoolgirl who has been teased to death by the
notes within the tawny covers of the Clarendon Press Edition. And fancy
what Chaucer's Prologue must seem like, taught by a man bent only on
philological hunts, variant readings, and a complete explanation of all
the final e's.

TEACHERS AND EXAMINATIONS.

It has always seemed to me a matter for surprise that those who had for
years studied the elements of Latin and Greek at school (and that with
no small difficulty), should entirely neglect these tongues afterwards
and read nothing composed in them. Most elaborate preparations are made
to reach the Promised Land, but the weary passenger never gets there.
Can it be that the preparations are too elabo