rom taking him as a stranger and pondering his three or
four days' performance in a Tripos. For some of the best men
mature slowly: and some, if not most, of the best writers write
slowly because they have a conscience; and the most original
minds are just those for whom, in a _literary_ examination, it is
hardest to set a paper.

But the process (you will admit) might be invidious, might lend
itself to misunderstanding, might conceivably even lead to
re-imposition of an oath forbidding the use of a knife or other
sharp implement. And among Colleges rivalry is not altogether
unknown; and dons, if unlike other men in outward aspect,
sometimes resemble them in frailty; and in short I am afraid we
shall have to stick to the old system for a while longer. I am
sorry, Gentlemen: but you see how it works.

VII

Yet--and I admit it--the main objection abides: that, while
Literature deals with _What Is_ rather than with _What Knows,_
Examinations by their very nature test mere Knowledge rather than
anything else: that in the hands of a second-rate examiner they
tend to test knowledge alone, or what passes for knowledge: and
that in the very run of this world most examiners will be
second-rate men: which, if we remind ourselves that they receive
the pay of fifth-rate ones is, after all, considerably better than
we have a right to expect.

We are dealing, mind you, with _English_ Literature--our own
literature. In examining upon a foreign literature we can
artfully lay our stress upon Knowledge and yet neither raise nor
risk raising the fatal questions 'What is it all _about_?' 'What
is it, and why is it _it_?'-since merely to translate literally a
chorus of the "Agamemnon," or an ode of Pindar's, or a passage
from Dante or Moliere is a creditable performance; to translate
either well is a considerable feat; and to translate either
perfectly is what you can't do, and the examiner knows you can't
do, and you know the examiner can't do, and the examiner knows
you know he can't do. But when we come to a fine thing in our own
language--to a stanza from Shelley's "Adonais" for instance:

He has outsoared the shadow of our night;
Envy and calumny and hate and pain,
And that unrest which men miscall delight,
Can touch him not and torture not again;
From the contagion of the world's slow stain
He is secure, and now can never mourn
A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain;
Nor, when the spirit's self has ce