ased to burn,
With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.

what can you do with _that_? How can you examine on _that_? Well,
yes, you can request the candidate, to 'Write a short note on the
word _calumny_ above,' or ask 'From what is it derived?' 'What
does he know of "Blackwood's Magazine?"' 'Can he quote any
parallel allusion in Byron?' You can ask all that: but you are
not getting within measurable distance of _it._ Your mind is not
even moving on the right plane. Or let me turn back to some light
and artless Elizabethan thing--say to the Oenone duet in Peele's
"Arraignment of Paris":

_Oenone._ Fair and fair and twice so fair,
As fair as any may be:
The fairest shepherd on our green,
A love for any lady.
_Paris_ Fair and fair and twice so fair,
As fair as any may be:
Thy love is fair for thee alone,
And for no other lady.
_Oenone._ My love is fair, my love is gay,
As fresh as bin the flowers in May,
And of my love my roundelay,
My merry merry merry roundelay
Concludes with Cupid's curse:
They that do change old love for new,
Pray gods they change for worse....
My love can pipe, my love can sing,
My love can many a pretty thing,
And of his lovely praises ring
My merry merry merry roundelays
'Amen' to Cupid's curse:
They that do change old love for new
Pray gods they change for worse.
_Ambo._ Fair and fair and twice so fair,
As fair as any may be:
The fairest shepherd on our green,
A love for any lady....

How can anyone examine on _that_? How can anyone solemnly
explain, in a hurry, answering one of five or six questions
selected from a three hours' paper, just why and how that hits
him? And yet, if it hit him not, he is lost. If even so simple a
thing as that--a thing of silly sooth--do not hit him, he is all
unfit to traffic with literature.

VIII

You see how delicate a business it is. Examination in Literature,
being by its very nature so closely tied down to be a test of
_Knowledge,_ can hardly