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 Molière 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 ceased 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.