All very well. But, as Elizabeth Barrett Browning asked,
Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers?
'Yes,' I hear you ingeminate; 'but what about Examinations? We thank you, sirs, for thus relieving and guiding us: we acknowledge your excellent intentions. But in practice you hang up a bachelor's gown and hood on a pole, and right under and just in front of it you set the examination-barrier. For this in practice we run during three years or so, and to this all the time you are exhorting, directing us—whether you mean it or not, though we suspect that you cannot help yourselves.' Yes; and, as labouring swimmers will turn their eyes even to a little boat in the offing, I hear you pant 'This man at all events—always so insistent that good literature teaches What Is rather than What Knows—will bring word that we may float on our backs, bathe, enjoy these waters and be refreshed, instead of striving through them competitive for a goal. He must condemn literary examinations, nine-tenths of which treat Literature as matter of Knowledge merely.'
IV
I am sorry, Gentlemen: I cannot bring you so much of comfort as all that. I have a love of the past which, because it goes down to the roots, has sometimes been called Radicalism: I could never consent with Bacon's gibe at antiquity as pessimum augurium, and Examinations have a very respectable antiquity. Indeed no University to my knowledge has ever been able in the long run to do without them: and although certain Colleges—King's College here, and New College at Oxford—for long persevered in the attempt, the result was not altogether happy, and in the end they have consigned with custom.
Of course Universities have experimented with the process. Let me give you two or three ancient examples, which may help you to see (to vary Wordsworth) that though 'the Form decays, the function never dies.'
(1) I begin with most ancient Bologna, famous for Civil Law. At Bologna the process of graduation—of admission to the jus docendi, 'right to teach'—consisted of two parts, the Private Examination and the Public (conventus):
The private Examination was the real test of competence, the so-called public Examination being in practice a mere ceremony. Before admission to each of these tests the candidate was presented by the Consiliarius of his Nation to the Rector for permission to enter it, and swore that he had complied with all the statutable conditions, that he would give no more than the statutable fees or entertainments to the Rector himself, the Doctor, or his fellow-students, and that he would obey the Rector. Within a period of eight days before the Examination the candidate was presented by 'his own' Doctor or by some other Doctor or by two Doctors to the Archdeacon, the presenting Doctor being required to have satisfied himself by private examination of his presentee's fitness. Early on the morning of the Examination, after attending a Mass of the Holy Ghost, the candidate appeared before the assembled College and was assigned by one of the Doctors present two passages (puncta) in the Civil or Canon Law as the case might be. He then retired to his house to study the passages, in doing which it would appear that he had the assistance of the presenting Doctor. Later in the day the Doctors were summoned to the Cathedral, or some other public building, by the Archdeacon, who presided over but took no active part in the ensuing examination. The candidate was then introduced to the Archdeacon and Doctors by the presenting Doctor or Promotor as he was styled. The Prior of the College then administered a number of oaths in which the candidate promised respect to that body and solemnly renounced all the rights of which the College had succeeded in robbing all Doctors of other Colleges not included in its ranks. The candidate then gave a lecture or exposition of the two prepared passages: after which he was examined upon them by two of the Doctors appointed by the College. Other Doctors might ask supplementary questions of Law (which they were required to swear that they had not previously communicated to the candidate) arising more indirectly out of the passages selected, or might suggest objections to the answers. With a tender regard for the feelings of their comrades at this 'rigorous and tremendous Examination' (as they style it) the Statutes required the Examiner to treat the examinee as his own son.
But, knowing what we do of parental discipline in the Middle
Ages, we need not take this to enjoin a weak excess of leniency.
The Examination concluded, the votes of the Doctors present were taken by ballot and the candidate's fate determined by the majority, the decision being announced by the Archdeacon.