This irregular examination by any master who chose to take part in it constantly gave rise to accusations of partiality.

[264]
]In 1763 the traditional rules for the conduct of the examination took more definite shape. Henceforth the examiners used the disputations only as a means of classifying the men roughly. On the result of their “acts,” and probably partly also of their general reputation, the candidates were divided into eight classes, each arranged in alphabetical order. The subsequent position of the men in the class was determined solely by the senate-house examination. The first two classes comprised all who were expected to be wranglers, the next four classes included the other candidates for honours, and the last two classes consisted of poll-men only. Practically anyone placed in either of the first two classes was allowed, if he wished, to take an aegrotat senior optime, and thus escape all further examination: this was called gulphing it.

All the men from one college were no longer taken together, but each class was examined separately and vivâ voce; and hence, since all the students comprised in each class were of about equal attainments, it was possible to make the examination more effective. Richard Watson, of Trinity, claimed that this change was made by him when acting as moderator in 1763. He said[41]:

There was more room for partiality ... then [i.e. in 1759] [265] ]than there is now; and I attribute the change, in a great degree, to an alteration which I introduced the first year I was moderator [i.e. in 1763], and which has been persevered in ever since. At the time of taking their Bachelor of Arts’ degree, the young men are examined in classes, and the classes are now formed according to the abilities shown by individuals in the schools. By this arrangement, persons of nearly equal merits are examined in the presence of each other, and flagrant acts of partiality cannot take place. Before I made this alteration, they were examined in classes, but the classes consisted of members of the same College, and the best and worst were often examined together.

It is probable that before the examination in the senate-house began a candidate, if manifestly placed in too low a class, was allowed the privilege of challenging the class to which he was assigned. Perhaps this began as a matter of favour, and was only granted in exceptional cases, but a few years later it became a right which every candidate could exercise; and I think that it is partly to its development that the ultimate predominance of the tripos over the other exercises for the degree is due.

In the same year, 1763, it was decided that the relative position of the senior and second wranglers, namely, Paley, of Christ’s, and Frere, of Caius, was to be decided by the senate-house examination and not by the disputations. Henceforward distinction in that examination was regarded as the most important honour open to undergraduates.

In 1768 Robert Smith, of Trinity College, founded [266] ]prizes for mathematics and natural philosophy open to two commencing bachelors. The examination followed immediately after the senate-house examination, and the distinction, being much coveted, tended to emphasize the mathematical side of the normal university education of the best men. Since 1883 the prizes have been awarded on the result of dissertations[42]. Additional prizes, awarded at the same time, and associated with the name of Lord Rayleigh[43], were founded in 1909.

Until about 1770, the senate-house examination had been oral, but it began now to be the custom to dictate some or all of the questions and to require answers to be written. Only one question was dictated at a time, and a fresh one was not given out until some student had solved that previously read: a custom which by causing perpetual interruptions to take down new questions must have proved very harassing. We are perhaps apt to think that an examination conducted by written papers is so natural that the custom is of long continuance, but I know no record of any in Europe earlier than the eighteenth century. Until 1830 the questions for the Smith’s prizes were dictated.

[267]
]The following description of the senate-house examination as it existed in 1772 was given by Jebb[44]:

The moderators, some days before the arrival of the time prescribed by the vice-chancellor, meet for the purpose of forming the students into divisions of six, eight, or ten, according to their performance in the schools, with a view to the ensuing examination.

Upon the first of the appointed days, at eight o’clock in the morning, the students enter the senate-house, preceded by a master of arts from each college, who ... is called the “father” of the college....

After the proctors have called over the names, each of the moderators sends for a division of the students: they sit with him round a table, with pens, ink, and paper, before them: he enters upon his task of examination, and does not dismiss the set till the hour is expired. This examination has now for some years been held in the English language.

The examination is varied according to the abilities of the students. The moderator generally begins with proposing some questions from the six books of Euclid, plain (sic) trigonometry, and the first rules of algebra. If any person fails in an answer, the question goes to the next. From the elements of mathematics, a transition is made to the four branches of philosophy, viz. mechanics, hydrostatics, apparent astronomy, and optics, as explained in the works of Maclaurin, Cotes, Helsham, Hamilton, Rutherforth, Keill, Long, Ferguson, and Smith. If the moderator finds the set of questionists, under examination, capable of answering him, he proceeds to the eleventh and twelfth books of Euclid, conic sections, spherical trigonometry, the higher parts of Algebra, and sir Isaac Newton’s Principia; more particularly those sections, which treat of the motion of [268] ]bodies in eccentric and revolving orbits; the mutual action of spheres, composed of particles attracting each other according to various laws; the theory of pulses, propagated through elastic mediums; and the stupendous fabric of the world. Having closed the philosophical examination, he sometimes asks a few questions in Locke’s Essay on the human understanding, Butler’s Analogy, or Clarke’s Attributes. But as the highest academical distinctions are invariably given to the best proficients in mathematics and natural philosophy, a very superficial knowledge in morality and metaphysics will suffice.

When the division under examination is one of the highest classes, problems are also proposed, with which the student retires to a distant part of the senate-house, and returns, with his solution upon paper, to the moderator, who, at his leisure, compares it with the solutions of other students, to whom the same problems have been proposed.

The extraction of roots, the arithmetic of surds, the invention of divisers, the resolution of quadratic, cubic, and biquadratic equations; together with the doctrine of fluxions, and its application to the solution of questions “de maximis et minimis,” to the finding of areas, to the rectification of curves, the investigation of the centers of gravity and oscillation, and to the circumstances of bodies, agitated, according to various laws, by centripetal forces, as unfolded, and exemplified, in the fluxional treatises of Lyons, Saunderson, Simpson, Emerson, Maclaurin, and Newton, generally form the subject matter of these problems.

When the clock strikes nine, the questionists are dismissed to breakfast: they return at half-past nine, and stay till eleven; they go in again at half-past one, and stay till three; and, lastly, they return at half-past three, and stay till five.

[269]
]The hours of attendance are the same upon the subsequent day.

On the third day they are finally dismissed at eleven.

During the hours of attendance, every division is twice examined in form, once by each of the moderators, who are engaged for the whole time in this employment.

As the questionists are examined in divisions of only six or eight at a time, but a small portion of the whole number is engaged, at any particular hour, with the moderators; and, therefore, if there were no further examination, much time would remain unemployed.

But the moderator’s inquiry into the merits of the candidates forms the least material part of the examination.

The “fathers” of the respective colleges, zealous for the credit of the societies, of which they are the guardians, are incessantly employed in examining those students, who appear most likely to contest the palm of glory with their sons.

This part of the process is as follows:

The father of a college takes a student of a different college aside, and, sometimes for an hour and an half together, strictly examines him in every part of mathematics and philosophy, which he professes to have read.

After he hath, from this examination, formed an accurate idea of the student’s abilities and acquired knowledge, he makes a report of his absolute or comparative merit to the moderators, and to every other father who shall ask him the question.

Besides the fathers, all masters of arts, and doctors, of whatever faculty they be, have the liberty of examining whom they please; and they also report the event of each trial, to every person who shall make the inquiry.

The moderators and fathers meet at breakfast, and at dinner. From the variety of reports, taken in connection [270] ]with their own examination, the former are enabled, about the close of the second day, so far to settle the comparative merits of the candidates, as to agree upon the names of four-and-twenty, who to them appear most deserving of being distinguished by marks of academical approbation.

These four-and-twenty [wranglers and senior optimes] are recommended to the proctors for their private examination; and, if approved by them, and no reason appears against such placing of them from any subsequent inquiry, their names are set down in two divisions, according to that order, in which they deserve to stand; are afterwards printed; and read over upon a solemn day, in the presence of the vice-chancellor, and of the assembled university.

The names of the twelve [junior optimes], who, in the course of the examination, appear next in desert, are also printed, and are read over, in the presence of the vice-chancellor, and of the assembled university, upon a day subsequent to the former....

The students, who appear to have merited neither praise nor censure [the poll-men], pass unnoticed: while those, who have taken no pains to prepare themselves for the examination, and have appeared with discredit in the schools, are distinguished by particular tokens of disgrace.