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sobered down, it is true, in the writings of almost all subsequent writers even to the present day.

Question 16.-Name the principal works of Cowper the poet, and criticise any one.

Answer.-Cowper's chief poems are Table Talk,' 'Progress of Error,' 'Truth,' 'Hope,'' Charity,' 'The Task,' and his translations of Homer. 'The Task' is at once his longest and greatest original poem. It derives its name from its subject, the sofa, having been assigned to him as a poetical task by his cousin. The poet begins with the sofa as his subject, treating it in a somewhat mock-heroic vein; and introduces, in the subsequent books of the poem, an account of his rural pursuits, pictures of country happiness and simplicity, denunciations of the corruption and luxury of cities, and an attack upon many of the vices and immoralities of his age. 'The Task,' it will thus be seen, has no proper subject, no central interest, it is a mere aggregation of episodes. Yet there is a pleasantness, and simplicity, and sometimes an earnestness, that make the poem far from uninteresting. There is a total freedom from art and the restraints of the conventional poetry of his age, and a genuine love of nature, that peculiarly mark out Cowper as well qualified to lead back poetry from the artificial insincerity into which it had degenerated to simplicity and truth. The style is somewhat prolix, and its loose, easy-flowing, and rather lengthy periods form a strong contrast to the terse rattling couplets which his contemporaries so much admired.

Question 17.-Name our best writers of contemporary history; state at what period each lived, and

give your estimate of the peculiar excellences of any one.

Answer. This question has been already answered. There have been many writers of contemporary history: the early chroniclers; the famous compilers in Elizabeth's reign, Holinshed, Harrison, and Hooker; Baxter, Bulstrode Whitelock, Evelyn, Pepys, Lucy Hutchinson and others, of the period of the Commonwealth and the Restoration; Horace Walpole, who in the 18th century wrote Memoirs of the last Ten Years of George II.;' and in our days such writers as Sir Archibald Alison and Colonel Napier. Still there are only two historians of contemporary events, whose names occupy any high position in our literature, Clarendon and Bishop Burnet. An estimate has already been given of the merits of Clarendon as an historian, and of the amount of credit due to his famous 'History of the Rebellion,' and it is not thought necessary to repeat what has been said (see supra, p. 49).

Question 18.-Name the satire which you think the most forcible in the language. Of what ancient poem is Johnson's 'London' a free version ?

Answer. The 'Dunciad' is unquestionably the most finished and most severe satirical poem in the language. Unfortunately, however, there is such a vast amount of petty personal spite in it, directed against feeble assailants quite unworthy of Pope's notice, that many are inclined to give the preference to Dryden's 'Absalom and Achitophel.' This is a political satire, the leading persons in it are not petty rhymesters but important statesmen, whose characters are magnificently delineated. In Dryden's case

also there is a deduction to be made. His satire is incomplete, and the Second Part was finished by the feebler muse of Tate. If we prefer the 'Dunciad' we cannot assign any other ground of preference than this, that it is the completed performance of its author. Johnson's London,' like his 'Vanity of Human Wishes,' is an imitation of one of the satires of Juvenal.

Question 19.-Name the authors of the following works, and arrange them in order according to the date of their death:-Religio Medici, Utopia, the Battle of the Books, the Thistle and the Rose, Rasselas, the Davideis, Essays of Elia, Madoc, the Rejected Addresses; and the plays Don Sebastian, Revenge, Cato, the Rehearsal.

Answer.-(1) The 'Thistle and the Rose' was by William Dunbar, a Scotch poet, the date of whose death is uncertain, but it unquestionably preceded that of the next author to be named.

(2) 'Utopia' by Sir Thomas More.

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(3) The Davideis' by Cowley.

(4) 'Religio Medici' by Sir Thomas Browne. (5) The 'Battle of the Books' by Swift.

(6) 'Rasselas' by Dr. Johnson.

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(7) The Essays of Elia' by Charles Lamb.

(8) 'Madoc' by Southey.

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(9) The Rejected Addresses' by the Brothers Smith.

The plays were by the following authors, chronologically arranged.

(1) The Rehearsal' by the Duke of Buckingham. (2) Don Sebastian' by Dryden.

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(3) 'Cato' by Addison.

(4) Revenge' by Young.

Question 20.-Name the authors of the following lines, and state, if you can, the particular work from which each passage is taken.

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(a) Westward the course of empire holds its way.'

(b) That air and harmony of shape express,

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Fine by degrees and beautifully less.'

(c) There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubim.'
(d) I am as free as nature first made man
Ere the base laws of servitude began,
When wild in woods the noble savage ran.'

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(e) Till oft converse with heavenly habitants
Begin to cast a beam on the outward shape,
The unpolluted temple of the mind,

And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence,
Till all be made immortal.'

Answer. It is not thought necessary to give the authors from which the above passages are taken. That marked (d), the only one likely to give the student any trouble, is taken from Dryden's Conquest of Granada,' the others are left to the student's reading.

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EXAMINATION PAPERS.

V. PAPER FOR 1858.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

Examiners: Dr. DASENT and Professor CRAIK.

(Three hours allowed.)

Question 1.-Give a distinct account of the constitution of the English language, in respect both of the vocabulary and of the grammar, at each of the following dates:-in the 10th century (when it was still what is usually called Saxon or Anglo-Saxon by modern philologists), in the 12th, in the 14th, in the 16th, and in the 18th; noting carefully the difference between each stage of its progress and the immediately preceding one, and assigning the cause or causes of the change.*

Question 2.-Describe clearly and exactly the position and connection of the English language (regarded in its earliest known form, which is still its basis or mould) in what is called the Indo-European family of languages.

Question 3.-Compare the English language with

See Latham, Craik, and Angus on the English Language. A small work, Keane's Handbook of the English Language, may also be consulted for all the questions in this paper. The student must not forget the inexorable three hours to which his time is limited.

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