Chapter_40

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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.”