GENERAL QUESTIONS 1. It has been said that "Poetry sets the hardest lessons to music." Enlarge upon this statement, adding any illustrations that may occur to you. 2. What would you say to a critic who objected to Keats's sonnet On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer because Chapman's is not a good translation and because it was not Cortez who "stared at the Pacific"? 3. Say whether you think the following lines are prose or verse. Give reasons for your opinion. (a) Was this the face that faced so many follies? (b) Oh-you queens-you queens; among the hills and happy greenwood of this land of yours. (c) What's become of Waring since he gave us all the slip? (d) But in this tournament can no man tilt. (e) Moses and the Prophets! Does the old lady intend to marry me? 4. Give examples of the various forms of recurrence that are found in literature. 5. Show, with illustrations, how movement in prose may be accelerated or retarded. 6. "Literature is the immortality of speech." Say what you think of this as a definition. 7. Emerson says, "There is no choice of words for him who clearly sees the truth. That provides him with the best word." Discuss this statement. 8. Comment on the suitability of the following figurative expressions: (a) 'Zounds! I am afraid of this gunpowder Percy, though he be dead. (b) A glorious world Fresh as a banner bright, unfurl'd To music suddenly. (c) Dew-drops are the gems of morning, But the tears of mournful eve! (d) The sweet buds. (e) (f) Had not yet lost their starry diadems The woman opened her eyes. The fainting-fit left the rouge like an unnatural island on her yellow cheeks, the lines and wrinkles in her face had become more apparent than ever. The rugged castle-I will not undertake to say how many hundreds of years ago then-was abandoned to the centuries of weather which have so defaced the dark apertures in its walls, that the ruin looks as if the rooks and daws had pecked its eyes out. 9. Comment on the suitability of the verse-forms chosen in Shelley's Epipsychidion, Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Milton's Paradise Lost, Burns's Cottar's Saturday Night. 10. Discuss the appropriateness of the line-length in the following passages: (a) A poor life this if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare. W. H. DAVIES (b) Very old are we men; Our dreams are tales Told in dim Eden By Eve's nightingales. W. DE LA MARE (c) We are puppets, Man in his pride, and Beauty fair in her flower; Do we move ourselves, or are we moved by an unseen hand at a game That pushes us off from the board, and others ever succeed? TENNYSON (d) Time, you old gipsy man, Will you not stay, RALPH HODGSON 11. Write detailed accounts of the following imag inary works: (a) A psychological novel by Shakespeare; (b) A light comedy by Milton; (c) A book of lyrics by Edward Gibbon. Make special reference to the way in which each writer handles the literary form he is supposed to have chosen. 12. Give an account of an imaginary conversation between (a) Hamlet and Shakespeare; (b) Satan and Milton. 13. Quote some notable examples of reticence in lit erature. 14. Examine the following passages and comment on their main literary features: (a) (b) And through his veins there ran Faster, faster, O Circe, Goddess, Let the wild thronging train, The bright procession Of eddying forms, Sweep through my soul. ROBERT BRIDGES MATTHEW ARNOLD (c) I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus, (d) Old Yew, which graspest at the stones TENNYSON (e) For Sorrow, like a heavy hanging bell, 15. The sonnet has been humorously called an "apartment for single gentlemen in verse. Add your own comments on this view. 16. Comment upon the prose-rhythm of the following extracts: (a) To call such a man "ambitious," to figure him as the prurient windbag described above, seems to me the poorest solecism. Such a man will say: "Keep your gilt carriages and huzzaing mobs, keep your red-tape clerks, your influentialities, your important businesses. Leave me alone, leave me alone; there is too much of life in me already!" Old Samuel Johnson, the greatest soul in England in his day, was not ambitious. "Corsica Boswell" flaunted at public shows with printed ribbons round his hat; but the great old Samuel stayed at home. The world-wide soul wrapt-up in its thoughts, in its sorrows;-what could paradings, and ribbons in the hat, do for it? CARLYLE (b) Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together. If we are conscious of our station, and glow with zeal to fill our places as becomes our situation and ourselves, we ought to auspicate all our public proceedings on America with the old warning of the church, Sursum corda! We ought to elevate our minds to the greatness of that trust to which the order of Providence has called us. By adverting to the dignity of this high calling, our ancestors have turned a savage wilderness into a glorious empire; and have made the most extensive, and the only honorable conquests, not by destroying, but by promoting the wealth, the number, the happiness, of the human race. BURKE (c) William denied that he was guilty of temerity. It was, he said, from a sense of duty, and on a cool calculation of what the public interest required, that he was always at the post of danger. The troops which he had commanded had been little used to war, and shrank from a close encounter with the veteran soldiery of France. It was necessary that their leader should show them how battles were to be won. And in truth more than one day which had seemed hopelessly lost was retrieved by the hardihood Iwith which he rallied his broken battalions and cut down the cowards who set the example of flight. Sometimes, however, it seemed that he had a strange pleasure in venturing his person. It was remarked that his spirits were never so high and his manners never so gracious and easy as amidst the tumult and carnage of a battle. MACAULAY (d) I was this morning surprised with a great knocking at the door, when my landlady's daughter came up to me and told me, that there was a man below desired to speak with me. Upon my asking her who it was, she told me it was a very grave elderly person, but that she did not know his name. I immediately went down to him, and found him to be the coachman of my worthy friend Sir Roger de Coverley. He told me that his master came to town last night, and would be glad to take a turn with me in Gray'sinn walks. ADDISON 17. Sir Edward Cook points out that while Perdita calls a violet "dim," Milton's epithet is "glowing." He asks why. What answer could you give to this question? 18. Comment on the length of the words in the following passages: (a) Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere: "Far other is this battle in the west Whereto we move, than when we strove in youth, |