Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.'

Answer.-(1) From Gray's Elegy,' written in elegiac verse; (2) From Goldsmith's Deserted Village,' written in ordinary rhyming heroic verse; (3) From Keats's 'Endymion,' in rhyming heroics; (4) From Johnson's 'Vanity of Human Wishes,' in rhyming heroics; (5) From Dryden's 'Alexander's Feast,' a lyric poem in irregular verse; (6) From Dryden's 'Absalom and Achitophel,' in rhyming heroics; (7) From Wordsworth's Lines on Rob Roy's Grave,' in a kind of ballad metre ; (8) From Pope's 'Essay on Man,' in rhyming heroics; (9) Shakspere's 'Merchant of Venice,' in blank verse; (10) Wordsworth's 'Excursion,' in blank verse; (11) Pope's Essay on Man;' (12) Milton's 'Comus,' chiefly in blank verse; (13) Tennyson's 'Locksley Hall,' a trochaic measure; (14) Wordsworth's 'Intimations of Immortality,' blank verse; (15) Byron's 'Childe Harold,' in the Spenserian stanza; (16) Shakspere's 'Hamlet,' blank verse; (17) Scott's 'Lady of the Lake,' chiefly octosyllabic verse; (18) Milton's L'Allegro,' a lyric poem in octosyllabic verse; the reference is to Chaucer, whose 'Squire's Tale' (introducing Cambuscan, Canace, Camball, &c.) is left unfinished; (19) Shakspere, Sonnet cxi., written in the regular sonnet form; the writer of the sonnet is confessing that he has done wrong, and degraded himself to the level of his wickedness; (20) Wordsworth, sonnet; Milton is the person referred to, and is complimented on his elevation of soul, that kept him free from the corruptions of his age; (21) Milton's 'Paradise

Lost,' in blank verse; the poet alludes to his blindness, which, however, did not exclude him from cultivating his poetical abilities; Thamyris and Mæonides (Homer) were famous among the ancients, though blind, and Milton hopes he may equal them in reputation, as he was involved in the same calamity with them; (22) Butler's 'Hudibras,' written in octosyllabics; Withers, Prynne, and Vicars, were writers on the Puritan side, and hence obnoxious to Butler; (23) Dryden's MacFlecnoe,' a satire in rhyming heroics; Shadwell, one of Dryden's rivals, is the person referred to; a tun is a large barrel, and a kilderkin a small cask; hence the satire is, that Shadwell, though a huge man as big as a barrel, had very little cleverness; (24) Pope, 'Dunciad,' in rhyming heroics; Swift, Dean of St. Patrick's, is the person here addressed; Drapier, Bickerstaff, and Gulliver, were names which he had assumed in his various writings; the rest of the passage refers to Swift's characteristic style of writing; the last line alludes to his opposition to a proposed copper coinage for Ireland, which created much excitement at the time; (25) Churchill's 'Apology,' a satire in rhyming heroics; the passage is a satire on Smollet, whose works, 'Pickle' (i.e. 'Peregrine Pickle,' the novel), 'History of England,' and 'Regicide' (a tragedy), are here ridiculed; (26) Goldsmith's Retaliation,' in anapæstic verse: Burke is referred to; (27) Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers;' Gifford had formerly, in his 'Baviad' and 'Mæviad,' satirized some feeble schools of poetry, and Byron invites him to return to the task, and purge the literary world once more; (28) Spenser, 'Fairy Queen,' Spenserian stanza; the simple meaning is that morn was approaching, the constellation

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of the Bear had disappeared, and the cock was announcing the near approach of day; (29) Tennyson's 'Ulysses,' blank verse; the passage alludes to the noble aspirations of a great mind tired of ease, and longing for adventure; (30) Shakspere, Hamlet,' blank verse; conscience alarms us with the fear of the consequences of our actions, and often causes us to abandon what we had resolved on doing.

III. PAPER FOR 1863.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

Examiner: Dr. SMITH.

(Three hours allowed for this paper).

Question 1.-What are the chief grammatical changes which converted the Anglo-Saxon into the English of the 14th century? How far are these changes due to the influence of the Norman Conquest? Mention the chief grammatical differences between the English of the present day and that of the 14th century.

Answer. The chief grammatical changes that converted the Anglo-Saxon into the English of the 14th century were the general substitution of the plural form in s for the various Saxon forms of the plural; the omission, in the article, adjective and noun, of the Saxon terminations which indicated gender; the loss of most of the inflections in the oblique cases, with the consequent employment of prepositions; and the rejection of the proper termination of the infinitive. The influence of the Norman Conquest in producing these changes has been much disputed, yet some of them can be directly traced to that event. Thus, e.g. the general employment of the plural form in s was manifestly promoted by the fact that the Norman-French language

employed that form almost exclusively. Again, the Anglo-Saxon had three genders, distinguished usually by terminations; the Normans had only two genders; the mutual action of the two languages led in English to the identifying of grammatical gender with sex, employing the masculine and feminine genders for the two sexes, and reserving the neuter gender for inanimate things. The French language had also dispensed with inflections in the nouns, using prepositions instead; and this unquestionably strengthened the tendency in the same direction that already existed in the Saxon.

The chief grammatical differences between the English of the present day and that of the 14th century are to be found in the still more complete rejection of inflections. The terminal vowels that were still employed in the 14th century have been altogether rejected; e.g. in Chaucer's time alle thingis was written, instead of which we now use simply all things, omitting the vowels which had been originally the signs of inflection. We have also rejected the plural termination of the verb in en (e.g. we dronken), the termination of the infinitive in en or e, and the imperative termination in eth.

Question 2.- The primary words in our language are almost all Saxon; the secondary, as they may be called, are mostly of French, the tertiary of Latin origin.' Illustrate and explain fully this statement. When and how were the words of Latin origin which are not derived from the French chiefly introduced into English?

Answer. The primary words in any language are those that express the most simple ideas, the most