Undergraduates, whose wretched existence for a week before each examination is spent in the hasty acquisition of much ill-assorted and indigestible knowledge, are not seldom the victims of similar confusions.  At Oxford—­and, for all I know, at Cambridge too—­a hideous custom prevails of placing before the examinee a list of isolated texts, and requiring him to supply the name of the speaker, the occasion, and the context.

Question.—­“‘My punishment is greater than I can bear.’  Who said this?  Under what circumstances?”

Answer.—­“Agag, when he was hewn in pieces.”

One wonders at what stage of the process he began to think it was going a little too far.

“What is faith?” inquired an examiner in “Pass-Divinity.”  “Faith is the faculty by which we are enabled to believe that which we know is not true,” replied the undergraduate, who had learned his definition by heart, but imperfectly, from a popular cram-book.  A superficial knowledge of literature may sometimes be a snare.  “Can you give me any particulars of Oliver Cromwell’s death?” asked an Examiner in History in 1874.  “Oh yes, sir,” eagerly replied the victim:  “he exclaimed, ’Had I but served my God as I have served my King, He would not in mine age have left me naked to mine enemies.’”

“Things one would rather have expressed differently” are, I believe, a discovery of Mr. Punch’s.  Of course he did not create them.  They must be as old as human nature itself.  The history of their discovery is not unlike that of another epoch-making achievement of the same great genius, as set forth in the preface to the Book of Snobs.  First, the world was made; then, as a matter of course, snobs; they existed for years and years, and were no more known than America.  But presently—­ingens patebat tellus—­people became darkly aware that there was such a race.  Then in time a name arose to designate that race.  That name has spread over England like railroads.  Snobs are known and recognised throughout an Empire on which the sun never sets. Punch appeared at the ripe season to chronicle their history, and the individual came forth to write that history in Punch.  We may apply this historical method to the origin and discovery of “Things one would rather have expressed differently.”  They must have existed as long as language; they must have flourished wherever men and women encountered one another in social intercourse.  But the glory of having discovered them, recognized them, classified them, and established them among the permanent sources of human enjoyment belongs to Mr. Punch alone.

    “He was the first that ever burst
       Into that silent sea.”

Let us humbly follow in his wake.