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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 50

English—Junior Scholarship Paper. — I

English—Junior Scholarship Paper.

I.

1. Point out any changes that have taken place in the history of the following words:—each, zounds, could, farther, soul, megrim, brethren, kerchief, else, tyrant, ours, icicle, pea, stirrup, foreign, nostril, newt, participle, alderliefest.

2. a. From what languages have the following words come into English?—alligator, hammock, tornado, cabal, sure, alcohol, motto, bivouac, yacht, chess, loafer, verandah, zinc.

β. Discuss the question whether a and the are rightly classified under a separate part of speech, and distinguish the following uses of the:—(a) The river Clyde; (b) The Americans; (c) The lily is the fairest of flowers; (d) This is the masterpiece of our author; (e) The meek shall inherit the earth; (f) He gave up law and entered the church; (g) He threw himself from the monument; (h) The Napoleon of the East; (i) He was wounded in the arm.

3. Distinguish admittance and admission; romantic and sentimental; imagination and fancy; reformation and reform; liberty and freedom; usage and custom.

4. Explain and comment upon any six of the following passages:—
(a)

Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?

(b)

Dan Chaucer well of English undefiled On Fame's eternal beadroll worthy to be filed.

(c)

Hear you this Triton of the minnows?

(d)

Hail, holy light, offspring of heaven first-born.

(e)

There's husbandry in heaven; their candles are all out.

(f)

Then to the well-bred stage anon, If Jonson's learned sock be on.

(g)

He that is beaten may be said To lie in honour's truckle bed.

(h)

Or call up him that left half-told The story of Cambuscan bold.

(i)

Ye towers of Julius, London's lasting shame.

(j)

The child is father of the man.

(k)

The blind old man of Scio's rocky isle.

(l)

A little learning is a dangerous thing. Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring.

(m)

Arcades ambo, id est, blackguards both.

(n)

Bidding his beads all day for his trespass.

(o)

This my hand will rather

The multitudinous seas incarnadine

Making the green one red.

(Turn over)

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5. Put any two of the following passages into ordinary English prose; point out the excellencies of expression which the paraphrase rejects, and comment upon the italicised words in the two:—

(a)

For him was lever han at his beddes hed,
A twenty bokes clothed in black or red,
Of Aristotle and his philosophic,
Than robes riche or fidel or salttrie.
But all be that he was a philosophre,
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre,
But all that he might of his frendes hente
On bokes and on lerning he it spente.

(b) Honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I come on? How then? Can honour set to a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? No. What is honour? A word. What is that word honour? Air. A trim reckoning. Who hath it? He that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he bear it? No. Is it insensible, then? Yea, to the dead. Hut will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it; therefore, i'll none of it: honour is a mere scutcheon, and so ends my catechism.

(c)

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death; out out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow: a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.

(d) Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks; methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam, purging and unsealing her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and, in their envious gabble, would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms.