Milton is fairly possessed with the story of Man's fall, Boswell
possessed with Johnson, Shelley with hatred of tyranny in all its
manifestations, Mill again with the idea of Liberty: and it is
only because we had knowledge presented to us at an age when we
thought more attentively of apples, that we still fail to
recognise in Euclid and Dr Todhunter two writers who are excellent
because possessed with a passion for Geometry.
I infer, then, that the framers of the Ordinance, when they
employed this phrase 'the study of the subject of English
Literature,' knew well enough that no such thing existed in
nature, but adopted the convention that English Literature could
be separated somehow from its content and treated as a subject
all by itself, for teaching purposes: and, for purposes of
examination, could be yoked up with another subject called
English Language, as other Universities had yoked it.
V
I believe the following to be a fair account of how these
examinations in English Language and Literature came to pass, and
how a certain kind of student came to pass these Examinations.
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