GREEK.-PART I. (COMPOSITION.) Professor Tucker and Mr. Tubbs. 1. For Greek Prose In truth, with undaunted courage, with considerable talents both for war and for administration, and with a certain public spirit which showed itself by glimpses even in the very worst parts of his life, he was emphatically a bad man, insolent, malignant, greedy, faithless. He conceived that the great services which he had performed at the time of the Revolution had not been adequately rewarded. Everything that was given to others seemed to him to be pillaged from himself. A letter is still extant in which he wrote to William about this time. It is made up of boasts, reproaches, and sneers. The Admiral, with ironical professions of humility and loyalty, asks permission to put his wrongs on paper, because his bashfulness will not suffer him to explain himself by word of mouth. His grievances he represents as intolerable. Other people got large grants of royal domains: but he could get scarcely anything. Other people could provide for their dependants: but his recommendations were uniformly disregarded. 2. For Greek Iambics Nay, listen unto me. I will speak frankly. I have never loved thee; This is not my fault; Thou art a man Restless and violent. What would'st thou with A feeble girl, who have not long to live, Thy rash and headstrong from thee. and let not I never sought thy love; never did aught Yet I pity thee, And most of all I pity thy wild heart, That hurries thee to crimes and deeds of blood LATIN.-PART I. (COMPOSITION.) Professor Tucker and Mr. Tubbs. 1. For Latin Prose I am willing to avow that I am in favour of justice and conciliation. Justice and mercy are the supreme attributes of the perfection which we call Deity, but all men everywhere comprehend them: there is no speech nor language in which their voice is not heard, and they cannot be vainly exercised with regard to the docile and intelligent millions of India. You have had the choice. You have tried the sword. It has broken: it now rests broken in your grasp: and you stand humbled and rebuked. You stand humbled and rebuked before the eyes of civilized Europe. You may have another chance. You may, by possibility, have another opportunity of governing India. If you have, I beseech you to make the best use of it. Do not let us pursue a policy such as many men in India and some in England have advocated, but which hereafter you will have to regret, which can end only, as I believe, in something approaching to the ruin of this country, and which must, if it is persisted in, involve our name and nation in everlasting disgrace. 2. For Latin Elegiacs One struggle more, and I am free From pangs that rend my heart in twain ; It suits me well to mingle now With things that never pleased before: What future grief can touch me more? That smiles with all and weeps with none. GREEK.-PART II. (COMPOSITION.) 1. For Greek Prose I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, but impurity: that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary. That virtue, therefore, which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure; which was the reason why our sage and serious poet Spenser, whom I dare be known to think better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas, describing true temperance under the person of Guion, brings him in with his palmer through the cave of Mammon and the bower of earthly bliss, that he might see and know, and yet abstain. Since, therefore, the knowledge and survey of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, how can we more safely scout into the regions of sin and falsity than by reading all manner of tractates and hearing all manner of reason? And this is the benefit which may be had of books promiscuously read. 2. For Greek Iambics I will speak frankly. It is my destiny. Nay, listen unto me. Restless and violent. What would'st thou with me, A feeble girl, who have not long to live, Whose heart is broken? Seek another wife, and let not moods estrange her I never sought thy love; never did aught That hurries thee to crimes and deeds of blood. LATIN.-PART II. (COMPOSITION.) Professor Tucker and Mr. Tubbs. 1. For Latin Prose Dec. 26. Dear Manning-Following your brother's example, I have just ventured one letter to Canton, and am now hazarding another (not exactly a duplicate) to St. Helena. The first was full of improbable romantic fictions, fitting the remoteness of the mission it goes upon; in the present I mean to confine myself nearer to truth, as you come nearer home. A correspondence with the uttermost parts of the earth necessarily involves in it some heat of fancy; it sets the brain agoing; but I can think on the half-way house tranquilly. Your friends, then, are not all dead, or grown forgetful of you through old age, as that lying letter asserted, anticipating rather what must happen if you kept tarrying on for ever on the skirts of creation; but they are all tolerably well, and in full and perfect comprehension of what is meant by "Manning's coming home again." I am the same as when you knew me, almost to a surfeiting identity. Gather up the wretched reliques of yourself, my friend, as fast as you can, and come to your old home. I will rub my eyes and try to recognize you. We have had strange doings of late. But novelties cease to affect. Come and try what your presence can. God bless you. Your old friend, C. LAMB. |