A14370W1

SECOND PUBLIC EXAMINATION

HONOUR SCHOOL OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

COURSE I
Paper 5 Literature in English from 1760 to 1830

HONOUR SCHOOL OF CLASSICS AND ENGLISH

Part A, Paper 1 (c) Literature in English from 1760 to 1830

HONOUR SCHOOL OF HISTORY AND ENGLISH

Literature in English from 1760 to 1830

TRINITY TERM 2018

Tuesday, 22 May, 2.30pm – 5.30pm

Time allowed – Three hours

Answer three questions. Except where specified, themes can be applied to any author or
authors of your choice. You should pay careful attention in your answers to the precise terms
of the quotations and questions.

Candidates should not repeat material across different parts of the examination.

Do not turn over until told that you may do so.

1. ‘[His] diction has no where any pretensions to elegance or dignity; and he has
scarcely ever condescended to give the grace of correctness or melody to his
versification’ (FRANCIS JEFFREY).

2. ‘I have an exceeding odd sensation, when I consider [...] that a Work which was so lately
Lodged, in all privacy, in my Bureau, may now be seen by every Butcher & Baker,
cobbler & Tinker, throughout the three Kingdoms, for the small tribute of 3 pence’
(FRANCES BURNEY).

3. ‘Idly talk they who speak of Poets as mere Indulgers of Fancy, Imagination, Superstition,
&c – They are the Bridlers by Delight, the Purifiers, they that combine them with reason
& order’ (SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE).

4. And Friendship, better than a Muse inspires.

(ANNA LAETITIA BARBAULD)

5. ‘Eternity and immortality are phrases to which it is impossible for us to annex any
distinct ideas, and the more we attempt to explain them, the more we shall find ourselves
involved in contradiction’ (WILLIAM GODWIN).

6. ‘We are, as it were, laying gunpowder, grain by grain, under the old building of error and
superstition, which a single spark may hereafter inflame, so as to produce an
instantaneous explosion’ (JOSEPH PRIESTLEY).

7. For I, methought, while the sweet breath of heaven,

Was blowing on my body, felt within
A corresponding mild creative breeze.
(WILLIAM WORDSWORTH)

8. ‘[T]he happiness and perfection of the two sexes are so reciprocally dependent on one
another that, till both are reformed, there is no expecting excellence in either’
(CATHERINE MACAULAY).

9. ‘A fragment, like a little work of art, must be quite separated from its surroundings and
complete in itself – like a hedgehog’ (FRIEDRICH SCHLEGEL).

10. ‘As the Scots songs are the flights of genius, devoid of art, they bid defiance to artificial
graces and affected cadences. A Scots song can only be sung in taste by a Scots voice’
(WILLIAM TYTLER, A Dissertation on the Scottish Music).

A14370W1

2
11. ‘[W]hen the curtain dropped, two or three more of the spectators went into hysterics, and
there was such a screaming & squalling, that really you could hardly hear the hissing’
(MATTHEW LEWIS ). Apply this quotation to any literary form of your choice.

12. ‘I have found myself somewhat relieved by reading, which I therefore intend to practice
when I am able. This day it came into my mind to write the history of my melancholy’
(SAMUEL JOHNSON, private journal).

13. ‘A Slave is a Person perverted into a Thing: Slavery, therefore, is not so properly a
deviation from Justice, as an absolute subversion of all Morality’ (SAMUEL
TAYLOR COLERIDGE).

14. ‘He & I should not in the least agree of course, in our ideas of Novels and Heroines;
– pictures of perfection as you know make me sick & wicked’ (JANE AUSTEN).

15. ‘The peasantry and labourers of England in old times enjoyed a degree of comfort and
plenty which they now never can obtain. Their morals & their health were not
poisoned by the soul-&-body murdering plan of herding together in large &
unwholesome manufactories’ (ROBERT SOUTHEY, Letters from England by Don
Manuel Alvarez Espriella).

16. ‘When I read it, as I was a girl of fourteen not yet versed in sentiment, I had a secret
dread I should not cry enough to gain the credit of proper sensibility’ (LADY LOUISA
STUART).

17. The white man landed! need the rest be told?

The New World stretch’d its dusk hand to the Old;
Each was to each a marvel, and the tie
Of wonder warm’d to better sympathy.
(LORD BYRON, The Island)

18. ‘Whatever the execution may have been, the intention of this Comedy is of a far nobler
nature than the mere incitement of risibility’ (THOMAS HOLCROFT).

19. ‘Government and Literature are now more than ever intimately connected; the history of
the last thirty years proves it beyond a controversy’ (THOMAS JAMES MATHIAS,
The Pursuits of Literature).

20. ‘To make any progress in the art of education, it must be patiently reduced to an
experimental science’ (MARIA EDGEWORTH, Practical Education).

A14370W1 LAST PAGE