Even the university examinations became farcical. Under the Laudian statutes the very examiners became corrupt. Instead of a feast of reason and a flow of soul, the wary student provided his examiner with good meat and wine; and the two, with what company they bade in, got gloriously drunk together. B. A. meant Bacchanal of Arts. Even when the forms of examination were held to, the farce was only less obvious. A writer in _Terræ Filius_, March 24, 1721, tells us that the examination consisted in "a formal repetition of a set of syllogisms upon some ridiculous question in logick, which the candidates get by rote, or perhaps read out of their caps, which lie before them." These commodious sets of syllogisms were called strings, and descended from undergraduate to undergraduate in a regular succession like themes and mechanical drawings in an American club or fraternity. "I have in my custody a book of strings upon most or all of the questions discussed in a certain college noted for its ratiocinative faculty; on the first leaf of which are these words: _Ex dono Richardi P----e primæ classi benefactoris munificentissimi_." Lord Eldon took his degree at University College by an examination that consisted of two questions: "What is the meaning of Golgotha?" and "Who founded University College?" It was, no doubt, the bearers of degrees thus achieved who owned those marvelous libraries of the eighteenth century, which consisted of pasteboard boxes exquisitely backed in tooled calf, and labeled with the names of the standard Greek and Latin classics.