disputed with the senior questionist. This stool or _tripod_ was eventually to provide a name for the great written examination of succeeding centuries--the _tripos_. The champion bachelor was addressed as “Mr. Tripos,” and his humorous orations were called “tripos speeches.” _Tripos verses_ were next written, and on the back of these the moderators, in the middle of the xviii century, began printing the honours list:[266] from this _tripos list of names_ the transition was easy to _tripos_ as the name of the examination itself--the tripos examination. These disputations degenerated in Restoration times to buffoonery, but the principle of examination made steady progress,[267] and there were probably no tripos speeches after the Senate House was built. In the xvi and xvii centuries, however, great personages had acts and disputations performed for their entertainment; and the tastes of Elizabeth and her Scotch successor were consulted when “a physic act” was kept before the former, while “a philosophy act” was reserved for James. There were declamations, which did not escape Byron’s ridicule, in the xix century, but the last general public “act” was kept in 1839. The _viva voce_ examination in the “Little go” which was only discontinued 14 years ago, and the _viva voce_ and the “act” for the medical degree[268] are the only survivals to our day of that oral examination by which the scholar in the public acts constantly responded to the living voice of the _magister_. For the first time in their long history silence settled down upon the schools, and the eye replaced the ear as the channel of knowledge.[269] [Sidenote: Subjects of study. _Trivium_ and _Quadrivium_.] The subjects in which university students were from the first exercised, were those of the Roman _trivium_ and _quadrivium_, and the three faculties of theology law and medicine. A special importance must be assigned to the school of grammar--the first member of the _trivium_--at Cambridge. There is every reason to believe that it flourished there not only in the xiii century, under the patronage of the bishops of Ely, but also in the xiith. It was called the school of glomery (glomery, glamery, grammery)[270] and continued to be of importance till the xvi century, the last degree in grammar being granted in 1542.[271] Degrees in grammar were, nevertheless, [Sidenote: xii-xiii c.] considered inferior to those in arts. To begin with, grammar was only studied for three years, arts for seven; grammar made the clerk, arts the professor. The introduction of the “new art,” Aristotle’s [Sidenote: A.D. 1712.]