_Oenone._ Fair and fair and twice so fair, As fair as any may be: The fairest shepherd on our green, A love for any lady. _Paris_ Fair and fair and twice so fair, As fair as any may be: Thy love is fair for thee alone, And for no other lady. _Oenone._ My love is fair, my love is gay, As fresh as bin the flowers in May, And of my love my roundelay, My merry merry merry roundelay Concludes with Cupid's curse: They that do change old love for new, Pray gods they change for worse.... My love can pipe, my love can sing, My love can many a pretty thing, And of his lovely praises ring My merry merry merry roundelays 'Amen' to Cupid's curse: They that do change old love for new Pray gods they change for worse. _Ambo._ Fair and fair and twice so fair, As fair as any may be: The fairest shepherd on our green, A love for any lady.... How can anyone examine on _that_? How can anyone solemnly explain, in a hurry, answering one of five or six questions selected from a three hours' paper, just why and how that hits him? And yet, if it hit him not, he is lost. If even so simple a thing as that--a thing of silly sooth--do not hit him, he is all unfit to traffic with literature. VIII You see how delicate a business it is. Examination in Literature, being by its very nature so closely tied down to be a test of _Knowledge,_ can hardly, save when used by genius, with care, be any final test of that which is better than Knowledge, of that which is the crown of all scholarship, of _understanding._ But do not therefore lose heart, even in your reading for strict purposes of examination. Our talk is of reading. Let me fetch you some comfort from the sister and correlative, but harder, art of writing.