In the face of personal experience of this kind how is it possible to believe that to obtain a degree was anything but a question of independent work or the judicious administration of “pourboires”? To attend at the right hour for a lecture which was never read, to be fined for non-attendance, and finally to have great difficulty in persuading the authorities to sign the necessary dispensation is a Gilbertian absurdity. No other instance more striking than this letter can be found in all the eighteenth-century chronicles of the attitude of Dons towards the Undergraduates in their charge. Once certain of their annual stipend their duties went by the board; and the Dons, whether lecturers or Heads of colleges, whether they knew each other personally or not, banded together to ensure their own safety, and signed to a lie in regard to the delivering of lectures with the utmost unconcern. CHAPTER XVI THE DON--(_continued_) The examiners--Perjury and bribery--Method of examining--College Fellows--Election to Fellowships--Gibbon and the Magdalen Dons--Heads of colleges--Their domestic and public character--Golgotha and Ben Numps--St John’s Head pays homage to Christ Church--Drs Marlowe and Randolph. After the lecture comes the examination, so the examiner shall be the next in line. Now the examiners were appointed by the senior Proctor, who administered to them the following oath: “That they will either examine, or hear examined, all candidates that fall to their lot, in those arts and sciences, and in such manner as the statute requires. Likewise that they will not be prevailed upon by entreaties, or bribes, or hatred or friendship, or hope or fear, to grant any one a _testimonium_, who does not deserve it, or to deny it to any one that does.” The examiners were, however, in the same parlous condition as the lecturers and tutors. The most mild of all the adverse criticisms was that of Henry Fynes Cliton, who was at the House in 1799. He said that the examiners discouraged Undergraduates from making a wide choice of authors for their schools, and that if any one anxious for first-class honours took an author not included in the abbreviated list as given out by them, they would find a way to stop him from obtaining the coveted class. This entirely bears out the statement of Amhurst, who said that the examiners were entirely ignorant of the subjects in which they examined, and that the whole system was a farce and a scandal.