It was well for the purposes of the hoaxers that Mr. Pucker's
trepidation prevented him from making a calm perusal of the paper;
and he was nervously doing his best to turn the nonsensical English
word by word into equally nonsensical Latin, when his limited powers
of Latin writing were brought to a full stop by the untranslateable
word "Bosh". As he could make nothing of this, he wiped the
perspiration from his forehead, and gazed appealingly at the
benignant features of Mr. Verdant Green. The appealing gaze was
answered by our hero ordering Mr. Pucker to hand in his paper for
examination, and to endeavour to answer the questions which he and
his brother examiner had been writing down for him.
Mr. Pucker took the two papers of questions, and read as follows:
"HISTORY.
"1. Draw a historical parallel (after the manner of Plutarch)
between Hannibal and Annie Laurie.
"2. What internal evidence does the Odyssey afford, that Homer
sold his Trojan war-ballads at three yards an obolus?
"3. Show the strong presumption there is, that Nox was the god of
battles.
"4. State reasons for presuming that the practice of lithography
may be traced back to the time of Perseus and the Gorgon's head.
"5. In what way were the shades on the banks of the Styx supplied
with spirits?
"6. Show the probability of the College Hornpipe having been used
by the students of the Academia; and give passages from Thucydides
and Tennyson in support of your answer.
[AN OXFORD FRESHMAN 131]
"7. Give a brief account of the Roman Emperors who visited the
United States, and state what they did there.
"8. Show from the redundancy of the word {gas} in Sophocles, that
gas must have been used by the Athenians; also state, if the
expression {oi barbaroi} would seem to signify that they were close
shavers.
"9. Show from the words 'Hoc erat in votis' (Sat. VI., Lib. II.,)
that Horace's favourite wine was hock, and that he meant to say 'he
always voted for hock.'
"10. Draw a parallel between the Children in the Wood and Achilles
in the Styx.
"11. When it is stated that Ariadne, being deserted by Theseus,
fell in love with Bacchus, is it the poetical way of asserting that
she took to drinking to drown her grief?
"12. Name the ~prima donnas~ who have appeared in the operas of
Virgil and Horace since the 'Virgilii Opera,' and 'Horatii Opera'
were composed."
"EUCLID, ARITHMETIC, and ALGEBRA.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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