HOWLERS.
[TO THE EDITOR Or THE "SPECTATOR.'1 SIR,—In your issue of July 25th Mr. C. H. Isaacson writes :— "The late Mr. Day, formerly senior tutor of Caine College, Cambridge, told me at dinner once that he was examiner in the Classical Tripes where the brilliant K. was sitting—perhaps it is hardly fair to give his name in full. The phrase Spernit ventos ' (He spurns the winds) was in his haste translated by K., 'He despised those who were coming.' The roar of laughter among the examiners ended by one saying, ' Knock off three hundred marks,' which was done. K. was held to have disgraced the family by not being placed in Class I., Division I."
I hope that you will permit me to make a few remarks about this curious legend. My old friend Alfred George Day examined in three years only, 1858, 1867, 1868. In 1858 and 1867 there was no notable K. In 1868 there was a " brilliant K.," Mr. W. R. Kennedy, now Lord Justice Sir William Kennedy ; but, as he was placed first in the First Class, he cannot be the injured hero of the story. I may note further that it was not till 1881 that the classes were broken up into divisions. I suspect that your correspondent is thinking of the year
1870, when Mr. John Kennedy, who, though he was not like his uncles and his brother Senior Classic, had the distinguished place of fourth in the First Class ; and, as I was one of the examiners, I am anxious to put on record certain facts. We are told that the examiners—as it would seem, acting col- lectively—deducted three hundred marks for a single mistake. Now (1) it was impossible that three hundred marks should be so deducted, for the total marks for a translation paper were at that time one hundred and eighty, and the total marks for a piece of translation from forty to fifty, and failure in one piece was not allowed to detract from performance in another ; if, then, there had been any examiner so eccentric as to allow a single mistake to determine his estimate of the whole of a piece, it could not have affected more than fifty marks. (2) When the examiners met to present their marks, to strike the averages, and to add up the totals, there was no revision of the marks which the several examiners had assigned to the several papers, and nothing was deducted from or added to any of the totals. (3) For such a mistake as your correspondent describes, I should myself have deducted about one-sixth of one mark. The truth is that the legend mistakes the Cambridge examiner, who, on the one hand, understands that supposed enormities are often oversights, in no way indicative of the quality of the candidate, and, on the other hand, that it is not necessary to punish the hardened offender artificially, because he perpetually punislies himself. When I was an undepgraduate, it was rumoured that So-and- so had been put down several places in the Classical Tripos because he had written Hengist and Horsa, when- he meant Hirtius and Pansa. The story which you have recorded is of the same apocryphal order. The friends of a candidate are disappointed, and they propound a cock-and-ball story of the
misconduct of the examiners.—I am, Sir, dre., H. J.
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