On Reading for Examinations by Arthur Quiller-Couch

Yet -- and I admit it -- the main objection abides: that, while Literature deals with What Is rather than with What Knows, Examinations by their very nature test mere Knowledge rather than anything else: that in the hands of a second-rate examiner they tend to test knowledge alone, or what passes for knowledge: and that in the very run of this world most examiners will be second-rate men: which, if we remind ourselves that they receive the pay of fifth-rate ones is, after all, considerably better than we have a right to expect.

We are dealing, mind you, with English Literature -- our own literature. In examining upon a foreign literature we can artfully lay our stress upon Knowledge and yet neither raise nor risk raising the fatal questions "What is it all about? " "What is it, and why is it it? " -- since merely to translate literally a chorus of the Agamemnon, or an ode of Pindar's, or a passage from Dante or Molière is a creditable performance; to translate either well is a considerable feat; and to translate either perfectly is what you can't do, and the examiner knows you can't do, and you know the examiner can't do, and the examiner knows you know he can't do. But when we come to a fine thing in our own language -- to a stanza from Shelley's "Adonais" for instance: