HARVEST OF HOWLERS

Evening Star, Issue 18399, 6 October 1923, Page 13

HARVEST OF HOWLERS

THE LATEST CROP. The school examinations which precede breaking up for the summer holidays—which in England begin at the close of July—never fail to add to the harvest of “howlers ” committed by youthful scholars (writes the •Sydney ‘Sun’ London correspondent). “Howlers” are committed by scholars attending the best public schools, such as Eton and Harrow, as well as by tho children of the poor, whose education begins and ends with the hoard school. It was probably a, public schoolboy who confused “ crossing tho Rubicon ” with crossing tho equator, and declared that tho former phrase “derives its origin from crossing tho equator (Rubicon), when people are shaved and lathered in order to make them clean to enter tho other hemisphere.” Poetry is full of pitfalls for (.he young mind. The idea that “blank verso is prose, written in the form of poetry” is entitled to a great deal of support, but there, is a suggestion of youthful impatience in the declaration that “sonnets aro very uninteresting, and show up, usually, the worst parts of an author.” “ The heroic couplet is the last two lines of a bad poem, which make a fine attempt to pull the standard of tho verse up,'’ is the confident opinion of another youthful critic. It was a.n Eton boy who summed up Milton’s literary achievements ami his domestic difficulties in tho briefest form by saying: “Milton was a groat poet, who wrote ‘ Paradise Lost ’; then his wife -died, and ho wrote ‘Paradise Regained.’ Tho following historical essay was written by a boy at a Cardiff board school;—“King Henry VIII. was the greatest widower that ever lived. Ho was bom at Anno Domino in the year 1066. He had 510 wives, besides children. Tho first was beheaded and executed. Tho second was revoked. She never smiled again. But she said the word ‘ Calais ’ would bo found on her heart after her death. Henry VIII. was succeeded on the throne by-his great-grandmother, the beautiful and accomplished Mary Queen of Scots, sometimes known as the Lady of tho Lake or the Lay of tho Last Minstrel.” Tho boy who confused Oliver Cromwell with Cardinal Wolsey scored a point when he wrote that Cromwell’s last words were: “If only I had served my God as I have served my King, ho would not have turned mo down in my grey hairs.”