A student may take either one or two
(With some restrictions mention'd in a footnote)
At th' expiration of his second year:
Or of his third, or of his fourth again
Take one or two; or of his third alone
Take two together. Thus this tripos is
(Like nothing in the Athanasian Creed)
Divisible or indivisible
At the option of the candidate--Gadzooks!

This method has even some advantage over the method of prose in that it
is more easily memorised; but it has, as you will admit, the one fatal
flaw that it imports emotion into a theme which does not properly admit
of emotion, and that so it offends against our first rule of
writing--that it should be appropriate.

Now if you accept the argument so far as we have led it--that verse is by
nature more emotional than prose--certain consequences would seem to
follow: of which the first is that while the capital difficulty of verse
consists in saying ordinary things the capital difficulty of prose
consists in saying extraordinary things; that while with verse, keyed for
high moments, the trouble is to manage the intervals, with prose the
trouble is to manage the high moments.

Let us dwell awhile on this difference, for it is important. You remember
my quoting to you in my last lecture these lines of Milton's:--

Up to a hill anon his steps he reared
From whose high top to ken the prospect round,
If cottage were in view, sheep-cote or herd;