GENUS HARVARDIENSIS

"An Oklahoman at Harvard", whose impressions of that ethereal personage known as the typical Harvard Man appears in today's CRIMSON, can necessarily perceive Him only through the glasses of Oklahoma. The Saturday Evening Post, College Humor, and sundry, other periodicals who spend some little amount of printer's ink from time to time worrying about this same Person are also colored by their own personal bias.

For the benefit of posterity and all others interested the following description of the sweet quintessence of Harvard, made up of the best features from all obtainable authorities, may serve the useful purpose of concluding the controversy with an air of finality that is not to be gainsaid:

The Harvard Man has an anglophile accent with extreme emphasis on the broad A. He wears a full dress with the same elaborate nonchalance that he evidences when clad in unpressed tweeds and rumpled coat; canes are permissable on Park Avenue but are decidedly not correct in Harvard Square; he wears spats under no conditions. His hat is rumpled and decadent, giving a touch of elan to an otherwise spotless appearance. The typical specie has a fleet of luxurious motor cars, one for every mood, and a charge account at the leading night clubs in a half-dozen cosmopolitan cities.

He has vagabonded all over Europe, speaks four languages fluently and has never been known to exhibit any signs of embarrassment. Every year he goes abroad in a cattleboat and returns in the Imperial Suite of the Bremen with Charles Lindbergh and Gene Tunney. He knows his James Joyce and can quote Millay by the hour. Above all, he is always courteous, correct, and an extremely presentable young gentleman, despite the fact that he has usually imbibed more imported grade A spirits than Bismarck could have consumed in his halcyon days.

Magazines please copy.

(Editor's Note--The following is the first part of the English 72 Midyear examination. Two hours were to be allowed to cover these questions.)

Take time to think before you write. Quality will be regarded rather than mere quantity.

The five poets to be considered in answering both I and II are Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats.

1. In the life of each of these poets there were circumstances and events which exercised, in various ways, an influence on their writings. Give some account, for each, of these determining factors, with a brief statement of the results.

2. Each of the five wrote on a wide variety of subjects. Give, for each, with specific references, some classification of these subjects. Draw any conclusions from your results which seem to you to be interesting or significant.

3. Each of these poets was an artist, but the art of no two of them was the same. Write (with such concrete illustration as is possible) about the work of each from the point of view of the writer's art. Take into account such matters as development of technique, characteristic methods of treatment, technical excellences and defects, etc.

4. "I have said that poetry interprets in two ways; it interprets by expressing with magical felicity the physiognomy and movement of the outward world, and it interprets by expressing, with inspired conviction, the ideas and laws of the inward world of man's moral and spiritual nature."--Arnold.

Apply this dictum to the body of poetry before you, either regarding it as a whole, or treating it with reference to the work of each poet individually.