Few things have been more interesting to the Pickwickian, or have done more to elevate Pickwickian study, than this celebrated jeu d’esprit. Calverley, or Blayds—his original name—was a brilliant creature, well known for his scholarship, verses, and sayings. He early obtained a fellowship at Cambridge, and was one of the youngest “Dons.” Like Dr. Thomson, the celebrated Master, he is felt to be a characteristic and a real personage, even by those little familiar with his work or writings. He was, moreover, an ardent Pickwickian and thoroughly saturated with the spirit of the immortal book, to appreciate which a first-rate memory, which he possessed, is essential; for the details, allusions, names, suggestions, are so immense that they require to be present together in the mind, and jostle each other out of recollection. In the ’fifties, there were at Cambridge a number of persons interested in the Book, who were fond of quoting it and detecting oddities. It was in the year 1858 or 1859—for, curious to say, the year cannot be fixed—that Calverley conceived the bizarre idea of offering a premium for the best answers to a series of searching examination questions, drawn from this classic. It was held at his own rooms at 7 o’clock in the evening, as Sir Walter Besant, one of the candidates, recalls it. There were about a dozen entered, the most formidable of whom were Skeat, the present professor of Anglo-Saxon, a well-known Chaucerian scholar, and Sir Walter Besant aforesaid. The latter describes the scene in very dramatic fashion—the Examiner, in his gown, cap, and hood, gravely walking up and down during the two hours the examination lasted, going through the ceremonial with all the regular solemnity of the Senate House. The candidates, we are told, expected a sort of jocose business, and were little prepared for the “stiffness” of the questions which were of the deep and searching kind they were accustomed to in the case of a Greek Play or a Latin Epic. Almost at once, three-fourths showed by their helpless bewilderment that the thing was beyond them; and the struggle lay between the two well-versed Pickwickians—Besant and Skeat. The latter was known to have his “Pickwick” at his fingers’ ends, and Besant confessed that he had but small hopes of success. Both plodded steadily through the long list of questions. It should be said that the competition was open only to members of Christ Church College, which thus excluded the greatest reputed Pickwickian of them all, John LempriÈre Hammond—the name, by the way, of the “creator” of Sam Weller on the stage. Besant went steadily through his list of questions to the end, revised his answers, and got his paper ready for delivery, but Skeat worked on to the very last moment. An evening or two later, as they were going into Hall, Calverley pinned up his report on the board at the door just like one of the usual University reports, and there was read the result:—

Besant . . . 1st Prize

Skeat . . . 2nd Prize

The authorities were not a little shocked at a liberty which assumed the aspect of a burlesque of their own proceedings, and Calverley was spoken to gently by a Don of the older school. The paper of questions certainly shows what ability may be brought to bear on so trifling a matter; for there is really a power of analysis and a grasp of “inner meaning” that is most remarkable. Sir Walter has very acutely commented on this little “exercise,” and has shown that it reached much higher than a mere jest. It brought out the extraordinary capacities of the book which have exercised so many minds. For “The Pickwick Examination,” he says, “was not altogether a burlesque of a college examination; it was a very real and searching examination in a book which, brimful as it is of merriment, mirth, and wit, is just as intensely human as a book can be. The characters are not puppets in a farce, stuck up only to be knocked down: they are men and women. Page after page, they show their true characters and reveal themselves; they are consistent; even when they are most absurd they are most real; we learn to love them. It is a really serious test paper; no one could answer any of it who had not read and re-read the Pickwick Papers, and acquired, so to speak, a mastery of the subject. No one could do well in the examination who had not gone much further than this and got to know the book almost by heart. It was a most wonderful burlesque of the ordinary College and Senate House examination, considering the subject from every possible point of view. Especially is it rich in the department then dear to Cambridge: the explanation of words, phrases, and idioms.”

Some of these cruxes, Sir Walter tells us, could not be solved by the examiner, and were laid before Boz himself, with a copy of the questions. Needless to say, Boz was infinitely amused, but, to the general disappointment, could or would give no information. The answer of Browning on a similar appeal is well known—he referred his questioners to the Browning Society, as knowing as much as he did on the point. There is no doubt that this is the true philosophy of the thing: that, once his ideas are in print, the author has no more to do with them or their meaning than anyone else has. The passages must speak for themselves; they are children sent into the world—helpless infants like those Pickwickian “expletives, let loose upon society.” Among these unexplained things were “my Prooshan Blue” and “Old Nobs.” Sir Walter, with real Pickwickian sagacity, points to a true explanation which may be applied in other cases. “Probably it was a phrase which he had heard in a crowd, and had never asked himself what it meant,” i.e., it seemed appropriate, and what a person in such a case would use. This is in fact part of that “hallucination” of which G. H. Lewes spoke; the scene came so completely before Boz that the words and phrases suggested themselves to him and could not be denied, and he did not ask them to give any account. This principle, however, does not hinder an amusing display of speculation. Mr. Andrew Lang’s explanation of “My Prooshan Blue” is certainly far fetched. He thinks it refers to a dreamy notion of George IV., who, at one moment, thought of changing the British uniform to the Prussian Blue. Now, this was not known at the time, and came out years later. It had certainly not reached persons of the Weller class. The truth is that most of Sam’s grotesque epithets, e.g., “young Brokiley sprout,” were the arbitrary coinage of a fantastic mind. This, too, as Sir Walter said, “he may have heard in a crowd,” or in the mazes of his own brain. “Old Nobs” is just as reasonable as Hamlet’s “Old Truepenny.” “Are you there, Old Truepenny,” might have been said by Sam to his father, as Hamlet addressed it to his.