He took the whole proceeding very easily; while another youth alongside of him, who for a year had been reading up for his promised nomination, was so awe-struck by the severity of the proceedings as to lose his powers of memory and forget the very essence of the differential calculus.
Of hydraulic pressure and the differential calculus young Tudor knew nothing, and pretended to know nothing.

He told the chief clerk that he was utterly ignorant of all such matters, that his only acquirements were a tolerably correct knowledge of English, French, and German, with a smattering of Latin and Greek, and such an intimacy with the ordinary rules of arithmetic and with the first books of Euclid, as he had been able to pick up while acting as a tutor, rather than a scholar, in a small German university.
The chief clerk raised his eyebrows and said he feared it would not do.

A clerk, however, was wanting.

It was very clear that the young gentleman who had only showed that he had forgotten his conic sections could not be supposed to have passed.

The austerity of the last few years had deterred more young men from coming forward than the extra L10 had induced to do so.