Grading Students

Irvin Ehrenpreis (1920-1985), Swift: The Man, His Works, and the Age, Vol. I: Mr. Swift and His Contemporaries (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), p. 57:

Bene, mediocriter, negligenter, male, pessime represent the range of marks, and haud or vix was available as a kind of minus sign.<sup>2

2</sup> Forster, pp. 38-40. See Appendix E.

This seems to correspond to modern day A, B, C, D, F. Forster is John Forster, The Life of Jonathan Swift, Vol. I: 1667-1711 (London: John Murray, 1875), and Ehrenpreis' Appendix E (pp. 279-283) is "Roll of Students' Marks on the Terminal Examinations at Trinity College, Dublin, Easter 1685."

Ehrenpreis, p. 61:

By far the most common mark on this examination was mediocriter; about as many male's appear as bene's, which is not very many, and about the same number of negligenter's.