Page 102 - DENG201_ENGLISH_II

English - II

Notes 8. Gandhiji made a mention of
(i) all the evils of foreign rule
(ii) only the dominating attitude of foreign rule
(iii) only those evils which were linked with foreign medium
(iv) evils which were prevalent in England also
9. Idiom means
(i) the rules governing a language
(ii) the expression peculiar to a language, and often beyond grammatical analysis, but approved
by usage
(iii) the structure of words in a sentence
(iv) ornamental phrases which beautify the language
10. Abstruse means
(i) hidden (ii) clear (iii) religious (iv) scientific

ANSWERS

1. (ii) higher education should not be received through a foreign language.
2. (ii) youth should be instructed in a language understood by the common people.
3. (i) the years wasted by thousands of young men in mastering a foreign language.
4. (iv) has shortened the lives of the pupils and sapped the energy of the nation.
5. (i) that the foreign medium should be done away with.
6. (iv) young men are obliged to waste years in mastering a foreign language and this leads to the
neglect of their own mother tongue.
7. (i) a language understood by the masses of the country.
8. (iii) only those evils which were linked with foreign medium.
9. (ii) the expression peculiar to a language and often beyond grammatical analysis, but approved
by usage.
10. (i) hidden
2. Read the following passage carefully, and answer the questions given below.
Unquestionably, a literary life is for the most part an unhappy life, because, if you have genius, you
must suffer the penalty of genius; and, if you have only talent, there are so many cares and worries
incidental to the circumstances of men of letters, as to make life exceedingly miserable. Besides the
pangs of composition, and the continuous disappointment which a true artist feels at his inability to
reveal himself, there is the ever-recurring difficulty of gaining the public ear. Young writers are
buoyed up by the hope and the belief that they have only to throw that poem at the world’s feet to get
back in return the laurel-crown; that they have only to push that novel into print to be acknowledged
at once as a new light in literature. You can never convince a young author that the editors of magazines
and the publishers of books are a practical body of men, who are by no means frantically anxious
about placing the best literature before the public. Nay, that for the most part they are mere brokers,
who conduct their business on the hardest lines of a Profit and Loss account. But supposing your
book fairly launches, its perils are only beginning. You have to run the gauntlet of the critics. To a
young author, again, this seems to be as terrible an ordeal as passing down the files of Sioux or
Comanche Indians, each one of whom is thirsting for your scalp. When you are a little older, you will
find that criticism is not much more serious than the bye-play of clowns in a circus, when they beat
around the ring, the victim with bladders slung at the end of long poles. A time comes in the life of
every author when he regards critics as comical rather than for-midable, and goes his way unheeding.
But there are sensitive souls that yield under the chastisement and, perhaps, after suffering much
silent torture, abandon the profession of the pen for ever. Keats, perhaps, is the saddest example of a

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