f
his first half-year at Rugby.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE.

"They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the truth they needs must think.
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three."

_Lowell, "Stanzas on Freedom."_

THE LOWER FOURTH.

The lower-fourth form, in which Tom found himself at the beginning of
the next half-year, was the largest form in the lower school, and
numbered upward of forty boys. Young gentlemen of all ages, from nine
to fifteen, were to be found there, who expended such part of their
energies as was devoted to Latin and Greek, upon a book of Livy, the
Bucolics[1] of Virgil, and the Hecuba[2] of Euripides, which were
ground out in small daily portions. The driving of this unlucky lower
fourth must have been grievous work to the unfortunate master, for it
was the most unhappily constituted of any in the School. Here stuck
the great stupid boys, who for the life of them could never master the
accidence;[3] the objects alternately of mirth and terror to the
youngsters, who were daily taking them up, and laughing at them in
lesson, and getting kicked by them for so doing in play-hours. There
were no less than three unhappy fellows in tail coats, with incipient
down on their chins, whom the Doctor and the master of the form were
always endeavoring to hoist into the upper school, but whose parsing
and construing resisted the most well-meant shoves. Then came the mass
of the form, boys of eleven and twelve, the most mischievous and
reckless age of British youth, of whom East and Tom Brown were fair
specimens. As full of tricks as monkeys, and of excuses as Irish
women, making fun of their master, one another, and their lessons,
Argus[4] himself would have been puzzled to keep an eye on them; and
as for making them steady or serious for half an hour together, it was
simply hopeless. The remainder of the form consisted of young
prodigies of nine or ten, who were going up the school at the rate of
a form a half-year, all boys' hands and wits being against them in
their progress. It would have been one man's work to see that the
precocious youngsters had fair play; and as the master had a good deal
besides to do, they hadn't, and were forever being shoved down three
or four places, their verses stolen, their books inked, their jackets
w