TOM BROWN'S
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.
HE 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 of Virgil, and the Hecuba of Euripides, which were ground out in small daily portions. The driving of this unlucky lower-fourth must have been grievous
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