retained as much as
possible. British spellings of words such as colour, neighbour,
odour, and flavour are retained, though in some cases the
American publisher seems to have made his own corrections as he
saw fit, and some words such as "connection" have retained the
nineteenth century spelling "connexion", but where a word was
obviously spelled wrong by the typesetter, I have corrected it.
The author used a few Greek words, which do not scan, and I have
entered those manually using Symbol font for the rtf file, but
substituted normal characters for the plain txt file and
indicated [Greek text] where appropriate. The English pound
symbol cannot be expressed in ASCII, so 25 pounds is rendered as
25L. Words printed in italics for emphasis are here rendered with
_underscores_ for the ASCII file.

Robert E. Reilly, PE, BSIE, BSME
Chicago, 2008

* * * * *

INITIUM

Tom Brown at Oxford

Thomas Hughes (1822-96)

Author's Dedication

To the Rev. F. D. Maurice, in memory of fourteen years' fellow
work, and in testimony of ever increasing affection and gratitude
this volume is dedicated by

The Author.

PREFACE

Prefaces written to explain the objects and meaning of a book, or
to make any appeal, _ad miseracordiam_ or other, in its favor,
are, in my opinion, nuisances. Any book worth reading will
explain its own objects and meaning, and the more it is
criticized and turned inside out, the better for it and its
author. Of all books, too, it seems to me that novels require
prefaces least--at any rate, on their first appearance.
Notwithstanding which belief, I must ask readers for three
minutes' patience before they make trial of this book.

The natural pleasure which I felt at the unlooked for popularity
of the first part of the present story, was much lessened by the
pertinacity with which many persons, acquaintance as well as
strangers, would insist (both in public and in private) on
identifying the hero and the author. On the appearance of the
first few numbers of the present continuation in Macmillan's
Magazine, the same thing occurred, and, in fact, reached such a
pitch, as to lead me to make some changes to the story.
Sensitiveness on such a point may seem folly, but if the readers
had felt the sort of loathing and disgust which one feels at the
notion of painting a favorable likeness of oneself in a work of
fiction, they would not wonder at it. So, now that this book is
finished and Tom Brown