Place me 'midst every toil and care,
A hapless undergraduate still,
To _fag_ at mathematics dire, &c.
_Gradus ad Cantab._, p. 8.
Dee, the famous mathematician, appears to have _fagged_ as
intensely as any man at Cambridge. For three years, he declares,
he only slept four hours a night, and allowed two hours for
refreshment. The remaining eighteen hours were spent in
study.--_Ibid._, p. 48.
How did ye toil, and _fagg_, and fume, and fret,
And--what the bashful muse would blush to say.
But, now, your painful tremors are all o'er,
Cloath'd in the glories of a full-sleev'd gown,
Ye strut majestically up and down,
And now ye _fagg_, and now ye fear, no more!
_Gent. Mag._, 1795, p. 20.
FAG. A laborious drudge; a drudge for another. In colleges and
schools, this term is applied to a boy of a lower form who is
forced to do menial services for another boy of a higher form or
class.
But who are those three by-standers, that have such an air of
submission and awe in their countenances? They are
_fags_,--Freshmen, poor fellows, called out of their beds, and
shivering with fear in the apprehension of missing morning
prayers, to wait upon their lords the Sophomores in their midnight
revellings.--_Harvardiana_, Vol. II. p. 106.
His _fag_ he had well-nigh killed by a blow.
_Wallenstein in Bohn's Stand. Lib._, p. 155.
A sixth-form schoolboy is not a little astonished to find his
_fags_ becoming his masters.--_Lond. Quar. Rev._, Am. Ed., Vol.
LXXIII, p. 53.
Under the title FRESHMAN SERVITUDE will be found as account of the
manner in which members of that class were formerly treated in the
older American colleges.