This was a plain and uninteresting statement of fact, and appeared to me to require no answer. I read on. 'Fine book, sir.' 'Very.' 'I suppose you have heard of the Tom Brown Question?' I shut my book wearily, and said I had not. 'It is similar to the Homeric Question. You have heard of that, I suppose?' I knew that there was a discussion about the identity of the author of the Iliad. When at school I had been made to take down notes on the subject until I had grown to loathe the very name of Homer. 'You see,' went on my companion, 'the difficulty about _Tom Brown's Schooldays_ is this. It is obvious that part one and part two were written by different people. You admit that, I suppose?' 'I always thought Mr Hughes wrote the whole book.' 'Dear me, not really? Why, I thought everyone knew that he only wrote the first half. The question is, who wrote the second. I know, but I don't suppose ten other people do. No, sir.' 'What makes you think he didn't write the second part?' 'My dear sir, just read it. Read part one carefully, and then read part two. Why, you can see in a minute.' I said I had read the book three times, but had never noticed anything peculiar about it, except that the second half was not nearly so interesting as the first. 'Well, just tell me this. Do you think the same man created East and Arthur? Now then.' I admitted that it was difficult to understand such a thing. 'There was a time, of course,' continued my friend, 'when everybody thought as you do. The book was published under Hughes's name, and it was not until Professor Burkett-Smith wrote his celebrated monograph on the subject that anybody suspected a dual, or rather a composite, authorship. Burkett-Smith, if you remember, based his arguments on two very significant points. The first of these was a comparison between the football match in the first part and the cricket match in the second. After commenting upon the truth of the former description, he went on to criticize the latter. Do you remember that match? You do? Very well. You recall how Tom wins the toss on a plumb wicket?' 'Yes.' 'Then with the usual liberality of young hands (I quote from the book) he put the M.C.C. in first. Now, my dear sir, I ask you, would a school captain do that? I am young, says one of Gilbert's characters, the Grand Duke, I think, but, he adds, I am not so young as that. Tom may have been young, but would he, _could_ he have been young enough to put his opponents in on a true wicket, when he had won the toss? Would the Tom Brown of part one have done such a thing?' 'Never,' I shouted, with enthusiasm. 'But that's nothing to what he does afterwards. He permits, he actually sits there and permits, comic songs and speeches to be made during the luncheon interval. Comic Songs! Do you hear me, sir? COMIC SONGS!! And this when he wanted every minute of time he could get to save the match. Would the Tom Brown of part one have done such a thing?'