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Lectures and notes on Shakspere and other English poets
Lectures and notes on Shakspere and other English poets Author:Thomas Ashe, Samuel Taylor Coleridge Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LECTURE VI. ' I .'HE recollection of what has been said by some of his biographers, on the supposed fact that Milton received corporal punishment at college, ... more »induces me to express my entire dissent from the notion, that flogging Gleaning has a tendency to degrade and debase the minds of boys at school. In my opinion it is an entire mistake; since this species of castigation has not only been inflicted time out of mind, but those who are subjected to it are well aware that the very highest persons in the realm, and those to whom people are accustomed to look up with most respect and reverence, such as the judges of the land, have quietly submitted to it in their pupilage. I well remember, about twenty years ago, an advertisement from a schoolmaster, in which he assured tenderhearted and foolish parents, that corporal punishment was never inflicted, except in cases of absolute necessity; and that even then the rod was composed of lilies and roses, the latter, I conclude, stripped of their thorns. What, let me ask, has been the consequence, in many cases, of the abolition of flogging in schools ? Reluctance to remove a pimple has not unfrequently transferred the disease to the vitals: sparing the rod, for the correction of minor faults, has ended in the commission of the highest crimes. A man of great reputationl (I should rather say of great notoriety) sometimes punished the pupils under his care by suspending them from the ceiling in baskets, exposed to the deri- 1 See H. C. Robinson's Diary, Dec. 5, pp. 22, 24. sion of their school-fellows ; at other times he pinned upon the clothes of the offender a number of last dying speeches and confessions, and employed another boy to walk before the culprit, making the usual monotonous lamentation and outcry. On one occasion ...« less