when the beadle turning rather pale, a glass of brandy was ordered to prepare
him for the mysteries. The scourging was, after the old Roman fashion, long
and stately. The lictor2 accompanied the criminal quite round the hall. We
were generally too faint, with attending to the previous disgusting circum
stances, to make accurate report with our eyes of the degree of corporal suf
fering inflicted. Report, of course, gave out the back knotty and livid. After
scourging, he was made over, in his San Benito,1 to his friends, if he had any
(but commonly such poor runagates were friendless), or to his parish officer,
who, to enhance the effect of the scene, had his station allotted to him on the
outside of the hall gate. These solemn pageantries were not played off so often as to spoil the general
mirth of the community. We had plenty of exercise and recreation after school
hours; and, for myself, I must confess that I was never happier than in them.
The Upper and the Lower Grammar Schools were held in the same room; and
an imaginary line only divided their bounds. Their character was as different
as that of the inhabitants on the two sides of the Pyrenees. The Rev. James
Boyer was the Upper master; but the Rev. Matthew Field presided over that
portion of the apartment of which I had the good fortune to be a member. We
lived a life as careless as birds. We talked and did just what we pleased, and
nobody molested us. We carried an accidence, or a grammar, for form; but,
for any trouble it gave us, we might take two years in getting through the verbs
deponent,4 and another two in forgetting all that we had learned about them.
There was now and then the formality of saying a lesson, but if you had not
learned it, a brush across the shoulders (just enough to disturb a fly) was the
sole remonstrance. Field never used the rod; and in truth he wielded the cane
with no great good will?holding it 'like a dancer.' It looked in his hands
rather like an emblem than an instrument of authority; and an emblem, too,
he was ashamed of. He was a good, easy man, that did not care to ruffle his
own peace, nor perhaps set any great consideration upon the value of juvenile
time. He came among us, now and then, but often stayed away whole days
from us; and when he came it made no difference to us?he had his private
room to retire to, the short time he stayed, to be out of the sound of our noise.
Our mirth and uproar went on. We had classics of our own, without being
beholden to 'insolent Greece or haughty Rome,'5 that passed current among
us?Peter Wilkins?the Adventures of the Hon. Captain Robert Boyle?the
Fortunate Bluecoat Boy6?and the like. Or we cultivated a turn for mechanic
and scientific operations; making little sun-dials of paper; or weaving those
ingenious parentheses called cat cradles; or making dry peas to dance upon
the end of a tin pipe; or studying the art military over that laudable game
'French and English,'7 and a hundred other such devices to pass away the
time?mixing the useful with the agreeable?as would have made the souls
of Rousseau and John Locke8 chuckle to have seen us. Matthew Field belonged to that class of modest divines who affect to mix
2. A Roman officer who cleared the way for the 6. All three were popular adventure stories or chief magistrates. romances of the day.
3. The yellow robe worn by the condemned 7. A game in which contestants, with eyes closed, heretic at an auto da fe. draw lines on a sheet of paper covered with dots.
4. Verbs with an active meaning but passive form. The winner is the contestant whose line touches 'Accidence': a table of the declension of nouns the most dots.
and conjugation of verbs in Greek and Latin. 8. Two philosophers who recommended systems
5. Ren Jonson's 'To the Memory of. . . William of education that combined theory with practical Shakespeare,' line 39. experience.
.
