ABSTRACT
I have often wondered, that among all the learned dissertators of this and the last age none have treated professedly of flogging. That it is an art, I think, most people agree, and I hope to show that it is one which deserves our particular cultivation. This lucubration then shall explain wherein the art consists, enumerate the wonderful uses of it, and give some account of the most remarkable professors. To begin with the distinction: flogging is an art which teaches us to draw blood from a person’s posteriors in such a manner as may twinge him most severely without the danger of a mortification. To proceed methodically, I shall consider this art under its four causes. The material cause is a rump which rises with a noble projection. I have seen a professor foam with ecstasy at the sight of a jolly pair of buttocks. The efficient cause is a grim pedant in his nightgown, with a big, dull look, whisking a birch fascis.17 The formal cause is the nice administering the rod in an angle of about 45 degrees. For it is a maxim that this does the business far more effectually than the most violent perpendicular impression. The final cause, or the advantage, of flogging may be considered either in regard to the patient or agent in the operation. As to the former, it has been observed that there is a great sympathy between the bum and the head; and that a proper application made to the posteriors draws the stupefying humours from the cranium,18 thoroughly purges the brain, and quickens the fancy wonderfully. Besides, the operation reduces the buttock into a decent size and form, effectually hindering that immoderate tumour which though so convenient and lovely in the fair sex, is yet, I think universally condemned in a man. But not only the patient, but also the professor receives great benefit from flogging. As these gentlemen’s lives are generally sedentary, flogging is a very necessary exercise, putting the body into a kindly agitation, and sometimes a gentle sweat. Besides, here a man has an opportunity of venting his spleen and ill-nature, and so qualifying himself for the company of his friends. Moreover, as every man has some ambition, what a vast satisfaction must it be to him to lord it so absolutely over a school full of his fellow creatures? Bumbalio has owned to me that (though he has an admirable stomach) he had rather cut up the buttock of a country squire than the finest loin of beef. I shall now proceed to give a short account of some eminent professors. This art does not seem to have flourished much amongst the ancients, and I wonder that the great writer Mr Wotton has not so much as hinted the mighty superiority of the Moderns19 in this respect, which would have afforded him as just and copious matter of triumph, as our excellency in the statute-laws and divinity above Plato and Tully…I cannot help adding for the honour of my country that this art is
practised as much now as ever, there being hardly a great town in this island but has a worthy professor in it. To all such I most humbly dedicate this painful dissertation, being very sensible in how great need it stands of their protection, heartily begging their pardon if there should be found grain of wit in it, which I hardly believe, since I have been at great pains to make it as dull and heavy as possible, in order to give it the better title to their patronage; and if any of ‘em are displeased, my modesty has not suffered me to celebrate them by name, I here promise to do ‘em all possible justice in the second edition of this work upon their directing their requests to me at my booksellers. Worthy sirs, yours, to command, THYRSIS.
