Dr. South and Cowley were never flogged at college, but certainly they were often flogged at school, or they could not speak so feelingly on the subject:
"Those 'plagosi Orbilii' (writes South), those executioners, rather than instructors of youth; persons fitted to lay about them in a coach or cart, or to discipline boys before a Spartan altar, or rather upon it, than to have anything to do in a Christian school. I would give these pedagogical Jehus, those furious school-drivers, the same advice which the poet says Phœbus gave his son Phaëton (just such another driver as themselves), that he should parcere stimulis (the stimulus in driving being of the same use formerly that the lash is now). Stripes and blows are the last and basest remedy, and scarce ever fit to be used but upon such as carry their brains in their backs, and have souls so dull and stupid as to serve for little else but to keep their bodies from putrefaction."—Sermon upon Proverbs, xxii. 6.
And Cowley, in describing the Betula (Angl. birch-tree), how he does paint from nature!
"Mollis et alba cutim, formosam vertice fundens
Cæsariem, sed mens tetrica est, sed nulla nec arbor
Nec fera sylvarum crudelior incolit umbras:
Nam simul atque urbes concessum intrare domosque
Plagosum Orbilium sævumque imitata Draconem
Illa furit, non ulla viris delicta, nec ullum
Indulgens ludum pueris; inscribere membra