“At the age of seven it was time for the Lichfield Grammar School, which happened to be first-rate, and he stayed there until he was fifteen. He excelled at Latin, and in later life he always claimed that the beatings the boys received were the best way to drive the language into their heads. “There is now less flogging in our great schools than formerly, but then less is learned there; so that what the boys get at one end, they lose at the other.” Less sympathetically, Swift recalled “the terror of the rod,” and Gibbon said that a school was “the cavern of fear and sorrow: the mobility of the captive youths is chained to a book and a desk. … They labour, like the soldiers of Persia, under the scourge.”10 Damrosch, Leo. The Club (Kindle Locations 283-285). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition. Damrosch, Leo. The Club (Kindle Locations 279-283). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition. ”