Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 November 1890 — Flogging and Literature, [ARTICLE]

Flogging and Literature,

Toward the beginning of the eighteenth century the literary standard of the French Academy fell to a low level. According to a critic in the Nineteenth Century, a poetaster, Moncrif by name, more famous for his dancing and singing than for his verse, was recommended for election, though the only work he had produced was a mock history of cats. His reception was marked by an incident which might seem more appropriate to an assembly of undergraduates than to that of the intellectual luminaries of France. While he was delivering his reception speech, some wag liberated a cat in the hall, which naturally began to miaow with terror, at which the audience burst into loud laughter and miaowed in unison. Horse-whipping appears to have been the method specially chosen, even by princes and noblemen, to remind men of letters of their social inequality. On meeting Dancourt, a poet and actor, at supper, the Comte de Livry warned him: “Beware, my dear sir; if you show more wit than I do before the end of this repast, I shall give you a hundred strokes with my cane. ” When Rousseau said that men of letters should take vows of poverty, liberty and truth, tho Government was so incensed against him that the King exclaimed that he would do well to have Rousseau sent to Bicetre. “It would serve him right,” added the Comte de (Vermont, “if he received a good thrashing.”