---- I usher
Such an unexpected dainty bit for breakfast
As never yet I cook'd; 'tis not Botargo,
Fried frogs, potatoes marrow'd, cavear,
Carps' tongues, the pith of an English chine of beef,
_Nor our Italian delicate, oil'd mushrooms_,
And yet _a drawer-on too_;[162] and if you show not
An appetite, and a strong one, I'll not say
To eat it, but devour it, without grace too,
(For it will not stay a preface) I am shamed,
And all my past provocatives will be jeer'd at,
MASSINGER, _The Guardian_, A. ii. S. 3.
To _knock the glass on the thumb_, was to show they had performed their
duty. Barnaby Rich describes this custom: after having drank, the
president "turned the bottom of the cup upward, and in ostentation of
his dexterity, gave it a fillip, to make it cry _ting_."
They had among these "domineering inventions" some which we may imagine
never took place, till they were told by "the hollow cask"
How the waning night grew old.
Such were _flap-dragons_, which were small combustible bodies fired at
one end and floated in a glass of liquor, which an experienced toper
swallowed unharmed, while yet blazing. Such is Dr. Johnson's accurate
description, who seems to have witnessed what he so well describes.[163]
When Falstaff says of Poins's acts of dexterity to ingratiate himself
with the prince, that "he drinks off _candle-ends_ for flap-dragons," it
seems that this was likewise one of these "frolics," for Nash notices
that the liquor was "to be stirred about with a _candle's-end_, to make
it taste better, and not to hold your peace while the pot is stirring,"
no doubt to mark the intrepidity of the miserable "skinker." The most
illustrious feat of all is one, however, described by Bishop Hall. If
the drinker "could put his finger into the flame of the candle without
playing hit-I-miss-I! he is held a sober man, however otherwise drunk he
might be." This was considered as a trial of victory among these
"canary-birds," or bibbers of canary wine.[164]
We have a very common expression to describe a man in a state of
ebriety, that "he is as drunk as a beast," or that "he is beastly
drunk." This is a libel on the brutes, for the vice of ebriety is
perfectly human. I think the phrase is peculiar to ourselves: and I
imagine I have discovered its origin. When ebriety became first
prevalent in our nation, during the reign of Elizabeth, it was a
favourite notion among the writers of the time, and on which they have
exhausted their fancy, that a man in the different stages of ebriety
showed the most vicious quality of different animals; or that a company
of drunkards exhibited a collection of brutes, with their different
characteristics.
"All dronkardes are beasts," says George Gascoigne, in a curious
treatise on them,[165] and he proceeds in illustrating his proposition;
but the satirist Nash has classified eight kinds of "drunkards;" a
fanciful sketch from the hand of a master in humour, and which could
only have been composed by a close spectator of their manners and
habits.
"The first is _ape-drunk_, and he leaps and sings and hollows and
danceth for the heavens; the second is _lyon-drunk_, and he flings the
pots about the house, calls the hostess w--- e, breaks the glass-windows
with his dagger, and is apt to quarrel with any man that speaks to him;
the third is _swine-drunk_, heavy, lumpish, and sleepy, and cries for a
little more drink and a few more clothes; the fourth is _sheep-drunk_,
wise in his own conceit when he cannot bring forth a right word; the
fifth is _maudlen-drunk_, when a fellow will weep for kindness in the
midst of his drink, and kiss you, saying, 'By God! captain, I love thee;
go thy ways, thou dost not think so often of me as I do of thee: I would
(if it pleased God) I could not love thee so well as I do,' and then he
puts his finger in his eye and cries. The sixth is _martin-drunk_, when
a man is drunk, and drinks himself sober ere he stir; the seventh is
_goat-drunk_, when in his drunkenness he hath no mind but on lechery.
The eighth is _fox-drunk_, when he is crafty-drunk, as many of the
Dutchmen be, which will never bargain but when they are drunk. All
these _species_, and more, I have seen practised in _one company at one
sitting_; when I have been permitted to remain sober amongst them only
to note their several humours." These beast-drunkards are characterised
in a frontispiece to a curious tract on Drunkenness where the men are
represented with the heads of apes, swine, &c. &c.
A new era in this history of our drinking-parties occurred about the
time of the Restoration, when politics heated their wine, and
drunkenness and loyalty became more closely connected. As the puritanic
coldness wore off, the people were perpetually, in 1650, warmed in
drinking the king's health on their knees; and, among various kinds of
"ranting cavalierism," the cavaliers during Cromwell's usurpation
usually put a crumb of bread into their glass, and before they drank it
off, with cautious ambiguity exclaimed, "God send this _crum well_
down!" which by the way preserves the orthoëpy of that extraordinary
man's name, and may be added to the instances adduced in our present
volume "On the orthography of proper names." We have a curious account
of a drunken bout by some royalists, told by Whitelocke in his
Memorials. It bore some resemblance to the drinking-party of Catiline:
they mingled their own blood with their wine.[166] After the
Restoration, Burnet complains of the excess of convivial loyalty.
"Drinking the king's health was set up by too many as a distinguishing
mark of loyalty, and drew many into great excess after his majesty's
restoration."[167]