Boy, that at my drinking-bout
Servest old Falernian out,
Fill me faster cups, and quicker,
With the spirit-stirring liquor.
So Posthumia's law doth say,--
Mistress of the feast to-day;
She more vinous than the grape.
Springs of water--bane of wine--
Where ye please for me and mine,
Avaunt, begone, escape!
Emigrate to men demure.
My bumper is Thyonian pure.
GRATIAN.--I am afraid, Curate, that if you were to take what you please
to call "the cheering glass," such as the jade Posthumia would
recommend, we should have to put you to bed pretty early. It was the
custom, it should seem, of the ancients to make a throw of the dice to
determine the arbiter of the feast--to appoint the drinking. Who threw
_Venus_ (three sixes) was the _magister_; but the _magistra_ is a
novelty; a "Venus Ebria," whose drinking law would throw all; for "wine
is a wrestler, and a shrewd one too." Doesn't Shakspeare say so? Now for
your version, Aquilius.
AQUILIUS.--Curate will say, I am not so close to the original. But, on
such a subject, we may be allowed to walk not quite straight;--a little
zig-zaggy. Spite the coming criticism I venture:--