composed of sugar, cinnamon, butter, and beer brewed without hops. It
was put into a cup, set before the fire to heat, and drunk hot.
_Cider_ was again coming into fashion. Butler (_Hudibras_) tells of
Sidrophel that he knew--
... in what sign best sider’s made.
The manufacture being of sufficient moment for reference to astrology.
A new liquor now introduced from Brunswick was a sort of strong beer
called _Mum_, or, sometimes, _Brunswick Mum_. The word has been derived
from _mummeln_, to mumble, or from the onomatopœic _mum_, denoting
silence, and from Christian Mummer by whom it was first brewed. It was
brewed chiefly from malt made from wheat instead of barley. Pope writes
of it:--
The clamorous crowd is hush’d with mugs of mum,
Till all, tuned equal, send a general hum.
This foreign drink was rivalled by Dorset beer.[160]
Lastly, we hear still of _Metheglin_. Pepys (1666) describes his dining
with the king’s servants from meat that came from his Majesty’s table,
‘with most brave drink, cooled in ice; and I, drinking no wine, had
metheglin, for the king’s own drinking, which did please me mightilye.’
It was an article of excise.
A good deal has been made of what is termed the _reaction_ in morals
after the republican spell. For instance, Mr. Samuelson says (_Hist. of
Drink_):--
These extreme measures of repression on the part of the Puritans
led to the result which might be anticipated. They gave courage to
those who were anxious for the return of royalty, and reconciled
many to its reinstatement who would otherwise have struggled for
the maintenance of republican institutions; and when Charles II.
was once more safely enthroned, there followed a reaction in morals
which has left to that period the unenviable notoriety of being the
most corrupt and dissolute in the whole history of our country.
One would almost imagine from this, and kindred statements, that vice
was unknown to the Protector and his adherents; whereas it is matter of
history that Cromwell’s early life was dissolute and disorderly, and
that he consumed in gaming, drinking, debauchery, and country riots,
the more early years of his youth.[161] The Roundheads liked ale as
well as the Cavaliers. Does not Pepys tell of Monk’s troops (Feb. 13,
1659):--‘The city is very open-handed to the soldiers; they are _most
of them drunk all day_’? Surely, then, bias must have possessed Lord
Macaulay when he would have us believe that ‘in the Puritan camp no
drunkenness was seen.’ Some prefer the evidence of a contemporary.
It _is_ possible to contrast the Courts of the two Charleses, and the
contrast is terrible; but was no one responsible besides Charles II.
for his wandering life, when he herded with inferiors? If he was a
creature of frailty and vice, he was also a creature of circumstance.
Thus much prefaced, let it be freely admitted that drunkenness
prevailed in every rank of society, and that the king set the example.
Mr. Samuelson adduces from Evelyn, as an instance, a supper given by
the Duke of Buckingham when the Prince of Orange was over on a visit,
on which occasion the king made the prince drink hard (though he could
not have required much making), under the influence of which, the
Dutchman broke the windows of the chambers of the maids of honour, with
other mischiefs.
Nor does the famous story in the _Spectator_ impress us with his bias
towards temperance. The king had been dining with the Lord Mayor
at Guildhall, where his cups did not prevent his observing that
conviviality had occasioned familiarity; whereupon, with an abrupt
farewell, he left the banquet. The mayor pursued the monarch, overtook
him in the courtyard, and swore that he should not go till they had
‘drunk t’other bottle!’ The airy monarch looked kindly at him over his
shoulder, and, with a smile and graceful air, repeated the line of the
old song:--
And the man that is drunk is as great as a king!
and immediately turned back and complied with his host’s bidding.
But the veil is more thoroughly lifted by Pepys, who notes:--
_September 23, 1667._--With Sir H. Cholmly to Westminster; who by
the way told me how merry the King and Duke of York and Court
were the other day, when they were abroad a-hunting. They came to
Sir G. Cartaret’s house at Cranbourne, and there were entertained
and all made drunk; and, being all drunk, Armerer did come to the
king, and swore to him ‘By God, sir,’ says he, ‘you are not so
kind to the Duke of York of late as you used to be.’ ‘Not I?’ says
the king. ‘Why so?’ ‘Why,’ says he, ‘if you are, let us drink his
health.’ ‘Why let us,’ says the king. Then he fell on his knees and
drank it; and having done, the king began to drink it. ‘Nay, sir,’
says Armerer, ‘by God, you must do it on your knees!’ So he did,
and then all the company: and having done it, all fell a-crying
for joy, being all maudlin and kissing one another, the king the
Duke of York, and the Duke of York the king; and in such a maudlin
pickle as never people were: and so passed the day.
Again he writes (1661):--
At Court things are in very ill condition, there being so much
emulacion, poverty, and the vices of drinking, swearing, and loose
amours, that I know not what will be the end of it but confusion.
Two of the notables about Court have already been alluded to.
Rochester--that is, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester--in the language
of Dr. Johnson, ‘blazed out his youth and his health in lavish
voluptuousness,’ dying at the age of thirty-three. Some lines of his
favour the notion that the origin of the term _toasting_, as given in
the _Tatler_, may be the correct one. They are:--
Make it so large that, fill’d with sack
Up to the swelling brim,
Vast _toasts_ on the delicious lake,
Like ships at sea, may swim.
A confirmation of the same may be derived from a verse of Warton:--
My sober evening let the tankard bless,
With _toast_ embrown’d, and fragrant nutmeg fraught,
While the rich draught, with oft-repeated whiffs,
Tobacco mild improves.
Of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, the criticism of Dryden must
suffice--lines well known:--
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
Was everything by starts and nothing long.
But in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon.
Then all for women, paintings, rhyming, drinking,
Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.
Another drinking notoriety was Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset (_n._
1637, _ob._ 1684).
One of his frolics [says Dr. Johnson] has by the industry of Wood
come down to posterity. Sackville, who was then Lord Buckhurst,
with Sir Charles Sedley and Sir Thomas Ogle, got drunk at the Cock
in Bow Street, by Covent Garden, and going into the balcony utterly
disgraced themselves. The public indignation was awakened; the
crowd attempted to force the door, and being repulsed drove in the
performers with stones, and broke the windows of the house. For
this misdemeanour they were indicted, and Sedley was fined five
hundred pounds: what was the sentence of the others is not known.
Sedley employed Killigrew and another to procure a remission from
the king; but (mark the friendship of the dissolute) they begged
the fine for themselves, and exacted it to the last groat.
Lord Macaulay, in his _History of England_, chap. vi. has the following
description of the same disgraceful event:--
The morals of Sedley were such as even in that age gave great
scandal. He on one occasion, after a wild revel, exhibited himself
without a shred of clothing in the balcony of a tavern near Covent
Garden, and harangued the people who were passing in language
so indecent and profane that he was driven in by a shower of
brickbats, was prosecuted for a misdemeanour, was sentenced to a
heavy fine, and was reprimanded by the Court of King’s Bench in the
most cutting terms.
It is perfectly clear that the higher motives for restraint were
lacking, though expediency acted as a curb upon occasions. The
following passage from Evelyn’s _Diary_ will serve as an illustration:--
_October 30, 1682._--I was invited to dine with Mons. Lionberg,
the Swedish Resident, who made a magnificent entertainment, it
being the birthday of his king. There dined the Duke of Albemarle,
D. of Hamilton, Earle of Bathe, E. of Aylesbury, Lord Arran, Lord
Castlehaven, the sonn of him who was executed 50 yeares before, and
several greate persons. I was exceeding afraide of drinking (it
being a Dutch feast), _but the Duke of Albemarle, being that night
to waite on his Majestie, excesse was prohibited_; and to prevent
all, I stole away and left the company as soone as we rose from
table.
[Italics not in the original.]
From the same author we find that the same vice beset women of rank.
The Duchess of Mazarine, he observes, is reported to have hastened her
death by intemperate drinking of strong spirits.
The Lower House of Parliament seems to have been infected with the
moral distemper. Evelyn writes:--
_December 19, 1666._--Among other things Sir R. Ford did make
me understand how the House of Commons is a beast not to be
understood, it being impossible to know beforehand the success
almost of any small plain thing.... He did tell me, and so did Sir
W. Batten, how Sir Allen Brodericke and Sir Allen Apsly did come
drunk the other day into the House, and did both speak for half
an hour together, and could not be either laughed, or pulled, or
bid to sit down and hold their peace, to the great contempt of the
king’s servants and cause; which I am grieved at with all my heart.
(What made this worse was that Sir Allen Brodericke was an
official--Surveyor-General in Ireland to his Majesty.)
But there was a vast amount of drinking that is really intemperance,
though it passes under another name. Very apposite are the words of a
contemporary, Sir William Temple:--
Temperance, that virtue without pride, and fortune without envy;
... the best guardian of youth, and support of old age; the precept
of reason as well as religion; and physician of the soul as well
as the body; the tutelar goddess of health, and universal medicine
of life, that clears the head and cleanses the blood, that eases
the stomach, and purges the bowels, that strengthens the nerves,
enlightens the eyes, and comforts the heart; in a word, that
secures and perfects the digestion.... I do not allow the pretence
of temperance to all such as are seldom or never drunk, or fall
into surfeits; for men may lose their health without losing their
senses, and be intemperate every day, without being drunk perhaps
once in their lives; nay, for aught I know, if a man should pass
the month in a college diet, without excess or variety of meats or
of drinks, but only the last day give a loose in them both, and
so far till it comes to serve him for physic rather than food,
and he utter his stomach as well as his heart, he may perhaps, as
to the mere considerations of health, do much better than another
that eats every day ... in plenty and luxury, with great variety
of meats, and a dozen glasses of wine at a meal, still spurring up
appetite when it would lie down of itself; flushed every day, but
never drunk.[162]
It is refreshing in reading Johnson’s _Lives_ to come upon a poet
really free from a suspicion of fondness for drink. Such a one was
Edmund Waller, born 1605, died 1687. Would he have lived so long had he
been a drink-hard? Johnson remarks of him:--
In the first parliament summoned by Charles the Second (March 8,
1661) Waller sat for Hastings, in Sussex, and served for different
places in all the parliaments of that reign. In a time when fancy
and gaiety were the most powerful recommendations to regard, it is
not likely that Waller was forgotten. He passed his time in the
company that was highest both in rank and wit, from which even his
obstinate sobriety did not exclude him. Though he drank water,
he was enabled by his fertility of mind to heighten the mirth
of Bacchanalian assemblies; and Mr. Saville said that ‘no man in
England should keep him company without drinking but Ned Waller.’
An excellent companion for the poet would have been Guy, Earl of
Warwick, in whose ‘Tragical History’ occur the lines:--
_Phillis._ Give me some bread. I prithee, father, eat.
_Guy._ Give me brown bread, for that’s a pilgrim’s meat.
_Phillis._ Reach me some wine; good father, taste of this.
_Guy._ Give me cold water, that my comfort is.
I tell you, Lady, your great Lord and I
Have thought ourselves as happy as a king,
To drink the water of a christal spring.
_Coffee_ came into general use in England, according to John Evelyn
(_Diary_), about 1667. But he records, under date May 1637, that ‘one
Nathaniel Conopios, out of Greece, from Cyrill, the Patriarch of
Constantinople, was the first he ever saw drink coffee.’
Tea became a fashionable beverage in England soon after the marriage of
Catharine of Braganza with Charles II. It was not exactly introduced by
her, as it was procurable in London some months, at any rate, before
her marriage; for Pepys writes:--‘_Sept. 28, 1660._--I did send for a
cup of tea (a China drink), of which I never had drank before.’ Yet
she set the fashion for the use of it. Strickland rightly considers
that the use of these simple luxuries, tea, coffee, and chocolate,
had gradually a beneficial influence on the manners of all classes of
society, by forming a counter-charm against habits of intoxication.
Waller wrote a complimentary poem on the queen, commending tea, in
which are the lines:--
The best of Queens and best of herbs we owe
To that bold nation, who the way did show
To the fair region where the sun doth rise.
All sorts of things have been scribbled about it, good, bad, and
indifferent. The same Waller writes:--
The Muses’ friend, _Tea_, does our fancy aid,
Repress the vapours which the head invade,
And keeps the palace of the soul serene.
Young could write, on the other hand:--
_Tea_; how I tremble at thy fatal stream!
As Lethe, dreadful to the love of fame.
What devastations on thy banks are seen!
What shades of mighty names which once have been!
A hecatomb of characters supplies
Thy painted altars’ daily sacrifice.
In sympathy with Young would be Dr. Parr, in the well-known line of
gallantry:--
Nec _tea_-cum possum vivere, nec sine te.
or, in mother tongue--
When failing tea, my soul and body thrive,
But failing thee, no longer I survive.
The epigram is still more severe:--
If wine be poison, so is Tea--but in another shape--
What matter whether we are kill’d by canister or grape?
We still plump for tea.
One word before leaving the drink of the Restoration. Some may be
curious to inquire the nature of their cups. Pepys, telling of his
dining at the Lord Mayor’s banquet, says:--
Plenty of wine of all sorts; but it was very unpleasing that we
had no napkins nor change of trenchers, and drunk out of earthen
pitchers and wooden dishes (cups).
Chaffers remarks that probably pitchers and large pots were usually
made of earth and leather, while the cups, or dishes, out of which the
liquor was drunk, were of ash; or sometimes, among the more opulent,
from cups or tankards of silver:--
His cupboard’s head six earthen pitchers graced,
Beneath them was his trusty tankard placed.
Dryden’s _Juvenal_.
It may be here mentioned that Dryden immensely prided himself on
his Bacchanalian song entitled _Alexander’s Feast_. He wrote to his
publisher, ‘I am glad to hear from all hands that my ode is esteemed
the best of all my poetry.’ Stanza III. is a sufficient specimen:--
The praise of Bacchus then the sweet Musician sung,
Of Bacchus ever fair and ever young:
The jolly god in triumph comes;
Sound the trumpets; beat the drums!
Flush’d with a purple grace
He shows his honest face.
Now give the hautboys breath; he comes, he comes!
Bacchus, ever fair and young,
Drinking joys did first ordain:
Bacchus’ blessings are a treasure,
Drinking is the soldiers’ pleasure:
Rich the treasure,
Sweet the pleasure,
Sweet is pleasure after pain.
_Legislation._
The Wine Acts of Car. II. were those known as 12 Charles and 22 & 23
Charles. Early in his reign he issued that remarkable proclamation,
which could not but reflect on his favourite companions and strongly
mark the moral disorders of those depraved times.[163] It is against
‘vicious, debauch’d, and profane persons,’ who are thus described:--
A sort of men of whom we are sufficiently ashamed, who spend their
time in taverns, tippling-houses, and debauches, giving no other
evidence of their affection to us but in drinking our health, and
inveighing against all others who are not of their own dissolute
temper; and who in truth have more discredited our cause by the
license of their manners and lives, than they could ever advance it
by their affection or courage. We hope all persons of honour, or
in place and authority, will so far assist us in discountenancing
such men, that their discretion and shame will persuade them to
reform what their conscience would not; and that the displeasure
of good men towards them may supply what the laws have not, and,
it may be, cannot well provide against; there being by the license
and corruption of the times, and the depraved nature of man, many
enormities, scandals, and impieties, which laws cannot well provide
against, which may, _by the example and severity of virtuous men,
be easily discountenanced and by degrees suppressed_.
Blackstone, speaking of the king’s ordinary revenue, observes that
a seventh branch might also be computed to have arisen from wine
licences, or the rents payable to the Crown by such persons as are
licensed to sell wine by retail throughout England, except in a
few privileged places. These were _first settled on the Crown_ by
the statute 12 Car. II. c. 25, and, together with the hereditary
excise, made up the equivalent in value for the loss sustained by the
prerogative in the abolition of the military tenures, and the right of
pre-emption and purveyance; but this revenue was abolished by 30 Geo.
II. c. 19, and an annual sum of upwards of 7,000_l._ per annum, issuing
out of the new stamp duties imposed on wine licences, was settled on
the Crown in its stead.[164]
The prices of wines were fixed anew. By 12 Car. II. it was provided
that no canary, muskadel, or aligant, or other Spanish or sweet wines,
should be sold by retail for over 1_s._ 6_d._ the quart; Gascoigne and
French wines limited to 8_d._ the quart, Rhenish wines to 12_d._
From the reign of the Norman kings here, to 1660, the wines of
Guienne, Poitou, and Gascony came in, subject to moderate dues,
until the reign of Charles II. The amount of duties by 12 Charles
II. c. 4, was 13_l._ 10_s._ per tun in London, and 16_l._ 10_s._
in the out-ports. This was at the rate of 13¼_d._ the gallon.
The trade with France after the Revolution seems to have been
carried on upon an equitable footing until 1675, when one of those
popular alarms that often disgrace this country was raised, that
France was ruining us, for there was a balance of trade against
us of 965,128_l._ Land happened at the time to have fallen in
price. The landed interest was shipwrecked; all, it was averred,
in consequence of the money of England going over to France for
the purchase of her productions. Cries were uttered like those
when the calendar was rectified, ‘Give us back our ten days,’ or
the old ‘No Popery,’ ‘the Church in danger,’ or more recently the
cry of ‘French invasion,’ echoed from all sides, amid the shouts
of the ignorant or interested. England was on the brink of ruin,
if they were to be credited. The treaty of commerce concluded was
soon hooted down, and in 1678, Parliament, the wisdom of which used
sometimes to be very problematical, came to a vote declaring that
the ‘trade with France was detrimental to the kingdom!’ An Act of
absolute wisdom in the legislative sense of that time followed,
the preamble of which ran, ‘Forasmuch as it hath been by long
experience found that the importing French wines, brandy, silks,
linen, salts, and paper, and other commodities of the growth,
product, or manufactures of the territories and dominions of the
French king, hath much exhausted the treasure of this nation,
lessened the value of the native commodities and manufactures
thereof, and caused great detriment to this kingdom, &c.’
It was also averred that, in consequence, rents fell. French wine
was therefore prohibited from 1679 to 1685.[165]
We form an idea of the _Ingredients put into wines_ from the order of
12 Car. II. c. 25:--
That no merchant, vintner, wine-cooper or other person, selling or
retailing any wine, shall mingle or utter any Spanish wine mingled
with any French wine, or Rhenish wine, cyder, perry, stummed wine,
honey, sugar, syrups of sugar, molasses, or any other syrups
whatsoever: nor put in any isinglass, brimstone, lime, raisins,
juice of raisins, water, nor any other liquor nor ingredients, nor
any clary or other herbs, nor any sort of flesh whatsoever.
The excise duties on superior beer was 1_s._ 3_d._; on inferior, 3_d._;
on a hogshead of cider or perry, 1_s._ 3_d._; on a gallon of mead,
½_d._; on a gallon of aqua-vitæ, 1_d._; on a gallon of coffee, 4_d._;
on a gallon of chocolate or tea, 8_d._ In 1670, brandy had a duty
imposed on it of 8_d._ a gallon when imported.
Upon the accession of
_James II._
after the dinner at Guildhall, their Majesties were beset with numerous
crowds whose shouts declared their joy. When they reached Ludgate, a
rank of loyal gentlemen stood in a balcony, charged with full glasses,
which they discharged in such excellent order, that caused all the
guards to answer them with a huzza![166]
John Evelyn was ordered by the sheriff to assist in proclaiming the
king. He thus describes the event:--
I met the Sheriff and commander of the Kentish Troop, with an
appearance, I suppose, of above 500 horse and innumerable people,
two of his Majesty’s trumpets, and a Sergeant with other officers,
who, having drawn up the horse in a large field neere the towne,
march’d thence with swords drawne, to the Market Place, where,
making a ring after sound of trumpets and silence made, the High
Sheriff read the proclaiming titles to his Bailiffe, who repeated
them aloud, and then, after many shouts of the people, his
Majesty’s health being drunk in a flint glass of a yard long by
the Sheriff, commander, officers, and chief gentlemen, they all
dispersed and I returned.
Here is an answer to the question, ‘What is a _yard of ale_?’ Before
the standard measures were in general use, ale was measured out in this
_ale-yard_, which was a flint-glass a yard long, of sufficient capacity
to admit a saccharometer which was a test of its strength and quality.
Many of the old ceremonies observed at the coronation banquets of the
early kings were revived by James. Amongst these, the following usage
may be noted. After thrice flinging down the gauntlet, the champion
made his obeisance to the king, who drank to him from a gilt bowl,
which he then returned with the cover. The champion then pledged his
Majesty, and rode out of the hall, taking bowl and cover as his fee.
But such ceremonies are not to be taken as any indication of a
proneness of the king to high living. Hard drinking he hated. A
contemporary writes that:--
The king, going to Mass, told his attendants he had been informed
that since his declaring against the disorder of the household,
some had the impudence to appear drunk in the queen’s presence ...
but he advised them at their peril to observe his order, which he
would see obeyed.[167]
Much light has been thrown upon the general habits of the period by
Lord Macaulay, who, in describing the English country gentleman of
1688, remarks:--
His chief serious employment was the care of his property. He
examined samples of grain, handled pigs, and on market days made
bargains over a tankard with drovers and hop merchants. His chief
pleasures were commonly derived from field sports, and from an
unrefined sensuality.... His table was loaded with coarse plenty,
and guests were cordially welcome to it. But as the habit of
drinking was general in the class to which he belonged, and as his
fortune did not enable him to intoxicate large assemblies daily
with claret or canary, strong beer was the ordinary beverage. The
quantity of beer consumed in those days was indeed enormous, for
beer then was to the middle and lower classes not only all that
beer now is, but all that wine, tea, and ardent spirits now are; it
was only at great houses, or on great occasions, that foreign drink
was placed on the board. The ladies of the house, whose business it
had commonly been to cook the repast, retired as soon as the dishes
had been devoured, and left the gentlemen to their ale and tobacco.
The coarse jollity of the afternoon was often prolonged till the
revellers were laid under the table.
Mr. Lecky observes:--
Among the poor ... the popular beverage was still ale or beer, THE
USE OF WHICH--especially before the art of noxious adulteration was
brought to its present perfection--HAS ALWAYS BEEN MORE COMMON THAN
THE ABUSE. The consumption appears to have been amazing. It was
computed in 1688 that no less than 12,400,000 barrels were brewed
in England in a single year, though the entire population probably
little exceeded 5,000,000. In 1695, with a somewhat heavier excise,
it sank to 11,350,000 barrels, but even then almost a third part of
the arable land of the kingdom was devoted to barley.
More bluntly, of course, than Macaulay, did that scourge of iniquity,
Jeremy Collier, express himself. Satirising dinner invitations, he
writes:--
If the invitation was sent in a letter, and the truth spoken out,
it must run in the tenor following: ‘Sir, if you please to do me
the favour to dine with me, I shall do my best to drink you out
of your limbs and senses, to make you say a hundred silly things,
and play the fool to purpose, if ever you did it in your life. And
before we part you shall be well prepared to tumble off your horse,
to disoblige your coach, and make your family sick at the sight
of you. And all this for an opportunity of showing with how much
friendship and respect I am _your humble servant_.’
That the delights of the table were the one thing needful is well
illustrated by a cross-examination recorded by Mr. Jeaffreson[168]:--
‘You know Lord Barrymore?’ Dr. Beaufort was asked by the lords
of the Privy Council. ‘Intimately, most intimately,’ replied the
Doctor. ‘You are continually with him?’ urged the questioner. ‘We
dine together almost daily when his lordship is in town.’ ‘What do
you talk about?’ ‘Eating and drinking.’ ‘_And_ what else?’ ‘Oh,
my lord, we never talk of anything except eating and drinking,
drinking and eating.’
The habit of _toasting_ had much to do with the excesses then so
common. At the birth of the male heir to the throne, claret was drunk
at the expense of the Crown, and endless glasses broken in drinking the
health of their Majesties and the Prince Stuart at the Edinburgh town
cross. Even the malcontent city of York drank deep potations.
Rhyming toasts were then in fashion. A Court gossip writes to Lady
Rachel Russell:--‘I know not whether you have heard a health that goes
about, which is new to me just now, so I send it you:--
The King God bless,
And each princess,
The Church no less,
Which we profess,
As did Queen Bess.’
No doubt great abuses attended this habit of health-drinking, or we
should not find Dekker, Thomas Hall, and, indeed, the moralists almost
to a man, inveighing against the custom. It was only a few years before
this reign that the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Matthew Hale, left the
injunction to his grandchildren:--
I will not have you begin or pledge any health, for it is become
one of the greatest artifices of drinking and occasions of
quarrelling in the kingdom. If you pledge one health you oblige
yourself to pledge another, and a third, and so onward, and if you
pledge as many as will be drank, you must be debauched and drunk.
If they will needs know the reason of your refusal, it is a fair
answer--that your grandfather who brought you up, from whom under
God you have the estate you enjoy or expect, left this in command
with you that you should never begin or pledge a health.
What a contrast does Justice Hale present to the merciless Judge
Jeffries, whose habitual intemperance may account for his actions. Nor
should it be forgotten that Sir Henry Bellasyse, whose widow the king
was so anxious to marry, was killed in a duel whilst in a state of
intoxication.
A very important reminder is to be found in an Act of 1685, to the
effect that--
The ancient true and principal use of ale-houses was for the
lodging of wayfaring people, and for the supply of the wants
of such as were not able by greater quantities to make their
provisions of victuals, and not for entertainment and harbouring of
lewd and idle people, to spend their time and money in a lewd and
drunken manner.
An event which occurred in this short reign immortalised a roadside
inn. _The Revolution House_, at Whittington, obtained its name from
the accidental meeting of the Earl of Danby, the Earl of Devonshire,
Lord Delamere, and Mr. John D’Arcy, one morning in 1688, on Whittington
Moor, near Chatsworth, to consult about the Revolution, then in
agitation. A shower of rain happening to fall, they removed to the
village for shelter, and finished their conversation at a public-house
called _The Cock and Pynot_.[169]
A fashionable spirit in this and the following reign was Jamaica _Rum_.
When the Duke of Monmouth was being brought to London as a prisoner, in
1685, he took for a bad cold, at Romsey, while staying on his saddle, a
hot glass of rum and eggs. Hot coffee would probably have done him more
good. We have already noticed that it came into use in Charles II.’s
time. Sir Anthony Shirley described it as made of a seed which, though
nothing toothsome, was wholesome. Pope went further, writing in his
_Rape of the Lock_--
Coffee, which makes the politician wise,
And see through all things with his half-shut eyes.
Upon the accession of
_William III._
the usual pageant was observed in London. The conduits ran with wine.
The same reception greeted the king shortly after at Oxford. The
drinking habits of the monarch are well known, though Evelyn speaks
of him as naturally averse to drink. After the death of the queen,
he became more addicted to his favourite drink, Hollands gin. The
banqueting-house at Hampton Court, which was used by him as a drinking
and smoking room, has been described as a royal gin-temple. Enemies he
had in abundance, and so intense was their hatred, that, in their hours
of debauch, they drank to the health of Sorrel, meaning the horse that
fell with the king, and, under the appellation of the ‘little gentleman
in velvet,’ _toasted_ the mole that raised the hill over which the
horse had stumbled.[170] Let us hope that it was the same hostility
that accused the queen of fondness for drink. However this may be, it
is certain that her physicians warned her most plainly against a strong
spirituous cordial to which she resorted in large doses when ill.
From highest to lowest intemperance raged in the reign of William and
Mary. De Foe remarks:--
If the history of this well-bred vice was to be written, it would
plainly appear that it began among the gentry, and from them was
handed down to the poorer sort, who still love to be like their
betters. After the Restoration, when the king’s health became the
distinction between a Cavalier and Roundhead, drunkenness began to
reign. The gentry caressed the beastly vice at such a rate that no
servant was thought proper unless he could bear a quantity of wine;
and to this day, when you speak well of a man, you say he is an
honest, drunken fellow--as if his drunkenness was a recommendation
to his honesty. Nay, so far has this custom prevailed, that the
top of a gentlemanly entertainment has been to make his friend
drunk, and the friend is so much reconciled to it that he takes
it as the effect of his kindness. The further perfection of this
vice among the gentry appears in the way of their expressing their
joy for any public blessing. ‘Jack,’ said a gentleman of very high
quality, when, after the debate in the House of Lords, King William
was voted into the vacant throne, ‘Jack, go home to your lady, and
tell her we have got a Protestant king and queen, and go make a
bonfire as big as a house, and bid the butler make ye all drunk, ye
dog.’[171]
From highest to lowest, we repeat, intemperance raged. Andrew Fletcher,
of Saltoun, writing upon the curse and terrorism of mendicancy,
complains that many thousands of beggars ‘meet together in the
mountains, where they feast and riot for many days; and at country
weddings, markets, burials, and the like public occasions, they are to
be seen, both men and women, perpetually drunk, cursing, blaspheming,
and fighting together.’[172]
The dissoluteness of the time found its expression, not only upon the
stage, but among the actors themselves. Terribly significant is the
following note by Derrick on a play written by Higden, to whom Dryden
wrote a poetical epistle:--
This gentleman (Henry Higden, Esq.) brought a comedy on the stage
in 1693, called _The Wary Widow, or Sir Noisy Parrot_, which
was damned, and he complains hardly of the ill-usage; for the
bear-garden critics treated it with cat-calls. It is printed and
dedicated to the courtly Earl of Dorset; Sir Charles Sedley wrote
the prologue, and it was ushered into the world with several copies
of verses. The audience were dismissed at the end of the third act,
the author having contrived so much drinking of punch in the play,
that the actors all got drunk, and were unable to finish it.[173]
Even the offices of religion enjoyed no immunity. Apart from the annual
item of ‘communion wine,’ a by no means uncommon charge upon the parish
was ‘wine for the vestry.’ A dignitary of the Church, evidently of the
_Mapes_ and _Still_ species, thought it not beneath the dignity of his
office to compose the bibulous epigram:--
Si bene commemini, causæ sunt quinque bibendi;
Hospitis adventus; præsens sitis; atque futura;
Et vini bonitas; et quælibet altera causa.[174]
which has been rendered into English:--
If all be true that I do think,
There are five reasons we should drink:
Good wine, a friend, or being dry,
Or lest we should be by-and-by,
Or any other reason why.
Plenty of voices were raised against the current vice. By far the most
powerful warning was uttered by the Rev. Dr. William Assheton, Fellow
of Brasenose,[175] who opens his discourse thus fearlessly:--
Their Majesties, being sensible that as Righteousness exalteth a
nation, so sin is a reproach to any people; and being desirous
to reform the lives and manners of all their subjects, have
commanded the clergy to Preach frequently against those particular
sins and vices which are most prevailing in this realm--viz.
against Blasphemy, Swearing, Cursing, Perjury, Drunkenness, and
Prophanation of the Lord’s day.
He reminds that the Act of Parliament calls the sin of drunkenness
‘odious and loathsom.’ He urges:--
The known ends of drink are these: the digestion of our meat,
chearfulness and refreshment of our spirits, and the preserving of
health. And whilst it contributes to those ends, so far Drinking
is regular and moderate; but when it destroys them, ‘tis irregular
and sinful. When therefore wine or any other drink is taken in such
excess that by overloading nature it hinders digestion, drowns
and suffocates the spirits, disorders the faculties, hinders the
free use of reason, and thereby makes men unfit for business, and
indisposeth them either for civil or religious duties, then its use
is irregular and immoderate, and consequently sinful.
He refers to Isaiah v. 11, 22, Prov. xxiii. 29, Luke xxi. 34, Rom.
xiii. 13. He dilates on the sad consequence of excess to soul, body,
estate, and good name. He asks:--
What sin is so heinous which a man intoxicated may not commit? The
reason is plainly this: _Erranti terminus nullus_. An intemperate
man is under no conduct: he is neither under God’s keeping, nor his
own. He hath quenched God’s Spirit, whilst he inflamed his own.
And again:--
When fancy is rampant, and sensual inclinations are let loose,
you little know what advantage the devil can make of such a
juncture.... Wine, if immoderately taken, is very Poyson, which,
though it destroys not immediately, yet kills as sure as the
rankest dose that was ever presented by Italian hand.
A medical writer, Dr. Richard Carr, inveighed, not only against strong
drink, but against tobacco, milk, and nurses![176] And something may
even be learnt from the once famous Tom Brown, classed by Thackeray
with Thomas D’Urfey and Ned Ward, a writer of libels and ribaldry, but
a man of humour and learning, from whose _Laconics_ many a useful maxim
may be culled. The following extract is not unworthy of Joseph Hall:--
If your friend is in want, don’t carry him to the tavern, where you
treat yourself as well as him, and entail a thirst and headache
upon him next morning. To treat a poor wretch with a bottle of
Burgundy, or fill his snuff-box, is like giving a pair of lace
ruffles to a man that has never a shirt on his back. _Put something
into his pocket._
Before estimating the causes of the prevalent declension of morals,
it will be necessary to examine the legislation at the close of this
seventeenth century, with which it was intimately associated.
Partly through hostility to France, and partly to encourage the home
distilleries, the Government of the Revolution, in 1689, prohibited
the importation of spirits from all foreign countries, and threw
open the distillery trade, on payment of certain duties, to all its
subjects. These measures laid the foundation of the great extension
of the English manufacture of spirits.[177] Any person was permitted
to set up a distillery, on giving ten days’ notice to the excise. The
consequence of this was a general thriving of the distillery business,
with a corresponding deterioration of the people. Indeed, legislative
modification was soon found to be absolutely necessary to counteract
the influence of these baneful measures upon health, sobriety, and
public order.
We scarcely wonder that the king enthusiastically encouraged the new
distilleries, although the measure was a reversal of all previous
policy. From the Norman period downwards, the laws of the land had
prohibited the conversion of malt into spirit, except a trifling
quantity for medicinal uses. Elizabeth had so strictly enforced this
statute as to treat an infringement of it as a moral offence.
A change so disastrous could not escape condemnation. The discursive
Whiston, in his autobiographical Memoirs, laments:--
An Act of Parliament has abrogated a very good law for discouraging
the poor from drinking gin; nay, they have in reality encouraged
men to drunkenness, and to the murder of themselves by such
drinking. Judge Hale earnestly supported the restrictive law, and
opposed its abrogation, declaring that millions of persons would
kill themselves by these fatal liquors.[178]
By the 5th & 6th of William and Mary, the duties were raised in 1694
to 4_s._ 9_d._ on strong, and 1_s._ 3_d._ on table beer. In 1695, the
Commons resolved that a sum not exceeding 515,000_l._ should be granted
for the support of the civil list for the ensuing year, to be raised by
a malt tax, and additional duties upon mum, sweets, cyder, and perry.
In 1691, owing to the tension with France, further supplies were raised
by impositions which included in their number a duty of sixpence a
bushel on malt, and a further duty on mum, cyder, and perry.
The price of claret rose rapidly when war with France broke out. Soon
the clarets were exhausted. A substitute had to be found, and was
discovered in the red wine of Portugal, then imported for the first
time.
‘Some claret, boy!’--‘Indeed, sir, we have none.
Claret, sir.--Lord! there’s not a drop in town.
But we have the best red port.’--‘What’s that you call
Red port?’--‘A wine, sir, comes from Portugal;
I’ll fetch a pint, sir.’
The next quotation throws light upon its composition:--
Mark how it smells. Methinks, a real pain
Is by its odour thrown upon my brain.
I’ve tasted it--‘tis spiritless and flat,
And has as many different tastes
As can be found in compound pastes.[179]
We are now in a position to determine the causes of the prevalent
intemperance at the close of the seventeenth century:--
1. The Act to encourage distillation.
2. The exhaustion of light wines.
3. The influence of the Court.
4. The development of _toasting_.
5. Club life.
It remains only to notice the last two of the causes.
_Toasting_ was carried to an utter absurdity. Chamberlayne thus
accounts for the fashion:--
As the English, returning from the wars in the Holy Land, brought
home the foul disease of leprosy, ... so, in our fathers’ days, the
English, returning from service in the Netherlands, brought with
them the foul vice of drunkenness.... This vice at present prevails
so much that some persons, and those of quality, may not safely be
visited in an afternoon without running the hazard of excessive
drinking of healths (whereby, in a short time, twice as much
liquor is consumed as by the Dutch, who sip and prate); and in some
places it is esteemed a piece of wit to make a man drunk, for which
purpose some swilling insipid buffoon is always at hand.[180]
An observant Frenchman, M. Misson, who in 1698 published his
observations on England and the English, referred particularly to
the custom of _toasting_--a custom (as he declared) almost abolished
amongst French people of any distinction. He noticed that, with
ourselves, to have drunk at table without making it the occasion of
a toast would have been considered an act of gross discourtesy. The
mode of observing the ceremony was that the person whose health was
drunk remained perfectly motionless from the moment his name was
uttered until the conclusion of the health. Or, as Misson sarcastically
describes it:--
If he is in the act of taking something from a dish, he must
suddenly stop, return his fork or spoon to its place, and wait,
without stirring more than a stone, until the other has drunk ...;
after which an _inclinabo_, at the risk of dipping his periwig in
the gravy in his plate. I confess that when a foreigner first sees
these manners he thinks them laughable. Nothing appears so droll
as to see a man who is in the act of chewing a morsel which he has
in his mouth, or doing anything else, who suddenly takes a serious
air, when a person of some respectability drinks to his health,
looks fixedly at his person, and becomes as motionless as if a
universal paralysis had seized him.[181]
It is questionable if Misson was strictly correct in stating that
health-drinking had gone out in good French society. Not long before
this, Pepys had made this entry in his _Diary_:--
To the Rhenish wine-house, where Mr. Moore showed me the French
manner when a health is drunk to bow to him that drunk to you, and
then apply yourself to him whose lady’s health is drunk, and then
the person that you drink to--which I never knew before; but it
seems it is now the fashion.
On a sort of progress through the country that William III. made in
1695, he was entertained, among other places, at Warwick Castle,
by Lord Brook. ‘Guy’s Tower was illuminated. A cistern containing
a hundred and twenty gallons of punch was emptied to his Majesty’s
health.’[182]
A good specimen of the convivial songs of the Jacobites at this time is
to be found in Sir Walter Scott’s collection. It is entitled:--
_Three Healths._
To ane king and no king, ane _uncle_ and father,
To him that’s all these, yet allowed to be neither;
Come, rank round about, and hurrah to our standard;
If you’ll know what I mean, here’s a health to our landlord!
To ane queen and no queen, ane _aunt_ and no mother,
Come, boys, let us cheerfully drink off another;
And now, to be honest, we’ll stick by our faith,
And stand by our landlord as long as we’ve breath.
To ane prince and no prince, ane son and no bastard,
Beshrew them that say it! a lie that is fostered!
God bless them all three; we’ll conclude with this one,
It’s a health to our landlord, his wife, and his son.
To our monarch’s return one more we’ll advance,
We’ve a king that’s in Flanders, another in France;
Then about with the health, let him come, let him come, then,
Send the one into England, and both are at home then.[183]
And, lastly, the _Clubs_. Such was their influence that Doran even
wrote:--‘The Clubs ... were the chief causes that manners were as
depraved as they were.’[184] But it must be remembered that they were
effect as well as cause. The Calves’ Head Club was probably as bad as
any. Out of a calf’s skull filled with wine, the company drank ‘to
the pious memory of those worthy patriots who killed the tyrant.’ An
anniversary anthem was sung. That for the year 1697 concludes thus:--
Advance the emblem of the action,
Fill the calf’s skull full of wine;
Drinking ne’er was counted faction,
Men and gods adore the wine.
To the heroes gone before us,
Let’s renew the flowing bowl;
While the lustre of their glories
Shines like stars from pole to pole.[185]
Another famous club was supposed to obtain its name from the custom of
pledging favourites after dinner. Thus, Arbuthnot writes:--
Whence deathless Kit-kat took his name,
Few critics can unriddle;
Some say from pastry-cook it came,
And some from Cat and Fiddle.
From no trim beaus its name it boasts,
Grey statesmen or green wits,
But from this pell-mell pack of toasts
Of old Cats and young Kits.
In the year 1703, which was the second year of
_Queen Anne_,
the famous Methuen treaty was formed; war between England and France
again driving us to Portuguese vintages. And thus was cancelled one
of the effects of the Peace of Ryswick, which allowed the reopening
of trade with France. It was during this short open-trade period that
Farquhar produced his aptly named tragedy, _Love and a Bottle_. In
this comedy we are for the first time introduced to champagne as a
_vin mousseux_, or sparkling wine. In act ii. scene 2, the lodgings of
Mockmode, a country squire, are represented; he is conversing with his
landlady, Widow Bullfinch:--
_Mock._ But what’s most modish for beverage now? For I suppose the
fashion of that always alters with the clothes.
_Bullf._ The tailors are the best judges of that; but Champaign, I
suppose.
_Mock._ Is Champaign a tailor? Methinks it were a fitter name for a
wig-maker. I think they call my wig a campaign.
_Bullf._ You’re clear out, sir--clear out. Champaign is a fine
liquor, which all great beaux drink to make ‘em witty.
_Mock._ Witty! Oh, by the universe, I must be witty! I’ll drink
nothing else; I never was witty in my life. Here, Club, bring us a
bottle of what d’ye call it--the witty liquor.
The widow having retired, Club, Mockmode’s servant, re-enters with a
bottle and glasses.
_Mock._ Is that the witty liquor? Come, fill the glasses.... But
where’s the wit now, Club? Have you found it?
_Club._ Egad, master, I think ‘tis a very good jest.
_Mock._ What?
_Club._ Why, drinking, you’ll find, master, that this same
gentleman in the _straw doublet_, the same will o’ the wisp, is a
wit at the bottom. Here, here, master, how it _puns and quibbles in
the glass_!
_Mock._ By the universe, now I have it; the wit lies in the
jingling. Hear how the glasses rhyme to one another.[186]
Evident allusion is here to the effervescence of champagne.
In his _Constant Couple_, we have:--
Malice ne’er spoke in generous Champaign.
But champagne, we have said, suffered like other French wines from
the War of Succession and the Methuen treaty. By this treaty we
were bound to receive Portuguese wines in exchange for our woollen
goods, and to deduct from the duty on importation one-third of the
rate levied on French wines. The new demand led to an extension of
Portuguese vineyards. The demand continued to increase; the supply
was forthcoming, but too often with an article grossly mixed and
adulterated. Counterfeits poured into this country, especially from
Guernsey, and home manufactures of spurious wine abounded. Mr. Cyrus
Redding, an acknowledged authority, in his treatise on French wines,
inveighs against what he considers the short-sighted policy of our
ministers in this reign. He says:--
We have only done now what wiser heads offered us nearly 150 years
ago. M. de Torcy, in vain, proposed an open trade, the advantages
of which (now obvious enough to every man of common sense) were
scouted by the Government here, and the proposition opposed,
not only by the Parliament, but by that suffrage satirically
denominated, if not profanely, the _vox populi, vox Dei_. It was
almost an axiom in the last century, in relation to trade, that
the success or ruin of our commerce continually inclined for or
against us, as the trade of France with England was shut or open.
Well and justly did the late Lord Liverpool remark that the trade
of England had flourished in spite of our legislation. When France
proposed, in 1713-14, that a tariff should be made in England
similar to that of France and England in 1664, Lord Bolingbroke
treated the proposal with disdain. This tariff was simply that the
duties and prohibitions in both countries should be reciprocal. The
duty to be paid on both sides was five per cent. After so much of
two centuries has elapsed since, we can hardly do otherwise than
admit that our ideas of the true principles of trade continued
to be erroneous too long, that the offer of de Torcy was a just
offer, and that any can still be found obtuse enough to deny this
fact shows that there must be exceptions even to the common run of
vulgar intellect.
Of the manners of the time we have abundant sources of information. An
interesting description is given by Grose of the little country squire
of about 300_l._ a year in Queen Anne’s days:--
He never played at cards but at Christmas, when a family pack was
produced from the mantel-piece. His chief drink, the year round,
was generally ale, except at this season, the fifth of November,
or some other gala days, when he would make a bowl of strong
brandy-punch, garnished with a toast and nutmeg.... In the corner
of his hall, by the fireside, stood a large wooden two-armed chair
with a cushion, and within the chimney corner were a couple of
seats. Here at Christmas he entertained his tenants, assembled
round a glowing fire.... In the meantime the jorum of ale was in
continual circulation.[187]
But Christmas was not what it had been. It struggled, almost in vain,
to overcome the check it had sustained during the Commonwealth. Private
hospitality and festivities were recovering, but the pageants and
masks in the royal household and at the Inns of Court had received a
death-blow. At the close of the century, a revel, which would once have
been regarded as routine, was thought worthy to be recorded in a diary.
Evelyn notes a riotous Christmas at the Inner Temple as late as 1697.
Such a falling off formed a common lament of the poets:--
Gone are those golden days of yore,
When Christmas was a high day;
Whose sports we now shall see no more,
‘Tis turn’d into Good Friday.[188]
To the same effect:--
Black jacks to every man
Were filled with wine and beer;
No pewter pot nor can
In those days did appear.
Good cheer in a nobleman’s house
Was counted a seemly show;
We wanted no brawn nor souse,
When this old cap was new.[189]
Perhaps the most sensible festivities of this period were certain
annual feasts in London for natives of the several counties. The
_London Gazette_, for May 30 to June 3, 1700, advertises ‘the annual
feast for gentlemen of the county of Huntingdon.’ Another number
announces ‘the anniversary feast for the gentlemen, natives of the
county of Kent.’ On such occasions, bygone times would be recounted,
mutual friends discussed, and the absent not forgotten in a _toast_.
Burton ale was celebrated at least as early as 1712. So remarks
a writer who had probably found in the _Spectator_, No. 383, the
remark:--‘We concluded our walk with a glass of Burton ale, and a slice
of hung beef.’ Had he forgotten that the author of _Ivanhoe_ carries
back the fame of Burton ale to a date before the time of Richard I.?
And the accuracy of Sir Walter is remarkable, for, in 1295, Matilda,
daughter of Nicholas de Shobenhale, ‘released to the Abbot and Convent
of Burton-on-Trent that service and custody of their abbey gate,
together with the custody and annual rent thereto belonging, and all
the tenements within and without the town of Burton which came to her
by inheritance from Walter de Scobenhale.... For which release they
granted her daily for life two white loaves from the monastery, two
gallons of conventual beer, or cider, if they drank it, and one penny;
also seven gallons of beer for the men,’ &c. These ales were brewed on
the abbey premises, where probably the abbots had their own maltings:
as it was a common covenant in leases of mills, where were abbey
property, for the malt of the lords of the manor to be ground free.[190]
It is truly sad to contemplate the stream of talent which was polluted
at this time by unrestrained indulgence in strong drink. The infernal
compounds which were substituted for the light wines of a previous age
played infinite havoc, not only with the Mohocks of aristocracy, but
with the giants of intellect. Of the Court itself, Macaulay writes:--
All places where he could have his three courses and his three
bottles were alike to Prince George of Denmark, the husband of
Queen Anne.[191]
Of Harley, Earl of Oxford, who was successively Speaker of the House of
Commons, Secretary of State, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Lord High
Treasurer, and who will always be remembered as the collector of the
Harleian Manuscripts, the same author, Macaulay, writes, that he was in
the habit of ‘flustering himself daily with claret, which was hardly
considered as a fault by his contemporaries.’[192]
Among the reasons given by the queen to the cabinet for dismissing her
Lord Treasurer, she alleges that he neglected all business, was seldom
to be understood; that when he did explain himself, she could not
depend upon the truth of what he said; that he never came to her at
the time she appointed: that he often came drunk.[193]
Notorious as a drunkard in high places was Lord Mohun, who was twice
tried for committing murder whilst in a state of intoxication. The duel
between this lord and the Duke of Hamilton--the wives of whom were
sisters at variance--is spoken of as probably the last of the kind
where the seconds were expected to engage as well as the principals,
and fight to the death.
There is a wide discrepancy between the writings and the reputed
actions of Joseph Addison. He was fond of wine, and indulged in it. His
contemporary, Swift, acknowledges the weakness. Dr. Johnson does not
conceal it. Macaulay laments the fact, Thackeray glories in it.[194]
His biographer, Miss Aikin, is almost singular in trying to defend him
from the imputation. She refers to the tone and temper, the correctness
of taste and judgment, of his writings in proof of his sobriety, and
doubts whether a man stained with the vice of intoxication would have
dared to write the essay on drunkenness in the _Spectator_ [No. 569].
But the facts leave no room for doubt. He was from his youth a great
man for toasts. Verses are extant, in honour of King William, from
which we learn that it was his custom to toast that king in bumpers of
wine. In a letter written at the age of 31 (1703), ‘to Mr. Wyche, his
Majesty’s Resident at Hambourg,’ he says:--
My hand, at present, begins to grow steady enough for a letter, so
the properest use I can put it to is to thank ye honest gentleman
that set it a-shaking.... As your company made our stay at
Hambourg agreeable, your wine has given us all ye satisfaction
that we have found in our journey through Westphalia. If drinking
your health will do you any good, we may expect to be as long-lived
as Methusaleh--or, to use a more familiar instance, as ye hoc in ye
cellar.
So much from himself. Dr. Johnson remarks of him:--
He studied all morning; then dined at a tavern; and went afterwards
to Button’s.
Button had been a servant in the Countess of Warwick’s family,
who, under the patronage of Addison, kept a coffee-house on the
south side of Russell Street, about two doors from Covent Garden.
Here it was that the wits of that time used to assemble. It is
said when Addison had suffered any vexation from the countess, he
withdrew the company from Button’s house. From the coffee-house
he went again to a tavern, where he often sat late, and drank too
much wine. In the bottle discontent seeks for comfort, cowardice
for courage, and bashfulness for confidence. It is not unlikely
that Addison was first seduced to excess by the manumission
which he obtained from the servile timidity of his sober hours.
He that feels oppression from the presence of those to whom he
knows himself superior, will desire to set loose his powers of
conversation; and who that ever asked succours from Bacchus was
able to preserve himself from being enslaved by his auxiliary?
And yet this was the man who could declare that ‘temperance and
abstinence, faith and devotion, are in themselves, perhaps, as
laudable as any other virtues.’[195] His essay on Drunkenness, in the
_Spectator_, might well have proceeded from the pen of Hall or Taylor,
Decker or Wither. He exclaims:--
A drunken man is a greater monster than any that is to be found
among all the creatures which God has made: as indeed there is no
character which appears more despicable and deformed, in the eyes
of all reasonable persons, than that of a drunkard.... This vice
has very fatal effects on the mind, the body, and fortune of the
person who is devoted to it. In regard to the mind, it first of
all discovers every flaw in it. The sober man, by the strength of
reason, may keep under and subdue every vice or folly to which he
is most inclined; but wine makes every latent seed sprout up in the
soul, and shew itself; it gives fury to the passions, and force
to those objects which are apt to produce them. Wine heightens
indifference into love, love into jealousy, and jealousy into
madness. It often turns the good-natured man into an idiot, and the
choleric into an assassin. It gives bitterness to resentment, it
makes vanity insupportable, and displays every little spot of the
soul in its utmost deformity.
And more to the same effect. But a passage of his, to be found
elsewhere, is far more terribly telling:--
Death, the King of Terrors, was determined to choose a Prime
Minister; and his pale courtiers, the ghastly train of diseases,
were all summoned to attend, when each preferred his claim to the
honour of this illustrious office. Fever urged the numbers he had
destroyed; Cold Palsy set forth his pretensions by shaking all
his limbs; Gout hobbled up and alleged his great power of racking
every joint; and Asthma’s inability to speak was a strong though
silent argument in favor of his claim; Stone and Colic pleaded
their violence; Plague his rapid progress in destruction; and
Consumption, though slow, insisted that he was sure. In the midst
of this contention the court was disturbed with the noise of
music, dancing, feasting, and revelry: when immediately entered a
lady, with a bold lascivious air and flushed countenance. She was
attended, on the one hand, by a troop of bacchanals, and on the
other by a train of wanton youths and damsels who danced half naked
to the softest musical instruments. Her name was Intemperance. She
waved her hand, and thus addressed the crowd of diseases:--‘Give
way, ye sickly band of pretenders, nor dare to vie with my superior
merits in the service of this monarch; am I not your Queen? Do
ye not receive your power of shortening human life almost wholly
from me? Who then so fit as myself for this important office?’ The
grisly monarch grinned a smile of approbation, placed her on his
right hand, and she immediately became his principal favourite and
Prime Minister.
Addison did another good service in exposing, in the Tatler,--
_Adulteration_.
He says (No. 131):--
There is in this city a certain fraternity of chemical operators,
who work underground in holes, caverns, and dark retirements,
to conceal their mysteries from the eyes and observation of
mankind. These subterraneous philosophers are daily employed in
the transmutation of liquors, and, by the power of magical drugs
and incantations, raising under the streets of London the choicest
products of the hills and valleys of France. They can squeeze
Bordeaux out of the sloe, and draw Champagne from an apple. Virgil,
in that remarkable prophecy,
Incultisque rubens pendebit sentibus uva.
Virg., Ecl. iv. 29.
(The ripening grape shall hang on every thorn),
seems to have hinted at this art, which can turn a plantation of
northern hedges into a vineyard. These adepts are known among one
another by the name of _wine-brewers_; and, I am afraid, do great
injury, not only to her Majesty’s customs, but to the bodies of
many of her good subjects.
But adulteration was no new expedient. In the reign of Edward III., a
law was enacted, imposing penalties on adulterations, and directing
that an essay of all the wines imported should be made, at least twice
a year in every town.
In 1426, Sir John Rainewell, mayor, received information that the
Lombard merchants were guilty of malpractices in the adulteration of
wines; upon inquiry, he ascertained that the charge was well founded,
and ordered that the noxious compound, to the quantity of 150 butts,
should be thrown into the kennel.
In the sixteenth century, a similar enactment was passed in the fifth
year of Mary. Much dread is expressed of adulteration of good wine,
either with inferior wines or water, the penalty on discovery being the
loss of their whole stock.
And besyde the samin sic wynes as are sould in commoun tavernis
ar commounlie mixt with auld corrupt wines and with watter, to
the greit appeir and danger and seikness of the byaris and greit
perrell of the saulis of the sellaris.
In the seventeenth century Sir William Hawkins writes:--
Since the Spanish sacks have been common in our taverns, which
for conservation are mingled with the lime in the making, our
nation complains of calentures, stone, dropsy, and infinite other
distempers not heard of before this wine came into common use.
Henderson observes that according to the Custom House Books of Oporto,
for the year 1812, 135 pipes and 20 hogsheads of wine were shipped for
Guernsey. In the same year, there were landed at the London Docks alone
2,545 pipes and 162 hogsheads from that island, reported to be port
wine.
The subject of adulteration is much too large to attempt to do any
justice thereto; it must suffice to draw attention to one or two
specimens. The authorities shall be disinterested.
The following receipt for _Port_ is from a wine guide:--
Take of good cider 4 gallons; of the juice of red beet, 2 quarts;
logwood, 4 oz.; rhatany root brewed, ½ a pound; first infuse the
logwood and rhatany root in brandy and a gallon of cider for a
week; then strain off the liquor, and mix the other ingredients;
keep in a cask for a month, when it will be fit to bottle.
In the _Mechanics’ Magazine_ is given the chemical analysis of a bottle
of cheap _Port_:--
Spirits of wine, 3 oz.; cider, 14 oz.; sugar, 1½ oz.; alum, 2
scruples; tartaric acid, 1 scruple; strong decoction of logwood, 4
oz.
Mr. Cyrus Redding, in his work on _Modern Wines_, lets us into the
secrets of cheap _Sherry_:--It ‘is mingled with Cape wine and cheap
brandy, the washings of brandy casks, sugar candy, bitter almonds,
&c. The colour, if too great, is taken out by the addition of a small
quantity of lamb’s blood; it is then passed off for best sherry.’
Professor Mulder, in his _Chemistry of Wine_, tells that during the
process of wine-clearing such aids as albumen, blood, cream, gypsum,
marble, nutgalls, lime, salt, gum-arabic, sulphuric acid, &c., are
furnished.
The scientific writer Dunovan, in his _Domestic Economy_, makes us
acquainted with a few of the drugs with which beer is _doctored_.
It is absolutely frightful to contemplate the list of poisons and
drugs with which malt liquors have been (as it is technically and
descriptively called) _doctored_. Opium, henbane, cocculus indicus,
and Bohemian rosemary, which is said to produce a quick and raving
intoxication, supplied the place of alcohol; aloes, quassia,
gentian, sweet-scented flag, wormwood, horehound, and bitter
oranges, fulfilled the duties of hops; liquorice, treacle, and
mucilage of flax seed, stood for attenuated malt sugar. Capsicum,
ginger, and cinnamon, or rather cassia-buds, afforded to the
exhausted drink the pungency of carbonic acid. Burnt flour, sugar,
or treacle, communicated a peculiar taste, which porter-drinkers
generally fancy. Preparations of fish, assisted, in cases of
obstinacy, with oil of vitriol, procured transparency. Besides
these, the brewer had to supply himself with lime, potash, salt,
and a variety of other substances, which are of no other use, than
in serving the office of more valuable materials, and defrauding
the customer.
But the subject is, like the frauds practised, without a limit;
references can only be subjoined.[196]
The principal writer in the _Tatler_, that _censor morum_, Richard
Steele, was a prominent figure in the convivial circle. Wine
and extravagance were his bane. He loved drink and was fond of
acknowledging it. The author of the _Christian Hero_ wrote his
devotional treatise in drink and in debt. The arrival of a hamper of
wine could interrupt his moments of tenderest grief. The emotions were
forgotten as he sent for his friends, who join him in drinking ‘two
bottles apiece, with great benefit to themselves, and not separating
till two o’clock in the morning.’
A story told of him by Dr. Hoadley is characteristic of the man:--
My father, when Bishop of Bangor, was, by invitation, present at
one of the Whig meetings, held at the Trumpet in Shoe Lane, when
Sir Richard, in his zeal, rather exposed himself, having the double
duty of the day upon him, as well to celebrate the immortal memory
of King William, it being the 4th November, as to drink his friend
Addison up to conversation pitch, whose phlegmatic constitution
was hardly warmed for society by that time. Steele was not fit for
it. Two remarkable circumstances happened. John Sly, the hatter of
facetious memory, was in the house; and John, pretty mellow, took
it into his head to come into the company on his knees, with a
tankard of ale in his hand to drink off to the _immortal memory_,
and to return in the same manner. Steele, sitting next my father,
whispered him--_Do laugh. It is humanity to laugh._ Sir Richard,
in the evening, being too much in the same condition, was put into
a chair, and sent home. Nothing would serve him but being carried
to the Bishop of Bangor’s, late as it was. However, the chairmen
carried him home, and got him upstairs, when his great complaisance
would wait on them downstairs, which he did, and then was got
quietly to bed.
One of his own letters to Mrs. Scurlock reveals the man:--
I have been in very good company, where your health, under the
character of the woman I loved best, has been often drunk; so that
I may say that I am dead drunk for your sake, which is more than _I
die for you_.
Matthew Prior, the poet, demands a notice. Whether he was the son of a
vintner or a joiner is a moot point. He was certainly nephew to Samuel
Prior, landlord of the Rummer Tavern at Charing Cross, at which house,
in 1685, was held the annual feast of the nobility and gentry living in
the parish of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. By this uncle he was brought
up and sent to Westminster School, after which he was employed, it is
said, at his uncle’s as server. Taken up by Lord Dorset, his career was
remarkable, as author, as secretary to successive embassies, as member
of Parliament, as favourite of the king. Dr. Johnson remarks that a
survey of Prior’s life and writings may exemplify a sentence which he
doubtless understood well when he read Horace at his uncle’s:--
The vessel long retains the scent which it first receives.
Mrs. Barbauld informs us, that having spent the evening with Oxford,
Bolingbroke, Pope, and Swift, he would go to Long Acre and there drink
a bottle of ale with a common soldier and his wife. Thus does the dog
return to his vomit. Swift has left us a lively picture of manners in
his descriptive breakfast with my Lady Smart at 11 A.M. Lord Smart,
who was absent at the levee, returns to dinner at 3 P.M. to receive
the guests. Seven of them dined, and were joined by a country baronet,
who had no appetite, having already eaten a beefsteak and drunk two
mugs of ale, besides a tankard of March beer when he got up in the
morning. They drank claret, which the host said should always be drunk
after fish, and my Lord Smart particularly recommended some cider to
my Lord Sparkish. When the host called for wine, he nodded to one or
other of his guests, and said, ‘Tom Neverout, my service to you.’ After
the first course came pudding. Wine and small beer were drunk during
this second course.... After the puddings came the third course....
Beer and wine were freely imbibed during this course, the gentlemen
always pledging somebody with every glass which they drank.... After
the goose, some of the gentlemen took a dram of brandy. Dinner ended,
Lord Smart bade the butler bring up the great tankard full of October
to Sir John. The great tankard was passed from hand to hand and mouth
to mouth; but when pressed by the noble host upon the gallant Tom
Neverout, he said, ‘No faith, my lord, I like your wine, and won’t
put a churl upon a gentleman. Your honour’s claret is good enough for
me.’ The cloth removed, a bottle of Burgundy was set down, of which
the ladies were invited to partake before they went to tea. When they
left, fresh bottles were brought, the ‘dead men’--meaning the empty
bottles--removed, and ‘D’you hear, John? bring clean glasses,’ my Lord
Smart said. On which the Colonel said, ‘I’ll keep my glass; for wine is
the best liquor to wash glasses in.’
It was at this time that the works were published of one who was at
once the creature and exponent of the times, Edward (better known as
Ned) Ward. Campbell observes that ‘his works give a complete picture of
the mind of a vulgar but acute cockney. His sentiment is the pleasure
of eating and drinking.’[197] Ward possessed two qualifications for
his depiction of manners; he was a tavern-keeper, and a poet. At any
rate his doggerel secured him notice in the _Dunciad_. His _Secret
History of Clubs_ is the authority for that kind of life at the
beginning of the eighteenth century. His _London Spy_ describes the
coffee-houses of the day:--‘In we went (says he), where a parcel of
muddling muckworms were as busy as so many rats in an old cheese-loft;
some going; some coming; some scribbling, some talking, some drinking,
some smoking, others jangling; and the whole room stinking of tobacco,
like a Dutch scoot or a boatswain’s cabin.’
Some of the famous taverns are also described in this work, such as the
‘Angel’ in Fenchurch Street, ‘where the vintner, like a double-dealing
citizen, condescended as well to draw carman’s comfort, as the
consolatory juice of the vine.’ The ‘Rose,’ in the Poultry, has gained
a reputation:--‘There in a snug room, warmed with brash and faggot,
over a quart of good claret, we laughed over our night’s adventure.’
Convivial life at the Universities may find its illustration in the
person of Bentley.
The following is told about Lord Cartaret and Bentley, in Monk’s _Life
of Bentley_, vol. ii. p. 324 (2nd edit. 1833).
Lord Cartaret was a great scholar, and, being an old Westminster boy,
especially fond of Terence, which Dr. Bentley had edited. Kippis
relates this anecdote, in the _Biographia Britannica_, vol. ii. p.
280:--
Dr. Bentley, when he came to town, was accustomed, in his visits to
Lord Cartaret, sometimes to spend the evenings with his lordship.
One day old Lady Granville reproached her son with keeping the
country clergyman, who was with him the night before, till he was
intoxicated. Lord Cartaret denied the charge; upon which the lady
replied that the clergyman could not have sung in so ridiculous a
manner unless he had been in liquor. The truth of the case was,
that the singing thus mistaken by her ladyship was Dr. Bentley’s
endeavour to instruct and entertain his noble friend by reciting
Terence according to the true _cantilena_ of the ancients.
Kippis, however, ought not to have called Lord Cartaret’s mother Lady
Granville, as her son was the first Lord Granville, to which title he
was not yet appointed. She was the Dowager Lady Cartaret.
Bentley himself ‘is stated to have been an admirer of good port wine,
while he thought contemptuously of claret, which, he said, “would be
port if it could.”’[198]
We infer also that Bentley did not despise ale. At any rate a great
quantity was drunk at the lodge of the Master.
In 1710, when the Fellows appealed against Bentley to the Visitor of
Trinity, the Bishop of Ely, this was one of the counts:--
Why have you for many years last past wasted the College Bread,
Ale, Beer, Coals, Wood, Turfe, Sedge, Charcoal, Linnen, Pewter,
Corn, Flower (_sic_), Brawn, and Bran, &c.?[199]
In a single year--1708--the expense of ale and small beer was no
less at Trinity Lodge than 107_l._ 16_s._[200]
The Fellows greatly protested against all this. And Dr. King, an old
opponent of Bentley’s, made great stock of the immense consumption of
bread, beer, and fuel in Bentley’s lodge:--
He wrote a piece of humour, entitled ‘Horace in Trinity College.’
The fiction supposes Horace, in fulfilment of his well-known
prophecy, _Visam Britannos hospitibus feros_, to visit Britain and
take up his abode in the Master’s lodge of Trinity College, where
he gets immensely fat (_Epicuri de grege porcus_) by the good cheer
maintained at the expense of the society.... Perhaps the most
laughable matter in the piece is the representation of a medal,
bearing on one side a figure of Horace, with a cup of audit ale
in one hand, some college rolls in the other, and an immeasurable
rotundity of person; and on the reverse _E Promptuar. Col. Trin.
Cant._
What the excellent bishop describes as ‘an immeasurable rotundity of
person’ seems to have been far from uncommon in the Universities in
these high days. We read in a note in Monk’s book, vol. ii. p. 394:--
The portly appearance of the three esquire-beadles at that day
[about 1739] did much credit to university cheer. They are
described by Christopher Smart, in a copy of Latin verses, by the
following periphrasis:--
‘Pinguia tergeminorum abdomina Bedellorum.’
We have certainly in Pope’s _Dunciad_ also an allusion to Bentley’s
love of port (book iv.) in the following lines:--
As many quit the streams[201] that murmuring fall,
To lull the sons of Margaret and Clare-hall,
Where Bentley late tempestuous wont to sport
In troubled waters, but now sleeps in port.[202]
Pope always seemed to have disliked Bentley. But these lines, and,
still more, Pope’s note, rather imply that Bentley liked his port.
But everybody was not a _bon-vivant_. Many were in the world, but
not of it. What a contrast to the authors quoted was John Philips,
the author of _Cyder_, a Poem.[203] And it is a poem worth reading.
Johnson calls it a Georgic after the manner of Virgil, nor does it
suffer from the comparison. The advice contained in it is excellent.
It praises use, it condemns abuse. It well serves temperance. Thus in
book ii., after praising Nature for her annual gifts, which tend to the
exhilaration of languid minds, he continues:--
Within
The golden _Mean_ confined: beyond, there’s naught
Of health, or pleasure. Therefore, when thy Heart
Dilates with fervent joys, and eager soul
Prompts to persue the sparkling glass, be sure
‘Tis time to shun it; if thou wilt prolong
Dire compotation, forthwith Reason quits
Her Empire to Confusion, and Misrule,
And vain Debates; then twenty Tongues at once
Conspire in senseless Jargon, naught is heard
But din, and various clamour, and mad Rant:
Distrust, and Jealousie to these succeed,
And anger-kindling Taunt, the certain Bane
Of well-knit Fellowship. Now horrid Frays
Commence, the brimming glasses now are hurled
With dire intent; Bottles with Bottles clash
In rude Encounter.
* * * * *
Nor need we tell what anxious cares attend
The turbulent Mirth of Wine; nor all the kinds
Of Maladies, that lead to Death’s grim cave,
Wrought by Intemperance: joint-racking Gout,
Intestine stone, and pining Atrophy,
Chill, even when the sun with July Heats
Frys the scorch’d soil; and Dropsy all afloat,
Yet craving Liquids.
When a poet could thus write, there is no wonder that divines should
have used still stronger language. John Disney, in a powerful
treatise,[204] agitates for the execution of the laws against
immorality. His remarks on the Sunday closing of public-houses are
especially applicable now:--
If they must have refreshment, why cannot they have it at their
own houses? In truth refreshment is but a pretence for excess and
drunkenness. If company meets together in a public-house on Sunday
evening, when there is no danger of other business that shall
call them away, who shall tell them the critical minute when they
are sufficiently refreshed? Except the constable beat up their
quarters, they sit very contentedly hour after hour, and call for
pint after pint, and make themselves judges of their refreshment
till they’re able to judge of nothing at all. If you still ask what
harm there is in going to a public-house for only an hour or two,
and to stay no longer, I might tell you that ‘tis enough that the
Laws have forbidden it, and that her Majesty has reinforced those
laws.
Bishop Beveridge, who died in Anne’s reign, wrote an important sermon
on ‘The Duty of Temperance and Sobriety.’[205] He says:--
There is no sin but some have committed it in their drink; and
if there be any that a drunken man doth not commit, it is not
because he would not, but because he could not. He had not an
opportunity.... For a man in such a condition hath no sense of
the difference between good and evil; for ‘wind,’ as the prophet
speaks (Hos. iv. 11), ‘hath taken away his heart.’ His reason, his
understanding, his conscience, is gone; and therefore, all sins are
alike to him. Hence it is that their sin never goes alone, but hath
a great train of other sins always following it; insomuch that it
cannot so properly be called one single sin, as all sin is one.
The legislation of the reign was not important. The 1st Anne permitted
tradesmen whose principal dealings were in other goods to sell spirits
by retail, without a licence, provided they did not allow tippling in
their shops or houses.
Another law enacted in this reign allowed French wines and other
liquors to be imported in neutral bottoms. Without this expedient it
was believed that the revenue would have been insufficient to maintain
the government.
FOOTNOTES:
[112] ‘Discovery of a London monster, called the Black Dog of Newgate.’
[113] J. R. Sheen, _Wines_. Cyrus Redding, _Modern Wines_.
[114] Beaumont and Fletcher, _The Chances_. V.
[115] _History of Signboards._
[116] _History of the English People._
[117] Strickland: _Lives of Queens_.
[118] Burton observes (_Anatomy of Melancholy_, i. 2): ‘Drunken women
most part bring forth children like unto themselves.’
[119] The author of the _History of Signboards_ is wrong in saying (p.
52) that James married a daughter of Christian IV. James married a
daughter of Frederic II. and a sister of Christian IV. Frederick was
dead before the marriage of James.
[120] Sir John Harrington, _Nugæ Antiquæ_, i. 348. It is cited, more or
less, in Lingard, _Hist. Eng._; Nichols’ _Progresses_; Aubrey, _Hist.
Eng._; Samuelson, _Hist. Drink_; Sandys’ _Chrismastide_, &c.
[121] Charles Lamb’s Works, _On the Poetical Works of George Wither_.
[122] Hazlitt, _Lectures on the English Poets_.
[123] Cited in Sir H. Ellis’s Brand, _Pop. Antiq._, and in Nares’
_Glossary_.
[124] George Herbert: _Country Parson_.
[125] _Virgidemiarum_, ii. 3.
[126] _Nabal and Abigail._
[127] Blackstone: _Comm. on the Laws of England_, iv. 4.
[128] Court of Hastings Book for Lyme.
[129] _Philocothonista_, or the Drunkard opened, 1635.
[130] For a picture of social degradation in this direction, see
Middleton’s _A Chast Mayd in Cheape-side_, 1630 (or T. Middleton’s
_Works_, iv. 44, &c.).
[131] Heywood and Rowley, _Fortune by Sea and Land_.
[132] Gervase Markham, _English Housewife_, 1683.
[133] Pasquil, _Palinodia_, 1619.
[134] _Familiar Letters, II._ 60.
[135] Heywood, _Rape of Lucrece_.
[136] _Healthes; Sicknesse_, 1628.
[137] _Gent’s Mag._ for 1791.
[138] _Lives of the English Poets._
[139] _The Royalist_, 1646.
[140] _English Villanies_, 1632.
[141] Howell, _State Trials_, vol. iii.
[142] _Sermon on Christian Prudence._
[143] _Funeral Sermon for the Countess of Carbery._
[144] James Usher, _Body of Divinity_, 1677.
[145] _Harleian Miscellany_, vol. x. Bridgett, who cites the passage,
says the letter was sketched by a French Protestant. The internal
evidence of the last sentence renders it certain that John Evelyn
was not the author; to whom, according to Sir H. Ellis, it has been
attributed.
[146] _Antiq. Repertory_, ii.
[147] _The Drunkard’s Prospective_ (1656).
[148] Cited by Timbs, _Club Life_, and Doran, _Table Traits_.
[149] _Rape of the Lock._
[150] 7th Edition, p. 502.
[151] _Ib._ p. 259.
[152] A picture of it is given in Knight, _Old England_, and Brand,
_Hist. of Newcastle_.
[153] _Works Collected_, 1654.
[154]
‘Even from my heart much health, I wish, No health I’ll wash with
drink, Healths wish’d not wash’d, in words, not wine, To be the best I
think.’--Witt’s _Recreations_, 1669.
[155] ‘I have discovered a treasure of pale wine.... I assure you ‘tis
the same the King drinks of.’--Otway, _Friendship in Fashion_, 1678.
[156] _French Wines and Vineyards_, 1860.
[157] Butler, _Hudibras_, iii. 3.
[158] Sir George Etheridge, _Man of the Mode_, 1676.
[159] _Magnæ Britanniæ Notitia_, 1710.
[160] Roberts: _Social Hist. Southern Counties_.
[161] Hume.
[162] Works of Sir W. Temple (_On the Cure of the Gout_), vol. iii.
[163] I. Disraeli: _Curiosities of Literature_.
[164] Blackstone: _Comment. on the Laws of Eng._ 1791.
[165] Cyrus Redding: _French Wines_.
[166] _London Pageants._ Cf. also Sandford’s _History of the Coronation
of James II. and his Queen at Westminster_.
[167] _Letters of the Herbert Family._
[168] _A Book about the Table_, 1875.
[169] A view of the house is given in Pegge’s _Curialia Miscellanea_,
London, 1818. Cf. also _Gent. Mag._, Suppl. to vol. lxxx. part ii.
[170] Smollett, _Hist. of Eng._
[171] _Poor Man’s Plea_, 1698.
[172] _Second Discourse on the Affairs of Scotland_, 1698.
[173] Giles Jacob: _Poetical Register_, 1723.
[174] Dr. Henry Aldrich (Dean of Christ Church), 1700.
[175] _A Discourse against Drunkenness_, Lond. 1692.
[176] _Epistolæ Medicinales_, Lond. 1691.
[177] Lecky: _England in the Eighteenth Century_, vol. i.
[178] _Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Mr. William Whiston_, Lond.
1749.
[179] _Farewell to Wine_, 1693.
[180] _Mémoires d’Angleterre_, 1698. A translation by Ozell was
published, London, 1719.
[181] _Hist. of Eng._, chap. xxi.
[182] _Hist. of Eng._, chap. xxi.
[183] The expressions _Uncle_, _Aunt_, refer to the relationship
between the exiled king and queen, and William III.
[184] _Table Traits_, 1854.
[185] Cited in Timbs, _History of Clubs_.
[186] See Vizetelly, _History of Champagne_.
[187] _Worn-out Characters of the Last Age._
[188] Marchamont Nedham: _Short History of the English Rebellion_, 1691.
[189] _Time’s Alteration_, cited in Sandy’s _Christmas-Tide_.
[190] Cf. Molineux, _Burton-on-Trent_.
[191] _Hist. of Eng._, chap. xviii.
[192] _Ibid._ chap. xx.
[193] See the letter of Erasmus Lewis to Swift, dated Whitehall, July
27, 1714.
[194] _English Humourists_, 1858.
[195] _Spectator_, No. 243.
[196] Cf. _Wine and Spirit Adulterations Unmasked_. The chapter on
‘Sophistication of Wines’ in Redding’s _Modern Wines_. _The Vintner’s
and Licensed Victualler’s Guide_, by a Practical Man. _Art of Brewing_
(Library of Useful Knowledge). Alex. Morrice, _Practical Treatise on
Brewing_. Samuel Child, _Every Man his own Brewer_. Edward Lonsdale
Bennet, _Practical Notes on Wine_. Professor G. Mulder, _Chemistry of
Wine_. Others may be found by reference to the chapter, ‘Bibliography.’
[197] _Essay on English Poetry._
[198] Monk’s _Life_, vol. ii. p. 401.
[199] Jebb’s _Bentley_, p. 105.
[200] Monk, _Life of Bentley_, i. 264.
[201] The river Cam.
[202] Viz. ‘now retired into harbour, after the tempests that had long
agitated his society.’ So _Scriblerus_. But the learned _Scipio Maffei_
understands it of a certain wine called _Port_ from _Oporto_, a city
of Portugal, of which this professor invited him to drink abundantly.
Scip. Maff. _de compotationibus Academicis_.
[203] London, 1708.
[204] _View of Ancient Laws against Immorality and Prophaneness._ 1729.
[205] CXXXV.