Albert-Henri de Sallengre

“ There are no people in the world more caressing, more civil, more officious, but still another cup. They have terrible customs on that article of drinking. Every thing is transacted over the bottle; you can do nothing without drinking. One can scarce speak three words at a visit, but you are astonished to see the collation come in, or at least a good quantity of wine, attended with crusts of bread cut into little pieces, upon a plate with salt and pepper, a fatal preparative for bad drinkers. ”

“ You must never drink without drinking some one’s health, which having done, you must immediately present the glass to the party you drank to, who must never refuse it, but drink it to the last drop. Reflect a little, I beseech you, on these customs, and you will see how, and by what means, it is impossible to cease from drinking. After this manner one shall never have done. It is a perpetual circle to drink after the German fashion; it is to drink for ever. You must likewise know, that the glasses too are respected in those countries as much as the wine is loved ”

“ Good wine, on the contrary, has very good effects. Erasmus2 preserved himself from the plague, by drinking a glass of Burgundy at a proper season.
You see now the efficacy of good wine, which, to be in its perfection, the adepts in the free-schools of Liber Pater say, must have these four properties, and please these four senses:— the taste by its savour, the smell by its flavour, the sight by its clean and bright colour, and the ear by the fame of the country where it grows. Old wine was looked upon to be the best by the ancients. ”

“ True pleasures never can our souls enjoy.
Let us add, “3That if we did not help to deceive ourselves, we should never enjoy any pleasure at all. The most agreeable things in this world are, in the bottom, so trivial, that they would not much affect us, if we made but never so little serious reflection upon them. Pleasures are not made to be strictly examined into, and we are obliged every day to pass over a great many things in them, about which it would not be proper to make one-self uneasy.” ”

“ The earnest desire of being praised after death is an instinct of morality that God has impressed in the mind of man, to keep up society. And it is certain, that earnest desire has been the cause of the greatest events; and this ought to instruct us that the world stands in need of a great many instincts, which, examined according to the ideas of our reason, are ridiculous and absurd. ”

“ Athenæus, after Theophrastus, says, That wine drives away those irksome inquietudes to which old people are unhappily subject6. And to conclude, the divine Plato assures us, that, “Wine is a medicine as well for the body as the mind, the dryness of old people have great occasion for this kind of moistening, and their severe genius of the brisk gaiety inspired by wine, without which they would not be able to perform their part in the concert, and consequently would be no longer useful members in the commonwealth, which is no other ways supported and preserved than by harmony.” ”

“ Don’t you know, that wise ambassadors of kings have heretofore got drunk for the good of their master’s affairs, and sacrificed all their prudence and gravity to the necessity of great men, and the custom of the country where they were. I do not advise you here to any forbidden acts of intemperance, but I think it no manner of harm now and then to drown your chagrin in Rhenish wine, and to make use of that agreeable means to shorten the time, the long continuance of which is ever extremely tedious to prisoners16. ”

“ As wine increases the quantity of animal spirits, by the fumes which it sends to the brain, it is easy to comprehend that it cannot but be of great advantage to dull and heavy wits; so that one may particularly apply to them the common proverb, “Wine sets an edge to wit1.” And the emblem of Adr. Junius, in which he represents Bacchus as a youth with wings on, and with this inscription, “Wine kindles wit2,” agrees admirably well with these people. But the application of both proverb and emblem is no less just in relation to all the world ”

“ The public-houses are full of drinkers, where the young women who wait, pour wine into goblets out of a large bottle with a long neck, without spilling one drop. They press you to drink with pleasantries the most agreeable in the world. People drink here continually, and return at all hours to do the same thing over again. ”

“ It is certain that wine rouses up the forces of nature, and gives our soul a vigour capable to drive away all sorts of uneasiness. I know very well that certain morose people, at least externally so, and in appearance, will shew a great deal of aversion for a remedy, the delights of which they do not, however, too much despise. But all grimace aside. I don’t trouble myself with their ill-understood severities, since the most severe philosopher in the world has advised us to make use of this remedy ”

“ In our discourses loudly we complain
Against the passions, weakness, vice, and yet
Those things we still cry down, we still commit.
One cannot, therefore, without indignation, hear Churchmen declaim against drunkenness, while they themselves are such ruddy examples of it.
Quis tulerit Gracchos de seditione quærentes.1
With patience who can hear west-country cudden
Rail against roasted beef and good plum pudden?
If the law of prescription take place, one cannot dispute with them that of fuddling with any colour of reason, for in St. Jerom’s time, the priests were very much given to wine. ”

“ To this I answer, I am very well contented, that the world should believe me as much a drunkard, as Erasmus, who wrote The Praise of Folly, was a fool, and weigh me in the same balance.
But some will say, what good can a man propose to himself in being a panegyrist for drunkenness? ”

“ If the antiquity of a custom makes it always good and laudable, certainly drunkenness can never deserve sufficient recommendation. Every one knows, that Noah got drunk after he had planted the vine. There are some who pretend to excuse him, that he was not acquainted with the strength of wine. But to this it may very well be answered, that it is not very probable so wise a man as Noah should plant a vine without knowing its nature and property. ”

“ For there is nothing so opposite to reason as to torment ourselves in this life, that we may be praised after we are dead, since neither philosophy, nor experience, nor faith, nor any thing whatsover, makes it appear, that the praises given us after death can do us any good. It would be a thing uneasy to the heart of man, if we did nothing but according to the light of reason ”

“ If one knew the Scythian philosopher Anacharsis no otherwise than by his apophthegms against wine and drunkenness, one would take him for the soberest man in the world, but we know very well that his theory varied very much upon this point, and no way agreed with his practice. One day above the rest, having got drunk at an entertainment given by Lybis, brother to Pittacus, he demanded the prize that was to be given to the greatest drinker. With which action, when he was afterwards reproached, he replied, “Can a man better signalize himself in battle than by glorious wounds? ”

“ The faces then of the most ancient and most honourable fraternity of the Free Masons, brightened with ruddy fires; their eyes illuminated, resplendent blazed.
91
Well fare ye, merry hearts, thought I, hail ye illustrious topers, if liberty and freedom, ye free mortals, is your essential difference, richly distinguishes you from all others, and is, indeed, the very soul and spirit of the brotherhood, according to brother Eugenius Philalethes4. I know not who may be your alma mater, but undoubtedly Bacchus is your liber pater. ”

“ To this objection I answer several ways:— First and foremost then, I say, people do well to talk to us so much of reason, when almost all mankind acts without reason, so that it may pass for a thing that has no manner of existence but in the imagination. ”

“ AN ANSWER TO THE OBJECTION, THAT THE MIRTH WHICH WINE INSPIRES IS CHIMERICAL.
It will be objected, without doubt, that the mirth which wine inspires is imaginary, and without any foundation, and that, as Boileau has it,
134 “Rien n’est beau que le vrai. Le vrai seul est aimable.” ”

“ In respect of poets the world was always so sensible of the necessity they lay under, of having their imagination roused by wine, that nobody ever had any good opinion of the productions of a poet that drank water, that Non est Dythyrambus si aquam bibat; and wine was called the poets great horse. “There never were any excellent poets,” says Mr. Bayle, “that could versify, till after drinking pretty plentifully5.” ”

“ And so many fine productions, for which we are obliged to the drunkenness of the poets, make it evidently appear, that wine, far from rendering us incapable of doing any thing that is good, rather helps and incites us to it. ”

“ Sadness is in the highest degree prejudicial to health, and causes abundance of distempers. There is no one ignorant of this truth. Joy (or mirth) on the contrary, prevents and forces them away. It is, as the Arabians say, the flower and spirit of a brisk and lively health1. Let us run over, and examine all the different states of life, and we shall be forced to own, that there is not one of them all but what is 3 subject to chagrin and sadness; and, consequently, that joy, or mirth, is most necessary to men. ”

“ For if one considers, that the surprising variety of the humour and temperament of men, do, notwithstanding, in nowise hinder them from agreeing unanimously in this point, one shall have a very strong temptation to believe, that the desire of getting drunk is an innate quality, and we shall be confirmed in this sentiment, after tasting experimentally the exquisite sweetness caused by drunkenness. ”

“ Bayle extends himself farther on this idea in another place3, which I shall here insert. “Errors,” says he, “irregular passions, and unreasonable prejudices, are so necessary to the world to make it a theatre of that prodigious diversity of events which make one admire his providence. So that he who would reduce men to do nothing but according to the distinct ideas of reason, would ruin civil society. If man was reduced to this condition, he would have no longer any desire of glory; and having no longer that desire, is it not true, that then mankind would be like ice? ”

“ Monsieur Hofman believes also, that wine is an excellent preservative against distempers, and of an admirable use in their cure. In like manner, several divines believe, that there is no manner of harm in getting drunk, when it is done for health’s sake and not for pleasure. In this class one may reckon Pere Taverne, a Jesuit6. These are his words: “Drunkenness,” says he, “is a mortal sin, if one falls into it for pleasure only; but if one gets drunk for any 32 honest end, as for example, by direction of one’s physician in order to recover health, there is no manner of harm in it at all.” ”

“ And, perhaps, this may be a kindness to us, since some are so superlatively so, that should they continue a much longer space, mankind could not support themselves under these ecstacies. But be this as it will, can we make them otherwise than they are? We must therefore have patience, and take them as we find them. In short, there is no present happiness in the world; all we can do, is to 142 be contented with the present, not uneasy at what is to come, but sweeten with an equality of soul the bitter miseries of human life. ”

“ Bright constellation! makes Parnassus gay.
Apollo droops and hangs his head,
His frozen fingers know not how to play;
And we his sons the sad distemper find,
Which chills the fancy, and benumbs the mind,
When cruel you withdraw your magic ray. ”

“ The attachment that Homer had to wine, appears 86 in the frequent eulogiums he gives that liquor. And if we examine Anacreon never so little, we shall find his inclinations, as well as his verses, were divided between wine and love. As much delicacy and fine turns as one finds in his works, an honest man cannot see without indignation, but that they tend absolutely to debauch. One must drink, one must love. The moments that are not employed in the pleasures of the senses are lost. ”

“ Do not disturb our entertainment, or rob us of what we hold most dear. A friend more opposite to error than charity is a very troublesome reasoner; and if he meddles with their chimeras they will endeavour to do him a diskindness.”
We come now to another objection, and that is, that this joy inspired by wine is but of a very short continuance; and the pleasure one tastes in so short a space, dearly repaid with a long and tedious uneasiness. Ebrietas unius horæ hilarem insaniam longo temporis tedio pensat. ”

“ And certainly Cicero was much in the wrong, when he said, that “what people do when they are drunk, is not done with the same approbation as if they were sober; they hesitate, and often recall themselves, and frame a weaker judgment of what they see13.” But had he consulted experience, he would have found that drunkenness, far from making people fearful, inspires them with boldness and temerity. ”

“ You must sometimes walk in the open air, that the mind may exalt itself by viewing the heavens, and breathing the air at your ease; sometimes take the air in your chariot, the roads and the change of the country will re-establish you in your vigour ”

“ Thirdly, Besides, reason very often serves for nothing but to make us wretched. “The happiness of man is never the work of reason.” Of all our evils reason is often the worst; it frightens us in the full career of our pleasures, and with importunate remorses comes to bridle our fleet desires. ”

“ One must not get drunk but in good company. That is to say, with good friends, people of wit, honour, and good humour, and where there is good wine. For example, a man in former times would have done very ill to get drunk with Heliogabalus, whose historian2 reports, that after having made his friends drunk, he used to shut them up in an apartment, and at night let loose upon them lions, leopards, and tigers, which always tore to pieces 171 some of them. On the other hand, the best wine in the world will taste very bad in bad company. ”