Richard Valpy French

“ 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. ”

“ For I never knew any man grow poor by keeping an orderly table. But some consume themselves through secret vices, and their hospitality bears the blame. But banish swinish drunkards out of thine house, which is a vice impairing health, consuming much and makes no show. I never heard praise ascribed to the drunkard, but for the well-bearing of his drink, which is a better commendation for a brewer’s horse or a drayman, than for either a gentleman or a serving-man. ”

“ The drunkard in this sense is an opium-eater; he puts an ‘enemy into his mouth that steals away his senses,’ and the fool’s paradise, into which liquor transports him, lies on ‘the broad way that leadeth to destruction.’ The snuff taker and the tobacco smoker in this sense are opium-eaters; these luxuries, as well as eating and drinking, may be enjoyed in moderation, but where does moderation end and abuse begin? That fine line of distinction was never yet traced with assurance, and the only safety lies many a league on the right side of it. ”

“ Drink, like the devil, when it gets hold of any one, though but a little, goes on by little and little to their destruction; so in my wife, her stomach being weak and faint, she first took this cordial, then that—till, in short, she could not live without them; and from a drop to a sup, from a sup to a dram, from a dram to a glass, and so on to two, till at last she took, in short, to what we call drinking.
As I likened drink to the devil in its gradual possession of the habits and person, so it is yet more like the devil in its encroachment on us, where it gets hold of our senses. ”

“ Obedience to his genius is a man’s only liberating influence. We wish to escape from subjection, and a sense of inferiority—and we make self-denying ordinances, we drink water, we eat grass, we refuse the laws, we go to jail: it is all in vain; only by obedience to his genius, only by the freest activity in the way constitutional to him, does an angel seem to arise before a man, and lead him by the hand out of all the wards of the prison. ”

“ The soldiery, as was natural, shared in the general demoralisation. They laboured under a greater deficiency than any which can result from the want of weapons or of armour. Stout, well-fed, and hale, the Anglo-Saxon when sober was fully a match for any adversary who might be brought from the banks of the Seine or the Loire. But they were addicted to debauchery, and the wine-cup unnerves the stoutest arm. [47] These were the troops who fortified themselves for the fatal battle of Hastings with strong drink, and whose cries of revelry resounded throughout the night. ”

“ Bacchus by the ancients was regarded as the god of harmony and reconciliation. There are many poisonous pretenders to Scotch whiskey; and it is when fusel-oil masquerades as pure spirit that the evil comes. The licensed victualler who dispenses such abominable stuff ought to be treated as one of the criminal classes. It is liquid lunacy, fluid ferocity, distilled damnation, akin to that compound which Cassio drank in Cyprus, of which
‘Every cup is unbless’d, and the ingredient is a devil.’
Much of the drunkenness which disgraces our civilisation is due to ‘doctored’ drink. ”

“ I am [says he] neither a judge nor a priest, nor a censor, nor a lawyer; why should I forbid the use of wine?
[Pg 309]
Do not be vexed at the trifles of the world; drink, for it is folly for a wise man to be afflicted....
The only friends who are free from care are a goblet of wine and a book of odes.
Give me wine! wine that shall subdue the strongest: that I may for a time forget the cares and troubles of the world.
Armstrong joined in the general growl at the substitution of port for the lighter French wine. ”

“ The poet fears not to tell the reader in the outset that his hero was a desperate and sottish drunkard, whose excesses were as frequent as his opportunities. This reprobate sits down to his cups while the storm is roaring, and heaven and earth are in confusion; the night is driven on by song and tumultuous noise, laughter and jest thicken as the beverage improves upon the palate—conjugal fidelity archly bends to the service of general benevolence—selfishness is not absent, but wearing the mask of social cordiality ”

“ My understanding is improved, and I comprehend political economy, I see better without wine and spectacles than when I used both. Only one evil ensues from it: I am in such extravagant spirits that I must lose blood, or look out for some one who will bore or depress me. Pray leave off wine:—the stomach is quite at rest ”

“ The quantity of ‘vitriol madness’ which unprincipled dealers push into the market, and which is sold cheaply to the unscrupulous proprietors of garish dram-shops to be disposed of dearly enough to deluded customers, is at once great and glaring. I wonder the Temperance party do not use their earnestness in the cause of reforming the drink, so that when the poor man wants whiskey he gets it, and not turpentine and fusel-oil and amylic atrocities; or when the doctor orders the sick woman port wine she is not imposed upon by a fraudulent decoction of logwood. ”

“ A great error undoubtedly in those who sit at the helm, to permit this scandal; to suffer so many of these taverns and occasions of intemperance, such leeches and vipers, to gratify so sordid and base a sort of people with the spoils of honest and well-natured men. Your lordship will not believe me, that the ladies of greatest quality suffer themselves to be treated in one of these taverns, where a courtezan in other cities would scarcely vouchsafe to be entertained. ”

“ The most advanced exponent of the conviviality of the time was William Congreve, at one time commissioner of wine licences. His comedies are steeped in vice. Congreve’s comic feast (says Thackeray) flares with lights, and round the table, emptying their flaming bowls of drink, and exchanging the wildest jests and ribaldry, sit men and women, waited on by rascally valets and attendants—perhaps the very worst company in the world. To him (says the same author) the world seemed to have no moral at all. ”

“ The sobriety of Pitt has been the subject of much debate. Mr. Jeaffreson has well said that free livers delight to attribute their own failings to great people who are free from them. Till Lord Stanhope relieved Pitt’s fame of groundless aspersions of intemperance, it suffered from drunken epigrams, and the idle tales of pot-loving detractors. Of the former, the following is a specimen:—
On folly every fool his talent tries;
It needs some toil to imitate the wise;
Though few like Fox can speak—like Pitt can think,
Yet all like Fox can game—like Pitt can drink. ”

“ There is within this city [London] and in all the towns of England which I have passed through, so prodigious a number of houses where they sell a certain drink called ale, that I think a good half of the inhabitants may be denominated ale-house keepers. These are a meaner sort of cabarets. But what is more deplorable, there the gentlemen sit and spend much of their time, drinking of a muddy kind of beverage, and tobacco, which has universally besotted the nation, and at which I hear they have consumed many noble estates. ”

“ Men come here to make merry, but indeed make a noise, and this music above is answered with a clinking below. The drawers are the civillest people in it, men of good bringing up, and howsoever we esteem them, none can boast more justly of their high calling. ‘Tis the best theatre of natures, where they are truly acted, not played, and the business as in the rest of the world, up and down; to wit, from the bottom of the cellar to the great chamber. ”

“ The powerful pen of Bacon was writing, ‘All the crimes on the earth do not destroy so many of the human race, nor alienate so much property, as drunkenness.’ George Gascoigne was holding up an honest old-fashioned mirror, true as steel, to the faults and vices of his countrymen. ”

“ Granted, that nations, like individuals, are imitators; granted, that the English in their long wars in the Netherlands learnt to drown themselves in immoderate drinking, and by drinking others’ healths to impair their own; still it is not true that in those wars they ‘first’ learnt such excess, and it is not true that ‘of all the northern nations, they had been before this most commended for their sobriety.’ For at least one thousand years before the Netherland wars, Britain had been stigmatised for intemperance. ”

“ Pitt, Dundas, the Lord Chancellor Eldon, and many others who gave the tone to society, would, if they now appeared at an evening party, ‘as was their custom of an afternoon,’ be pronounced fit for nothing but bed. A three-bottle man was not an unusual guest at a fashionable table; and the night was invariably spent in drinking bad port wine to an enormous extent. ”

“ As for other taverns London is composed of them, where they drink Spanish wines, and other sophisticated liquors, to that fury and intemperance, as has often amazed me to consider it. But thus some mean fellow, the drawer, arrives to an estate, some of them having built fair houses, and purchased those gentlemen out of their possessions, who have ruined themselves by that base and dishonourable vice of ebriety. And that nothing may be wanting to the height of luxury and impiety of this abomination, they have translated the organs out of their churches to set them up in taverns ”

“ 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? ”

“ Whether an advantage or otherwise, to the Romans undoubtedly we owe signboards. The bush, which was for ages with us the sign of an inn, we owe immediately to them. Our proverb, ‘Good wine needs no bush,’ is of course own child to the Latin ‘Vino vendibili suspensa hedera non opus est’—‘Wine that will sell needs no advertisement.’ Our sign of ‘Two Jolly Brewers’ carrying a tun slung on a long pole is the counterpart of a relic from Pompeii representing two slaves carrying an amphora. [6]
Again, our country owes to Roman influence the national custom of toasting or health-drinking. ”

“ Martin’s Lane, told me that there was a tun of red port drunk at his wife’s burial, besides mulled white wine.—No men ever go to women’s burials, nor women to men’s, so that there were none but women at the drinking of Butler’s wine. Such women in England will hold it out with the men, when they have a bottle before them, as well as upon the other occasion, and battle infinitely better than they. ”

“ From the social man of letters, we turn to one who moved in a far wider circle; who, in Byron’s opinion, wrote the best comedy, the best opera, the best farce, the best address, and delivered the very best oration ever conceived or heard in this country—Richard Brinsley Sheridan. He, like Lamb, can be judged out of his own mouth. It was he who with piquant humour declared that he could drink with advantage any given quantity of wine. ”

“ Thought is stimulated, activity is excited, man becomes communicable. He then seeks society and enjoys it. Thus has social intercourse gathered round the social board. Eating and drinking are two indispensable factors in dealing with the history of a nation’s social life. Adopting the adage by way of accommodation, ‘In vino veritas,’ truth is out when wine is in, once know the entire history of a nation’s drinking, and you have important materials for gauging that nation’s social life. ”

“ A more striking lay homily than even this upon the [Pg 151] evils of drink is to be found in the writings of another notable of the period, Sir Walter Raleigh. His words are letters of gold.
Take especial care that thou delight not in wine, for there was not any man that came to honour or preferment that loved it; for it transformeth a man into a beast, decayeth health, poisoneth the breath, destroyeth natural heat, brings a man’s stomach to an artificial heat, deformeth the face, rotteth the teeth, and, to conclude, maketh a man contemptible, soon old, and despised of all wise and worthy men ”

“ At a time when the horn of mead circulated at a festival as freely as the harp; at a time when the song of the Northmen too often became the pretext for intoxication and its kindred vices, Alfred was seeking wisdom from its true source; his life was an embodiment of temperance, soberness, and chastity. Many of his renderings of the Roman philosopher Boethius, whose work, De Consolatione Philosophiæ, he translated, or rather paraphrased, display his own sentiments on such matters. In transmitting them, he has transmitted himself. ”