portion of his little book, " a sort of fascination
in ihe supposed dignity and manliness
attached to powers of deep potation, and
the fatal effects of drinking were spoken
of in a manner both reckless and unfeeling.

A well-known laird of the old school
expressed himself with great indignation
against the charge that hard drinking
actually killed people. ' Na, na! I never
knew anybody that was killed with drinking,
though I have known some that died
in the training!' '

The bacchanalian songs and other
effusions of the rollicking time, now happily
departed, form a curious chapter in literary
history. From the days of Sir John
Falstaff, down to those of Captain Morris
of the Guards, who wrote and sang songs
for the congenial spirits who met round
the board of the Prince Regent, when that
personage was the arbiter of fashion and
taste, the convivial songs that were written
and published would, if collected together,
form many hundreds of volumes. One of
the very earliest of English drinking-songs
was written by John Still, Bishop of Bath
and Wells, in praise of good ale. But from
the date of that composition, the end of the
sixteenth century (the bishop was born in
1542 and died in 1607), no convivial songs
or ballads of any note or merit were written
in praise of any drink but wine. Neither
beer nor spirits were inspiring enough
to prompt a song or a ballad that was
not the vilest of doggerel, though both
the Scotch and the Irish produced some
very fair compositions in praise of the
whisky that the Celtic nations love so
unwisely and so well. The only notable
exception that I have been able to discover
is in Dibdin's sea songs in praise of the
sailor's beverage " grog." Sack and sherry
were the wines first in favour with the
convivial poets, and after them, as a taste
for French wines sprung up among the
wealthy, came claret, burgundy, and
champagne, as the themes for song; but no one
ever wrote in praise of port or madeira.
Claret and burgundy continued to be the
chief favourites as long as convivial songs
were written and sung. The earliest
songs of the kind were modelled more or
less on the anacreontic pattern, and made
constant mention of the gods and goddesses
of the heathen mythology, and celebrated
Bacchus, as if he were a real divinity,
whose favour was to be won by copious
libations at his shrine, and who looked
upon the water-drinker with abhorrence.

The age was one of unblushing vice
and effrontery, mingled with false pretence.
Love played at masquerade; and the
songwriters, deriving their inspirations, not at
first hand from Nature, but at second-
hand from the classical writers of antiquity,
whom they parodied, made every lover a
shepherd, in a court dress of satin or
velvet, with gold buttons; gave him shoes
with silver buckles, a curly wig à la Louis
Quatorze or Charles the Second, and a
Greek or Roman name. Lovers in those
days had no such honest names as John or
Thomas, or Edward or Charles, but were
all Strephons, or Adonises, or Varros.
Every lass was an Arcadian shepherdess,
with dainty shoes and ribbons to them,
with silk stockings and spangled robe as
short as that of a ballet-dancer; and she, too,
instead of being called Mary, or Ellen, or
Margaret, was Chloe, Phoebe, Lesbia, or
Sophonisba. To judge of the English by
their bacchanalian and amatory songs at
this time, they might have been ranked as
a nation of pagans. There was no such
thing as love in literature; but, instead of it,
Cupid was continually shooting his "darts,"
rhyming them, as well as aiming them, at
"hearts,". The word marriage was never
mentioned; but the happy pair went to " the
altar of Hymen. ' ' A breeze was not a breeze,
but a Zephyr; the storm was Boreas, the
sun was Sol or Phoebus, and the moon was
Cynthia, Diana, or Luna. Every pretty
girl, if not a shepherdess in a dress like a
ballet-dancer, was a Venus if she were
kind, and a Diana if she were coy. Bacchus
was the God of Drunkenness, to whom
continual appeals were made to drown Care
in a wine-butt, or a bowl, or in any other
way, to drive him out of the world. Of
the kind of song that was most in favour
at this time, the following, by Henry Carey,
author of Sally in our Alley, will afford a
favourable – or if the reader pleases an
unfavourable – specimen:

         Bacchus must now his power resign;
         I am the only god of wine.
         It is not fit the wretch should be
         In competition set with me,
         Who can drink ten times more than he!

        Make a new world, ye powers divine,
        Stock it with nothing else but wine;
        Let wine its only product be;
        Let wine be earth, and air, and sea,

and oh, drunken and selfish poet, if he
meant what he sang!

        And let that wine be all for me!

The bacchanalian writers sometimes
affected to ignore Venus altogether. Unlike
Captain Wattle, who " was all for love and