schoolmaster, defining " punch," in 1685, as
"a mixture of brandy, water, lemons and
sugar." Like many other good and ill
mixtures, it, in all probability, came into
England with our sailors— Fryer, in his
Travels to the East Indies in 1672, informing
his readers that " at Nerule (near Goa) is
made the best arack, or nepa die Goa, with
which the English on this coast make that
enervating liquor called paunch (which is
Indostan for five,) from five ingredients, as
the physicians name this composition
Diapente, or from four things Diatesseron." It
was the English, we see, who made and drank
this mixture of five things on the coast of
Goa, and our sea captains and their men were
not long in acquiring and bringing to England
a taste for what Fryer considered an
enervating liquor.

Of the early use of punch in the English
navy in the reign of Charles II., there are
some striking illustrations in the Diary of
Henry Teonge, an "old cavalier" turned
ship's chaplain. The first voyage of this
clerical worthy was on board the frigate
"Assistance," fifty-six guns, then, 1st of
June, 1675, lying in the Long Reach, at
Blackwall, bound for Tripoli. On joining his
ship he drank, he tells us, before going to
bed, part of three bowls of punch—" a liquor,"
he adds, " very strange to me." On the
3rd of June they hoisted sail, and made for
the Nore. " Hither," he writes, " many of
our seamen's wives follow their husbands,
and several other young women accompany
their sweethearts, and sing ' Loath to Depart,'
in punch and brandy." The wives still
lingered about the vessel till they reached
the Downs, when, as he records, " we drink
a health to all our friends behind us, in a
good bowl of punch." Nor when in the
Bay of Biscay, did they forget the women
over their bowls. " Here," it is Saturday,
"the porpoises come tumbling in great
multitudes. We end the day and week with
drinking to our wives in punch-bowls." A
milder liquor, perhaps, though we suspect
punch after all, was used by the chaplain
and the crew of the stout ship Assistance
when " towards evening, we being bound to
cruise westward, drink to our friends in a
lemonade." But punch, we imagine, or
"good racckee," as he calls and spells it,
was once more resorted to when, 3rd of
October, 1675, he had occasion to record
that " This day I hanselled my new cassock,
but," (here is an admission) "had no time
for prayers!"

"This same flipp and punch are rare drinks,"
exclaims a scowrer in one of Shadwell's amusing
comedies of manners; and so Teonge found
them, though their use would not appear to
have injured his constitution, for he died on
shore, parson of Spernall in Warwickshire, in
a green old age, reflecting frequently no doubt
on the good entertainment he received while
chaplain of His Majesty's frigate "Assistance."
Two of these deserve a place in a
paper on punch. At Tangier, the chaplain
and his friend the doctor of the " Assistance"
are desirous to see the fort. A Captain Charles
Daniell gratifies their Pepysian curiosity, and
they were thus nobly entertained, " in a fayre
room, when first of all he gave us a crust of
excellent bread and two bottles of claret,
then took us into his gardens, which lie
clearly round about the fort, and shadowed
with an arbour of vines of all sorts and of his
own planting. Here we drank several bottles
of wine. After this he took us into his cellar,
where he feasted us with roast beef, cold,
Westfalia polony pudding, parmezant; gave
us cucumbers, musk melons, salletts, and a
sieve of Spanish onions as thick as my thigh;
stowed us with good wine, and then, loath to
let us go, he sent one of his corporals with us
to see us safe to our pinnace. Such a hearty
entertainment," says the merry-making
chaplain, "I never saw before from a mere
stranger; nor never shall again till I return
to the prince-like Captain Daniell." This
was on the 15th of July, 1675—a memorable
day in Mr. Teonge's existence; for he got
on board "something late," and went to his
hammock without his usual bowl of punch.
He soon, however, fell into his old habits,
and the entry of the 17th concludes with:
"in the evening' (according to our wonted
custom) we end the day with two bowls of
punch." Another drink which the good
chaplain mentions as having encountered on
a second voyage was " punch gallore; " on
which it is easy to put more than one merry
interpretation.

When punch was first put into jugs, and
who was the first man to introduce a "jug
of punch," are matters of antiquarian interest
that have sorely puzzled some of the most
pains-taking correspondents of Notes and
Queries; nor have we evidence of our own
to assist in settling such important questions.
Bowls were in vogue when, in the middle
of the last century, Hogarth drew his great
punch-picture of Midnight Modern Conversation.
Still earlier were they in fashion,
when (1701) a poet of King William the
Third's reign perpetrates in print the
following bad verses on a punch-bowl:—

  " Capacious goblet! stored with all delight,
  Sweet to the taste and pleasing to the sight;
  Where nutmegs, lemons and the jolly toast
  Scattered like wrecks o' th' merry ocean float."

The last note that Otway is said to have
composed was " a song in praise of punch; " but
it unfortunately has not reached us. Johnson
in his youth loved a bowl of bishop—" a
mixture," he tells us in his Dictionary, " of wine,
oranges, and sugar." Burns delighted in
whiskey punch; and his bowl has cost its
present generous possessor many hundreds of
pounds to keep it filled for his own friends
and the poet's numerous admirers. We
have drank from it often, and hope to do so,