DRUNKENNESS.

IN the bottle, discontent seeks for comfort, cowardice for courage, and bashfulness for confidence.

DR. JOHNSON.

A VINE bears three grapes, the first of pleasure, the second of drunkenness, and the third of repentance.

ANACHARSIS.

A DRUNKARD is one that will be a man to-morrow morning, but is now what you will make him, for he is in the power of the next man, and if a friend the better.

Cassio. I REMEMBER a mass of things, but nothing distinctly; a quarrel, but nothing wherefore. O that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains! that we should with joy, pleasure, revel, and applause, transform ourselves into beasts!

Iago. Why, but you are now well enough: How came you thus recovered?

Cas. It hath pleased the devil, drunkenness, to give place to the devil, wrath; one imperfectness shows me another, to make me frankly despise myself.

Othello, Act II.

THE maxim, "in vino veritas,' 66 a man who is well warmed with wine will speak truth," may be an argument for drinking, if you suppose men in general to be liars; but, sir, I would not keep company with a fellow, who lies as long as he is sober, and whom you must make drunk before you can get a word of truth out of him.

"Tis pity wine, which nature meant

To man in kindness to present,
And gave him kindly to caress,
And cherish his frail happiness,
Of equal virtue to renew

His wearied mind and body too,
Should, like the cider-tree in Eden,
Which only grew to be forbidden,

*

To gain access a private way

To man's best sense, by its own key,
Which painful judges strive in vain
By any other course t' obtain.

JOHNSON.

BUTLER. On Drunkenness.

No sooner come to be enjoy'd,
But th' owner's fatally destroy'd;
And that which she for good design'd,
Becomes the ruin of mankind,

That for a little vain excess

Runs out of all its happiness,

And makes the friend of truth and love
Their greatest adversary prove;

While man with raging drink inflamed,
Is far more savage and untamed:
Supplies his loss of wit and sense
With barbarousness and insolence;
Believes himself, the less he's able,*
The more heroic and formidable;
Lays by his reason in his bowls,
As Turks are said to do their souls,
Until it has so often been
Shut out of its lodging, and let in,
At length it never can attain
To find the right way back again;
Drinks all his time away, and prunes
The end of's life, as vignerons
Cut short the branches of a vine,
To make it bear more plenty o' wine;
And that which nature did intend
T'enlarge his life, perverts t' its end.
So Noah, when he anchor'd safe on
The mountain's top, his lofty haven,
And all the passengers he bore
Were on the new world set ashore,
He made it next his chief design

To plant and propagate a vine,

Which since has overwhelm'd and drown'd,

Far greater numbers, on dry ground,

Of wretched mankind, one by one,

Than all the flood before had done.

BUTLER. On Drunkenness.

For truly then I feare no man

Be he never so bolde,

When I am warmed and throwly warmed
With jolly goode ale and old.

SKELTON.

SHALL I, to please another's wine-sprung mind,
Lose all mine own? God hath given me a measure
Short of his can and body; must I find

A pain in that, wherein he finds a pleasure?

If reason move not gallants, quit the room;
(All in a shipwreck shift their several way ;)
Let not a common ruin thee intomb:

Be not a beast in courtesy, but stay,

Stay at the third cup, or forego the place,

Wine above all things does God's stamp deface.

G. HERBERT.

Olivia. WHAT's a drunken man like, fool? Clown. Like a drowned man, a fool, and a madman: one draught above heat makes him a fool; the second mads him; and a third drowns him.

Oli. Go thou and seek the coroner, and let him sit o' my coz: for he's in the third degree of drink, he's drowned: go, look after him.

Clo. He is but mad yet, madonna; and the fool shall look to the madman.

Twelfth Night, Act I., Scene 2.

A DRUNKARD is a good philosopher, for he thinks aright: the world goes round.

SIR T. OVERBURY.

IF the headache should come before drunkenness, we should have care of drinking too much. But pleasure, to deceive us, marches before and conceals her brain.

MONTAIGNE. Essays.

BEFORE dinner, men meet with great inequality of understanding; and those who are conscious of their inferiority have the modesty not to talk: when they have drunk wine, every man feels himself happy, and loses that modesty, and grows impudent and vociferous; but he is not improved; he is only not sensible of his defects.

DR. JOHNSON.

DR. ALDRICH'S FIVE REASONS FOR DRINKING.

GOOD wine; a friend; or being dry;

Or lest we should be by and by;

Or any other reason why.

Delightful visitant! with thee

I hail the time of flowers,

And hear the sound of music sweet
From birds among the bowers.

The schoolboy, wandering through the wood
To pull the primrose gay,

Starts, the new voice of spring to hear,

And imitates thy lay.

What time the pea puts on the bloom,

Thou fliest thy vocal vale,

An annual guest in other lands,
Another spring to hail.

Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green,

Thy sky is ever clear;

Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,
No winter in thy year!

O, could I fly, I'd fly with thee!
We'd make, with joyful wing,
Our annual visit o'er the globe,
Companions of the spring.

MICHAEL BRUCE.

O BLITHE new-comer! I have heard,
I hear thee and rejoice;

O cuckoo! shall I call thee bird,
Or but a wandering voice?

While I am lying on the grass

Thy twofold shout I hear; From hill to hill it seems to pass At once far off and near.

Though babbling only to the vale
Of sunshine and of flowers,
Thou bringest unto me a tale
Of visionary hours.

Thrice welcome, darling of the spring!

Even yet thou art to me

No bird, but an invisible thing,

A voice, a mystery;

The same whom in my school-boy days
I listen'd to; that cry

Which made me look a thousand ways

In bush, and tree, and sky.

WORDSWORTH.

SCANDAL.

THERE is a lust in man no charm can tame,
Of loudly publishing his neighbour's shame;
On eagle's wings immortal scandals fly;
While virtuous actions are but born and die.

Nor that elegant ladies, in fact,

In genteel society ever detract,

DRYDEN. Juvenal.

Or lend a brush when a friend is black'd,—

At least as a mere malicious act,

But only talk scandal for fear some fool,

Should think they were bred at charity school.
HOOD. Tale of a Trumpet.

WE hain't got any daily paper in our town, but we've got a female sewin' circle, which answers the same purpuss.

ARTEMUS WARD.

PAINTING.

BUT poets are confined in narrower space,
To speak the language of their native place:
The painter widely stretches his command,
Thy pencil speaks the tongue of ev'ry land.

DRYDEN. Epistles.

THE EFFECT OF TIME UPON PAINTINGS.

MORE cannot be by mortal act exprest;
But venerable age shall add the rest.
For Time shall with his ready pencil stand;
Retouch your figures with his ripening hand;