SONGS OF THE VINE

For their courtesy in granting permission to include copyright poems in this volume, I am much indebted to the following men of letters and publishers: Messrs. Hilaire Belloc, Robert Bridges, C. W. Dalmon, John Davidson, Norman R. Gale, John Masefield, Arthur Symons, and the late Charles Godfrey Leland; Professors A. E. Housman and Michael Macmillan; Messrs. Blackwood and Sons (for Lord Neaves's "I'm very fond of water"), Mr. Elkin Mathews (for Hovey's "Kavanagh"), Mr. Nutt (for four poems by Mr. Henley), Mr. Grant Richards (for confirming Professor Housman's sanction to include a poem from A Shropshire Lad), and Messrs. G. Routledge and Sons, Ltd. (for two poems by W. J. Linton). I have also to thank Sir Theodore Martin for kindly permitting me to print one of the joyous ballads of "Bon Gaultier," Mrs. Calverley and Sir Walter J. Sendall, g.c.m.g., for C. S. Calverley's "Beer," and Mr. A. H. Huth for two poems from Inedited Poetical Miscellanies of the Seventeenth Century. I regret that I was unable to obtain sanction to include the late Lord de Tabley's "Hodge Prologizes at his Public."

This note must not conclude without grateful acknowledgment of the valued suggestions I have received from Mr. A. H. Bullen and the late W. E. Henley.

INTRODUCTION

"Tobacco, Ale, and the Protestant Religion," wrote that eminent member of the Reformed Church, Tom Brown, "are the three great Blessings of Life." Blessings of any sort, when we can get them, are surely quite as well fitted for lyric celebration as those gloomier themes which have such attraction for some poets—especially poets of the minor variety; and with the poetry and verse of the first of Tom's blessings I have already dealt [Lyra Nicotiana. London, 1898.] The Protestant Religion, respect it as I may, does not appeal to me as the theme of an anthology, and hymn-books, after all, are plentiful and bulky and cheap. But ale and its fellows, wine and strong waters generally, have for many a long year lacked a volume devoted to their praises as sung by the poets. Indeed, my only predecessor in the field, so far as I know, has been Mr. William Sandys, who, in 1848, edited for the Percy Society a pleasant little book of Festive Songs which did not, however, extend in scope beyond the early years of the eighteenth century. The present collection, on the other hand, ranges from the twelfth century to the present year of grace, from Walter Mapes (or another) to William Ernest Henley, who, in addition to permitting the inclusion of some of his own poems, interested himself in my project and materially assisted my selection. A selection, and only a selection, this book can be. The mass of verse which has been devoted to the subject would fill many huge tomes. Poems of almost epic dimensions have been penned, indeed, like Philips's "Cider" and Warton's "Panegyric on Oxford Ale." Doubtless I shall be reproved for omissions and perhaps for some of my inclusions, but, since there is no pleasing everybody, the most satisfactory course seems to be that of following one's own predilections without apology.

Nor do I see need for apology on the ground of subject. It was George the Third, I believe, who, when a certain ecclesiastic was recommended for a bishopric on the ground that he had written an excellent Apology for the Bible, remarked that he was unaware the Bible required any apology. My view of a collection of drinking songs is somewhat similar, though no doubt there are intolerably conscientious persons, the salt of the earth, who would regard such a volume as requiring not only apology, but penance in a white sheet to boot. It is not my purpose, however, to argue with such opinions. He who spurns a gracious gift that Nature, aided by the ingenuity of man, has provided for us, is as unreasonable in his way as he who abuses the gift by excess—and the former suffers the additional drawback of being unable to appreciate fitly such a garland of lyric rapture as the present. He confuses use with abuse, and does not recognise that the eternal verity that you can have a great deal too much of a good thing, implies that in moderation the thing is excellent. Let us take two analogies—religious emotion and a fish-diet. To the former the world is enormously indebted no doubt, but an excess of it drove poor Cowper, and has driven many another, crazy; the latter has been extolled in all ages as a stimulus to mental and other functions ("Fish-dinners will make a lass spring like a flea "), but it was a surfeit of lampreys that brought Henry the First to his grave. Even goodness itself is capable of exaggeration, some philosophers have held. "What we call Evil in this World, Moral as well as Natural," says Mandeville, prince of special pleaders, "is the grand Principle that makes us sociable Creatures, the solid Basis, the Life and Support of all Trades and Employments without Exception" [The Fable of the Bees. Sixth edition. London, 1732, p. 428.]

Had one but the wit, how eloquent a homily, after the manner of Lamb's Popular Fallacies, might be preached in praise of pothouses from this text. To the Chancellor of the Exchequer how fair a prospect they present of flowing revenues, to the moral philosopher how beautiful such a scene as that depicted by Heine!—

"The noble soul! we sat there together,
And drank, too, like brothers,
Discoursing of lofty, mysterious matters,
Sighing and sinking in solemn embraces.
He made me a convert to Love's holy doctrine;
I drank to the health of my bitterest enemy,
And I forgave the worst of all poets,
As I myself some day shall be forgiven."

Heine's Book of Songs, translated by Charles G. Leland. Philadelphia, 1864.

It was surely in this spirit that Renan in his essay on Amiel remarked:—

"The temperance societies rest upon excellent intentions, but also upon a misunderstanding. I only know of one argument in their favour. Madame T. told me one day that in certain countries the married men, when they have not been temperate, beat their wives. Now that is horrible assuredly; we must try to correct it. But, instead of suppressing drunkenness in those who have a need for it, would it not be better to attempt to render it sweet, amiable, and accompanied by the moral sentiments? There are so many men for whom the hours of drunkenness are, after the hours of love, the time when they are at their best!"

But for our present purpose the best defence of drinking would be neither financial nor ethical, but literary: let us try to realise the good literature and the good oratory that wine has inspired. Brought up on port from infancy, Pitt was as great a drinker as a statesman and speaker; Gladstone, in our own more sober days, is said to have fortified himself for any great speech with an egg beaten up in sherry. Here, however, we are concerned only with poetry, and the intimate connection of wine and the Muses need scarce be insisted on.

"Gold, music, wine, tobacco, and good cheer
Make poets soar aloft and sing out clear,"

wrote John Day, early in the seventeenth century probably, and a couple of centuries later Dr. Maginn, of joyous memory, confessed—

"My muse is always kindest when I court her
O'er whisky punch, gin-twist, strong beer and porter."

It cannot be said that in our poets drinking has been obtrusively accompanied by the moral sentiments, as M. Renan would have it, but for this, on the whole, we may be thankful. There is no surer sign of our morals being out of order than the inclination to discuss them, and didactic poetry is somewhat of a contradiction in terms. And yet as prologue—or, considering its source, shall we say grace?—we have the Latin poem of an Archdeacon to give the book the benefit of clergy. An Archdeacon has been luminously defined as a dignitary who exercises archidiaconal functions, and good Walter Mapes, if he really wrote "Mihi est propositum," [see Notes] seems to have understood these functions with a breadth that would scandalise some of his modern brethren, though not perhaps one clerical bon vivant of whom I have heard. This reverend gentleman, when dining out and asked to say grace, would glance round the board first, and, if the banquet promised well, begin: "Bountiful Jehovah!" if the reverse: "Lord, we thank Thee even for the least of these Thy mercies." Within a few pages is another renowned drinking song with a tradition of ecclesiastical authorship. But it is now quite clear that "Back and Side" was written long before it was included in Gammer Gurton's Needle, and Bishop Still's credit, even for that, is impugned nowadays. We do not get drinking songs from contemporary Bishops and Archdeacons. Indeed, I do not know of a recent example by a parson of any kind; but in the eighteenth century it was the Rev. John Home who pronounced the famous epigram on claret and port [Firm and erect the Caledonian stood,
Old was his mutton, and his claret good;
"Let him drink port," an English statesman cried—
He drank the poison, and his spirit died.] in Scotland, and a Doctor of Divinity, the Rev. John Blacklock, who wrote so appreciatively of punch. Of another Scots divine of the period, the Rev. Alexander Webster, leader of the high-flying-party in the Kirk of Scotland, it is written:—

"Webster had justly obtained much respect amongst the clergy.—He was held to be excellent company, even by those of dissolute manners; while, being a five-bottle man, he could lay them all under the table. This had brought on him the nickname of Dr. Bonum Magnum in the time of faction." [Rev. Alexander Carlyle, Autobiography, p. 240. Edinburgh, 1860.]

Mr. Webster's accomplishments recall a couple of lines from The Holy Fair—

"There's some are fou o' love divine,
There's some are fou o' brandy."

He, good man, successfully achieved both repletions.

As certain significant pages in this volume testify, that unique example of pagan and Christian amalgam, the Rector of Dean Prior, Herrick. Devon, must often have heard the chimes at midnight in his roistering Cambridge and London days, and—

                     "Have out-worn
The fresh and fairest flourish of the morn
With flame, and rapture; drinking to the odd
Number of wine, which makes us full with God.

His fine "Ode for Ben Jonson" is a brief but noble tribute to the lyric feasts of a day when the blight of respectability had not settled upon poets. With the great name of Ben how many hostelries are associated: the Sun, the Dog, the Triple Tun, the Falcon, the Mitre, the Sun and the Half Moon which he linked in an epigram, the Swan at Charing Cross, which he had good reason to remember, since an extempore versified grace ending with a blessing on the head of Rafe, the Swan's drawer, delivered before James the First, was rewarded by that monarch (I give the story with due reserve on Aubrey's authority) with a gift of £100! But it is the Old Devil tavern between Temple Bar and Middle Temple Lane, the house of Simon Wadloe, "old Simon the King," that we connect most with Jonson's literary dictatorship. There in the Apollo room, the holy of holies, men of letters gave themselves a standing by "sealing themselves of the tribe of Ben," and his mountain belly and rocky face presided over as notable a roomful of poets and dramatists as Elizabethan London, with one exception, could produce. That one exception was, of course, the Mermaid, with which we associate not only Jonson's name but a greater, and the traffic of speech at which moved Beaumont to a pitch of admiring enthusiasm—

               "What things have we seen
Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been
So nimble, and so full of subtle flame,
As if that every one from whence they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And had resolved to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life."

Ralegh is said to have been the founder of the gatherings at the Mermaid, which was undoubtedly in Bread Street, Cheapside, though laboriously ingenious attempts have been made to locate it elsewhere. It will be remembered that two of Jonson's friends—

"At Bread Street's Mermaid having' dined, and merry,
Proposed to go to Holborn in a wherry."

Under present conditions such a proposal would suggest the mixed metaphor of the orator who said he looked forward to the time when the good ship "Temperance" would sail proudly over the land, but in those days London had that open sewer, the Fleet Ditch; and from Bridewell the two navigators set sail, their progress being described with a needless and noisome prolixity by Jonson in the verses with which he celebrates the voyage. Gifford, without apparently very much evidence to go upon, gives sundry precise details of the Mermaid circle. In addition to Shakespeare and Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Selden, Cotton, Carew, Martin, Donne, and many others of distinction, were, he tells us, regular frequenters. But, in any case, there can be no doubt that such a society of wine and wit was not merely a pleasant legend, for were no other evidence extant, Beaumont's lines would amply prove its existence. Fuller's account of the symposia gives the impression of having been received from an eye-witness, and shows admirable characterisation.

It is to Thomas Dekker, author of two of the most spirited of drinking songs, that we must go for the best account of tavern life in the early seventeenth century, and the details he gives are not the less interesting because they are presented under the form of an awful warning. Herrick, too much of an Epicurean at heart to feel the sting of conscience keenly, looked back on London revelries from his quiet parsonage in "the dull confines of the drooping West" with a pleasant zest of reminiscence. Dekker, who has a strain of that Puritanism caricatured by Jonson in Zeal-of-the-Land Busy, with his denunciation of bottle ale as "a drink of the Devil's, a diet drink devised to puff us up and make us swell in this latter age of vanity," is seized at times with horror of his own prodigalities and those of others, and plays the Juvenal to his age. Sometimes it is in high-strung rhetoric, as in those colloquies of Bellafront and Hippolito, [The Honest Whore, Part I. Act ii. Sc. i, and Part II. Act iv. Sc. i.] where humour to relax the tension is wanting, sometimes in prose tractates, in which he endeavours to vanquish vice by rendering it ridiculous; but the same intention animates both rhetoric and satire, and he speaks as one who has himself been flown with insolence and wine, and tarried in the house of the strange woman. "There is a Hell named in our Creed and a Heaven, and the Hell comes before; if we look not into the first, we shall never live in the last." So when the fire of Spring lies in ashes and the wine-cup is empty, Dekker sits down and writes The Seven Deadly Sins of London and The Gull's Horn Book. [Dekker's extensive knowledge of the criminal and vagrant classes was utilised in other works of the same character, like The Bellman of London, Lanthorne and Candle-light, and O Per Se O.] That his satire in both these books has both wit and whimsical humour, only makes its flight the farther and aim the surer, for in truth a dull satire has no right to exist.

There is a certain quaint fantasy in his making one of the Deadly Sins Candle-light, which in his view has a peculiar glamour that does anything but make for righteousness. The Horn Book professes to be a handy guide for young men from the country who wish to cut a dash in London, and, indeed, despite ironical intention, might well have served its ostensible purpose. The would-be gallant is taken in hand from the moment he rises, which must not be too early, for his mentor, anticipating Lamb, warns him against venturing from his blankets before the morning be well aired; and is led from a promenade in St. Paul's to a midday dinner at an ordinary, followed later by a visit to the playhouse. Naturally the evening is to be spent at a tavern. To find the best for his purpose, the Gull must inquire in which the customers are oftenest drunk, and, once he has found it, must cultivate familiarity with the servants. Even as it is the custom in some circles today to know and address barmaids by their Christian names, so, in default of barmaids, the Elizabethan gilded youth must "grow most inwardly acquainted with the drawers." By which prudent good-fellowship he may expect credit on days of empty pockets, and always have the best liquors on tap. In these liquors a narrow specialism should be avoided, and a catholic taste cultivated; it is the height of accomplishment "to drink any stranger drunk in his own element of drinke."

Such a universal scholarship was then possible. Even as the Elizabethan philosopher might hope to master the whole circle of the sciences, so in drinking he might achieve a completeness of experience, which in these latter days of Continental importations and American bars the most conscientious student would hesitate to attempt. Falstaff, on the other hand (and if he was not an authority, who could be?), strongly recommended an exclusive taste: "If I had a thousand sons, the first principle I would teach them would be to forswear thin potations, and to addict themselves to sack."

But what was sack? Let us leave the Gull for the moment to make friends with the skinkers, and consider the wine which inspired so many songs in these pages, and abandonment of which drew from Herrick so exquisite a farewell. There is, it must be confessed, considerable doubt on the question. That industrious creature, the Shakespearian commentator, has covered pages with illustrative citations and ingenuities of surmise. The word itself is obviously the French sec (dry), and in a French version of a Privy Council proclamation of 1633, vins secs is the translation given of "sacks" in the original. Nares roundly argues that it was at first precisely the wine we now call sherry —and certainly for long the two words were indiscriminately used [     Give me sack, old sack, boys,
          To make the Muses merry,
     The life of mirth and the joy of the earth
          Is a cup of good old sherry.]
Pasquil's Palinodia, 1619; for more of this ballad, see p. 40. —but, to explain Malaga and Canary [     "Some sack, boy."
     "Good sherry sack, sir?"
     "I meant Canary, sir! What, hast no brains?"
Heywood and Rowley's Fortune by Land and Sea, 1655.] sacks, goes on to say that later it was applied to all white wines, whether sweet or dry, and quotes Dr. Venner's Via Recta ad Vitam Longam (1637). Discussing the common practice of sweetening sack with sugar, Venner remarks: "But what I have spoken of mixing Sugar with Sack, must be understood of Sherie Sack, for to mix Sugar with other Wines, that in a common appellation are called Sack, & are sweeter in taste, makes it unpleasant to the pallat and fulsome [Venner's remarks on wine, ale, etc., are of considerable interest to the student of the subject. Thus he devotes one section to gravely discussing "Whether it be expedient for health, to be drunk with Wine once or twice a moneth," a question to which he returns a negative.] to the stomack." We may find, I think, a clue to an understanding of sack in Venner's phrase "a common appellation." In spite of purists, words change their meaning, and the truth probably is that sack, at first the name of a dry Spanish wine, acquired with its amazing popularity a looser, more extended significance. In his History of Ancient and Modern Wines, Henderson points out that many sacks might be, at different times, both sweet and dry, sweet when new, dry after having been kept for some time to ensure decomposition of free saccharine matter. Dry wine was not, however, to the taste of the time, and dry sack was usually sugared, or "burnt," or treated with the exuberant complication which resulted in sack posset, [It may serve a practical purpose to quote a rhyming recipe for sack posset by Sir Fleetwood Shepherd:—

From fam'd Barbadoes in the Western Main,
Fetch sugar, ounces four; fetch sack from Spain,
     A pint; and from the Eastern Indian coast,
     Nutmeg, the glory of our Northern toast:
     O'er flaming coals let them together heat,
     Till the all-conquering sack dissolve the sweet.
     O'er such another fire put eggs, just ten,
     Stir them, with steady hand and conscience pricking
     To see the untimely end of ten fine chicken.
     From shining shelf take down the brazen skillet,
     A quart of milk from gentle cow will fill it.
     When boil'd and cold, put milk and sack to egg,
     Unite them firmly like the Triple League;
     And on the fire let them together dwell
     Till Miss sing twice—You must not kiss and tell.'
     Then lad and lass take up a silver spoon,
     And fall on't fiercely, like a starv'd dragoon. ] an invariable concomitant of wedding festivities.

Whatever sack was, we will suppose the Gull to have had his fill of it; possibly, following his instructor's counsel, he may have mingled his drinks—tasted the Malmsey so fatal to the Duke of Clarence, Rhenish, with an over-dose of which, combined with pickled herrings, poor Robert Greene killed himself, Charneco, Peter-see-me, Alegant, bastard, or claret. This last was an increasingly popular wine during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially in Scotland, as Home's epigram, already quoted, shows. Mr. Shaw, an authority on wine, tells us that when ships from Bordeaux or Rochelle arrived at Leith, the casks of claret were put on wheelbarrows and retailed along the streets. It was not the claret we know now, he says, but probably a strong white wine, either sweet or dry. In spite of Mr. Shaw, however, I should say that claret was usually red. When Prince Arthur espoused Catharine of Aragon, there was a fountain running red claret and white "at the west door of Powles," and, passing on to the seventeenth century, we have Tom D'Urfey's toper protesting his attachment to his "flask of dear red," and Brome describing it as a scarlet liquor. Our Gull, meanwhile, is waiting for his reckoning, which he must settle without too curious a survey of its items: "cast your eie onely upon the Totalis, and no furder; for to traverse the bill, would betray you to be acquainted with the rates of the market." So his inaugural day as a "trampler of time" comes to a close, and we can imagine him next morning, crying aloud with Christopher Sly: "For God's sake a pot of small ale.—And once again a pot of the smallest ale!" For in those benighted days and for long after, soda-water [The earliest literary allusion to soda-water of which I know is in Don Juan, canto ii. stanza 180, where Byron recommends it, mixed with hock, as a morning draught after a night's heavy drinking:—

     Not the first sparkle of the desert spring,
          Not Burgundy in all its sunset glow,
     After long travel, ennui, love, or slaughter,
     Vie with that draught of hock and soda-water.] was an unknown luxury, and the morning's reflections were only to be moistened with small beer.

Beer from its smallest to its greatest is a vast subject, and one that would repay a profounder and more recondite study than it has yet received. Certain antiquarians have traced its origin to ancient Egypt, some, indeed, with more precise research, attributing the invention to Osiris; and substantiation for this theory may be found in Ned Ward, who tells of having met in some of his wanderings with some particularly strong ale called "Old Pharaoh" —"because it would not let the people go." But these antiquities need not concern us here; there are no Egyptian drinking songs in this collection, which, none the less, leading as it does from the unknown singer of "Back and Side" to Mr. Hilaire Belloc with his admirable Sussex song, can claim to be a worthy celebration of ale. Our ancestors under Queen Bess, who was in the habit of drinking a quart as her breakfast allowance, had as much variety as we in their ale, if not more. The very names roll alluringly on the tongue: October, March beer, stingo, purl, huff-cup, nippitato, oil of barley, stitchback, mum, Norfolk nog. More, they sublimed their ale with spices in a fashion now almost forgotten. "Mark you, sir," says Adam in Greene's Looking Glass for London and England, "a pot of ale consists of four parts, imprimis the ale, the toast, the ginger, and the nutmeg." Well might Marston sing that such a mixture "puts down all drink when it is stale."

In a curious pamphlet, remarkable for its number of bad puns, Ale Ale-vatcd into the Ale-titude, published in 1650, John Taylor the Water Poet (one is sometimes tempted in reading his multifarious writings to call the cognomen in question), gives some information of other potations of his time. Cider, he tells us, is the most ancient of drinks, Cain, who got the recipe from his mother Eve—naturally an authority on apples—having made a large fortune by it. Metheglin, which from being in high favour had by the seventeenth century fallen into disuse, was, according to Taylor, first made by a Welshman called Matthew, who dwelt in a glinne or valley at the foot of Penmaenmawr. The word mead he boldly claims, with all the happy confidence of the popular etymologist, to be derived from the Medes and Persians. Pomperkin, a preparation from apples, has been traced to Pompey the Great, "but,<.q> says our author, "it is not probable that so great a Spirit was the Inventor of so smal and inconsiderable a drinke .… it is a poore conditioned confection."

As is well known, the original inventor of wine was Noah, and it is regrettable that, after the manner of seafaring men in general when they come ashore after a long voyage, he should have got drunk so soon. Rabbinical legend tells us that—

"When Noah first planted the Vine,
The Devil contrived to be there,"

as he usually does contrive to be present on historical occasions; and when the patriarch poured the blood of a white lamb without spot as a libation on the delicate root, Satan followed by drenching the young plant with that of a lion, an ape, and a hog: the natural result being that, while moderation in the cup promotes only the innocent gaiety of the lamb, deeper draughts bring the lion, ape, and hog to light. It is to be hoped that the reader will find in the following pages only an innocent gaiety, though some of these poets, to judge by their sentiments, must have been topers indeed. But the lyric poet has by the nature of things to wing his words with some exaggeration. He has been described as endowed with the love of love, the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn; not unreasonably then may he soar in his cups to dizzy heights untouched by the prosaic drinker, and his song, the vivid feeling of a moment transfused into speech, touch extremes.

Of the songs and verses of this collection I need say little individually, though in the Notes I have tried to give sources as far as possible, and to explain a few allusions. For the most part they do not make appeal as poetry of the highest order, though some certainly have the touch of greatness—Mr. Henley's "Spirit of Wine," for instance, which fitly closes the volume in a strain that recalls some great musician's sonata carried into the realm of poetry. Yet they make appeal to instincts which, despite all our modern refinements, spring eternal in the masculine human breast at least. We may be uncommonly respectable, but there are still cakes and ale, and ginger shall be hot i' the mouth too. Not even the susceptibilities of the most totally abstinent ascetic, however, could be ruffled by the fine old eulogy of the Vine, by an unknown author, from the Vespasian MS., a happy expression of that sober and cheerful Christianity which we associate with such as Fuller and George Herbert. The final stanza, with its suddenly developed sacred application, strikes no jarring tone, but comes as a fit ending to a poem of singular sweetness and fragrance. In the wassail song, "Bring us in good ale," we have a more boisterous note. How heartily must the gossips have roared out the refrain to an obligato of mugs on the table! Assuredly the drinking song must have a chorus, as most of our poets have recognised; indeed, the singable quality, so to speak, of the majority of the lyrics is remarkable, not least so when the burthen is pure nonsense like the "Fa la la lantido dilly" of "We be soldiers three."

The last is interesting historically also, for if we are to believe some social historians, the English acquired their lamentable propensity to more liquor than was good for them from the example of the many veterans of fortune who had returned from the wars in the Low Countries, [Heywood in Philocothonista gives "Low-Countrey Souldier" as a synonym for drunkard] the same quarter, be it remembered, as that where Corporal Trim averred there had been so much swearing". Other soldier-songs include Fletcher's barrack-room ballad of the period, "Sit, soldiers, sit and sing"; Robert Heath's cavalier lyric, struck off in white heat, one can believe, during some siege in the Great Rebellion; and the manly ditty "How stands the glass around," to which the tragic tradition hangs of Wolfe having sung it the night before he fell in the moment of victory on the Heights of Abraham. It has much more spirit and sincerity than the majority of its period, the eighteenth century, so far as quantity goes, the harvest-time of drinking songs; but drinking songs of a more leaden movement, a more prosaic tone, a greater tendency to run in grooves of conventional expression, than those of the Elizabethan and Caroline periods with their unstudied grace and spontaneity. It is a long way from "Old Simon the King," "The Leather Bottel," and the songs from the Elizabethan dramas to those which form the bulk of Bacchic verse in the convivial treasuries of the eighteenth century—the Tea Table Miscellany (was ever so misleading a title?), the Hive, the Musical Miscellany, the Buck's Bottle Companion, and the rest of them. I hope I shall not be deemed guilty of national vanity, if I profess my belief that the best eighteenth-century drinking songs came from beyond Tweed. Burns, of course, was a host in himself; and "Todlin Hame" and "Andro and his Cutty Gun" are in their gust and realism equal to anything of the master's in the same genre.

The nineteenth century is, all things considered, fairly productive of our class of song. But the drinking song of the populace—the English populace, I mean, for in Scotland they still sing Burns—is no longer fit for presentation as a literary product. The convivialities of the music-halls, as mouthed by those wearisome gentlemen in dilapidated trousers and battered hats, are dull as ditchwater. Yet the last hundred years have contributed some capital numbers to this collection. What nobler eulogy of beer than Calverley's, what richer Irish humour than that of the songs which Lever puts into the mouth of Micky Free; to come down to the men of to-day and to-morrow, what could have more "go" than Richard Hovey's "Kavanagh," Mr. Davidson's "Stoop of Rhenish," and Mr. Masefield's "Captain Stratton's Fancy"? There is a pleasing variety, too, about the modern Bacchic Muse. While one singer assures us that—

   malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man,

and Mr. Henley, in an impressive little poem, says bluntly: "Let us be drunk," the absinthe drinker of Mr. Arthur Symons fuddles himself into a set of subtle and artistic sensations, which the mere quaffer of Bass and Guinness would assuredly toil after in vain.

But the true philosophy of drinking is nowhere to be found expressed with more finality than in the wonderful poem on which a Persian astronomer of the eleventh, and an English poet of the nineteenth century collaborated. In verse of imperishable beauty it sounds an eternal note that echoes all through literature: in the Book of Wisdom, in Horace's —

Huc vina et unguenat et nimium breves
flores amoenæ ferre iube rosæ,
   dum res et ætas et sororum
      fila trium patiuntur atra,

in Herrick's "Gather ye roses while ye may," in Fletcher's "Drink to-day and drown all sorrow," and in many another song in these pages: the note of passionate appreciation of to-day and distrust of the possibilities of tomorrow. There is no to-morrow for him who can say —

   To-morrow?—Why, To-morrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday's Sev'n Thousand Years.

At times this necessity for seizing the moment in its flight, and the tragic folly of looking before and after, appeals insistently to most of us; and there are those who, like Dr. Johnson, would argue that no man is perfectly happy in the hour that is present unless he be drunk, and with Byron would claim—

Man being reasonable, must get drunk;
   The best of life is but intoxication.

Let me add a postscript to this foreword, and as a postscript is a feminine thing, it shall deal with women and wine, which, according to one genial songster, "run in a parallel." Is wine favourable to love or is it not? I tremble to decide—more especially as those toping poets of mine differ among themselves on this point of crucial import. The dead host of The Lover's Progress, fain to show what in a well-known story was called "the height of hospitality," evidently believed it to be; and the same sentiments are expressed in "0 for a bowl of fat Canary" and that rollicking old stave with the refrain "a hundred year hence." Stingo, says another bard, will —

Make a parson not to flinch,
   Though he seem wondrous holy,
And for to kiss a pretty wench,
   And think it is no folly,

which reminds one of—

The minister kissed the fiddler's wife,
   And couldna' preach for thinkin' o't.

Yet elsewhere we find women and wine put in antagonism. Sedley bids Phyllis farewell to seek refuge for her slights in the bottle; another wine-bibber, whose mistress takes exception to his drinking, exclaims roundly— "Let her go to the Devil, bring the other whole flask"; the author of "Wine, mighty wine" makes a comparison between his Chloe and his glass, which is most disparaging to the lady; and Brome, piqued, like Sedley, by maidenly coyness, cries—

'Tis wine alone that cheers the soul,
   But love and ladies make us sad."

Now what is one to pronounce in the way of judgment? Simply this, I suppose, that, while wine can be an incitement to the amatory passion, it is also the unfailing consolation for the lover who suffers the coldness or fickleness of his fair.