earth.

Though an excess in wine is highly blamable, yet it is more pardonable
than most other excesses. The progressive steps to it are cheerful,
animating, and seducing; the melancholy are relieved, the grave
enlivened, the witty and gay inspired--which is the very reverse of
excess in eating: for, Nature satisfied, every additional morsel carries
dulness and stupidity with it. "Every inordinate cup is unbless'd, and
the ingredient is a devil," says Shakspeare.

"King Edgar, like a king of good fellows," adds Selden, "or master of
the revels, made a law for Drinking. He gave orders that studs, or knobs
of silver or gold (so Malmesbury tells us.) should be fastened to the
sides of their cups, or drinking vessels, that when every one knew his
mark or boundary, he should, out of modesty, not either himself covet,
or force another to desire, more than his stint." This is the only law,
before the first parliament under king James, that has been made against
those swill-bowls,

Swabbers of drunken feasts, and lusty rowers,
In full-brimmed rummers that do ply their oars,

"who, by their carouses (tippling up Nestor's years as if they were
celebrating the goddess _Anna Perenna_,) do, at the same time, drink
others' health, and mischief and spoil their own and the public."

An argument very much after this fashion was held by the learned Sir
Thomas More. Sir Thomas was sent ambassador to the Emperor by king Henry
the Eighth. The morning he was to have his audience, _knowing the virtue
of wine_, he ordered his servant to bring him a good large glass of