I wish to state at the outset that this little work is not compiled in the interests of the sot, the toper, and the habitual over-estimator of his swallowing capacity. That the gifts of the gods, and the concoctions of more or less vile man, should be used with moderation, if we wish to really and thoroughly enjoy them, is a truism which needs no repetition; and although at the commencement of this work many “frightful {2} examples” of the evils of over-indulgence will be found mentioned, nothing but moderation will be found counselled in my book, from cover to cover.

In the past, drunkenness was not always regarded as a vice, and this is evident from much of the literature of former generations. In the course of my researches into the alcohol question I have come across a little book which bears the shameful and abandoned title of Ebrietatis Encomium, or the Praise of Drunkenness. And this book, which conveys such questionably moral aphorisms as “It is good for one’s health to be drunk occasionally,” and “The truly happy are the truly intoxicated,” claims to prove, “most authentically and most evidently, the necessity of frequently getting drunk, and that the practice is most ancient, primitive, and catholic.”

The author commences with what he calls “a beautiful passage out of Seneca:—

“The soul must not be always bent: one must sometimes allow it a little pleasure. Socrates was not ashamed to pass the time with children. Cato enjoyed himself in drinking plentifully, when his mind had been too much wearied out in public affairs. Scipio knew very well how to move that body, so much inured to wars and triumphs, without breaking it, as some nowadays do ...; but as people did in past times, who would make themselves merry on their festivals, by leading a dance really worthy men of those days, whence could ensue no reproach, when even their very enemies had seen them dance. One must allow the mind {3} some recreation: it makes it more gay and peaceful. ... Assiduity of labour begets a languor and bluntness of the mind: for sleep is very necessary to refresh us, and yet he that would do nothing else but sleep night and day would be a dead man, and no more. There is a great deal of difference between loosening a thing, and quite unravelling it. Those who made laws have instituted holidays, to oblige people to appear at public rejoicings, in order to mingle with their cares a necessary temperament. ... You must sometimes walk in the open air, that the mind may exalt itself by seeing the heavens, and breathing the air at your ease; sometimes take the air in your chariot, the roads and the change of the country will re-establish you in your vigour; or you may eat and drink a little more plentifully than usual. Sometimes one must even go as far as to get drunk; not indeed with an intention to drown ourselves in wine, but to drown our care. For wine drives away sorrow and care, and goes and fetches them up from the bottom of the soul. And as drunkenness cures some distempers, so, in like manner, it is a sovereign remedy for our sorrows” (Seneca de Tranquillitate).

Such sentiments were doubtless popular enough in Great Britain at the commencement of the present century—when Ebrietatis Encomium was published—when three and four bottle-men slept where they fell, “repugnant to command”; and malt liquor, small or strong, was the only known matutinal restorative of manly vigour. But my own experience is that {4} the sorrow and care which may be temporarily driven away by drowning them in the bowl are apt to return within a very few hours, reinforced an hundredfold, with their weapons re-sharpened, their instruments of torture put in thorough working-order, and with many other devils worse than themselves. A man, sound in body and mind, may really enjoy a certain amount of good liquor without feeling any ill effects next morning; but woe to him who seeks to drown that which cannot sink; to crush the worm which knows not death! The individual has yet to be born who can flourish, either in body or soul, on his own immoderation; and but for a chronic state of thirst in early youth I should not now be reduced to the compilation of drink statistics for a living.

But the ancients, in their heathen philosophy—which, by the way, was once rec­om­mend­ed to Christians to follow—took no thought for the morrow. “Carpe diem!” was the head and front of the programme of the Roman patricians, who used to cry aloud at their feasts, by way of grace before meat:—

This was probably the original version of “We won’t go home till morning,” and was sung, or shouted, at all bean-feasts and smart supper-parties. The ancient Egyptians made use of a very extraordinary, and a very nasty, custom in their festivals. They shewed to every guest a {5} skeleton, before the soup was served. This, according to some historians, was to make the feasters think on their latter end. But others assert that this strange figure was brought into use for a directly opposite reason; that the image of death was shewn for no other intent than to excite the guests to pass their lives merrily, and to employ the few days of its small duration to the best advantage; as having no other condition to expect after death than that of this frightful skeleton.

This was the idea of one Trimalchion, who, Petronius tells us, thus expressed himself on the subject: “Alas! alas! wretched that we are! What a nothing is poor man! We shall be like this, when Fate shall have snatched us hence. Let us therefore rejoice, and be merry while we are here.” The original Latin of this translation is much stronger, and had better not be given here. And the same Trimalchion on another occasion remarked: “Alas! Wine therefore lives longer than man, let us then sit down and drink bumpers; life and wine are the same thing.”

The Scythians undoubtedly used to drink out of vessels fashioned from human skulls, and probably had the same design in doing so as the Egyptians had in looking on their nasty skeletons.

In Virgil’s time, his contemporaries—and very probably the old man himself—drank deep; but instead of fighting, and breaking things, and jumping on their wives, and getting locked up, they brought their own heathen religion into their debaucheries. In more civilized circles, at this end of the most civilized century, the reveller {6} goes out “to see a man,” and sub­se­quent­ly “shouts for the crowd”; but in Virgil’s time a man who had a drink was said to be “pouring forth libations to the gods,” “making sacrifices”—more especially to Bacchus, the wine deity, whom nothing under the slaughter of a he-goat was supposed to propitiate. And the “Billy” was chosen for the sacrifice, because the tender shoots of the vine formed his favourite food, in a land in which there was neither brown paper, nor wall-plaster, nor salmon-tins, to nibble. And these sacrifices to the rosy god were “occasions” (as they say in the City) indeed! I have often wondered what the ancients did to cure a headache; and whether a man said to be “possessed of a devil” was in reality suffering from Alcohol, “the Devil in solution,” in the shape of delirium tremens in one of its many and objectionable forms.

In the time of Pliny, drunkenness and debauchery appear to have been the principal studies of the nations about whom he had information. A man was actually rewarded for getting drunk—tell it not in Vine Street, W.! The greatest drinker got the most prizes; and Pliny informs us that whilst the Parthians contended for the distinction of having the hardest heads and the longest swallows, they were simply “not in it” with the Milanese, who had a real champion in one Novellius Torquatus. This man, according to history, could have given a market-porter of the present day, a brewer’s drayman, or a stockbroker, any amount of start over the Alcohol course, and “lost” him.

This Novellius won the championship from all {7} pretenders, and “had gone through all honourable degrees of dignity in Rome, wherein the greatest repute he obtained was for drinking in the presence of Tiberius three gallons of wine at one draught, and before he drew his breath again; neither did he rest there, but he so far had acquired the art of drinking, that although he continued at it, yet was never known to falter in his tongue; and were it ne’er so late in the evening he followed this exercise, yet would be ready again for it in the morning. Those large draughts also he drank at one breath, without leaving in the cup so much as would dash against the pavement.”

Ah! We have nobody up to this form to talk about nowadays; and if men have improved in morality they must have deteriorated in capacity, or the occupation of gaolers and warders would be gone. And the poor old poet “Spring Onions,” with even a tenth part of the powers of endurance and swallow of Novellius Torquatus, might have escaped even one solitary conviction.

“If the antiquity of a custom,” writes the author of Ebrietatis Encomium, “makes it always good and laudable, certainly drunkenness can never deserve sufficient recommendation. Every one knows that Noah got drunk after he had planted the vine. There are some who pretend to excuse him, that he was not acquainted with the strength of wine. But to this it may very well be answered that it is not very probable so wise a man as Noah should plant a vine without knowing its nature and property. Besides it is one thing to know whether he got drunk at all: and another whether he had an intention to do so.” {8}

The amount of water previously experienced by Noah should surely be sufficient to purge him of the offence of making too free with the fruit of the vine!

“But,” continues the laudator of ebriety, “if we give any credit to several learned persons, Noah was not the first man who got fuddled. Father Frassen maintains ‘that people fed on flesh before the Flood, and drank wine.’ There is no likelihood, according to him, that men contented themselves with drinking water for fifteen or sixteen hundred years together. It is much more credible that they prepared a drink more nourishing and palatable. These first men of the world were endued with no less share of wit than their posterity, and consequently wanted no industry to invent everything that might contribute to make them pass their lives agreeably. Before the Flood men married, and gave their children in marriage. These people regaled each other, and made solemn entertainments. Now who can imagine that they drank at those festivals nothing but water, and fed only on fruits and herbs! Noah, therefore, was not the inventor of the use which we make of the grape; the most that he did was only to plant new vines.”

Procopius of Gaza, one of the most ancient and learned interpreters of Scripture, thinks it no less true that the vine was known in the world before Noah’s time; but he does not allow that the use of wine was known before the patriarch, whom he believes to be the inventor of it. As for the wine mentioned in the New Testament, we are now assured by modern commentators—total {9} abstainers every one—that it was unfermented, devoid of alcohol, and non-intoxicating. I had certainly always looked upon the wine which Timothy was enjoined to take for his “stomach’s sake,” as some form of brandy.

The Early Christians—like far too many of the late ditto—were terrible topers. Ecclesiastical history tells us that in the primitive church it was customary to appoint solemn feasts on the festivals of martyrs. This appears by the harangue of Constantine, and from the works of St. Gregory Nazianzen, and St. Chrysostom. Drunkenness was rife at those feasts; and this excess was looked upon as permissible. This is shewn by the pathetic complaints of St. Augustine and St. Cyprian, the former of which holy fathers thus delivered himself:—

“Drunken debauches pass as permitted amongst us, so that people turn them into solemn feasts, to honour the memory of the martyrs; and that not only on those days which are particularly consecrated to them (which would be a deplorable abuse to those who look at those things with other eyes than those of the flesh), but on every day of the year.”

St. Cyprian, in a treatise attributed to him, says much the same thing:—

“Drunkenness is so common with us in Africa that it scarce passes for a crime. And do we not see Christians forcing one another to get drunk, to celebrate the memory of the martyrs?”

Cardinal du Perron told his contemporaries “that the ManichÆans said that the Catholicks were people much given to wine, but that they {10} never drank any,” which sounds paradoxical. Against this charge St. Augustine only defends them by recrimination. He answers, “that it was true, but that they (the ManichÆans) drank the juice of apples, which was more delicious than all the wines and liquors in the world.” And so does Tertullian, who said the liquor press’d from apples was most strong and vinous. His words are: “Succum ex pomis vinosissimum.”

I trust that in quoting all those things I am not becoming wearisome, at the very commencement of my work; the main object being to show that all the drinking in the world is not done by the present generation of vipers.

But the Early Christians were excused for their habits of soaking, by Paulinus, on the grounds of the “excellence of their intentions”; which naturally reminds us of the celebrated excuse of the late Monsieur Thiers, on a much later occasion. The words of Paulinus are, when translated and adapted:—

Similar pleas are occasionally urged by roysterers nowadays, yet they are but seldom credited in their own parishes.