nce a month to rouse them by this excess, and to spur them lest
they should grow dull and rusty; and one author tells us that the
Persians used to consult about their most important affairs after being
well warmed with wine.

My taste and constitution are greater enemies to this vice than my
discourse; for besides that I easily submit my belief to the authority of
ancient opinions, I look upon it indeed as an unmanly and stupid vice,
but less malicious and hurtful than the others, which, almost all, more
directly jostle public society. And if we cannot please ourselves but it
must cost us something, as they hold, I find this vice costs a man's
conscience less than the others, besides that it is of no difficult
preparation, nor hard to be found, a consideration not altogether to be
despised. A man well advanced both in dignity and age, amongst three
principal commodities that he said remained to him of life, reckoned to
me this for one, and where would a man more justly find it than amongst
the natural conveniences? But he did not take it right, for delicacy and
the curious choice of wines is therein to be avoided. If you found your
pleasure upon drinking of the best, you condemn yourself to the penance
of drinking of the worst. Your taste must be more indifferent and free;
so delicate a palate is not required to make a good toper. The Germans
drink almost indifferently of all wines with delight; their business is
to pour down and not to taste; and it's so much the better for them:
their pleasure is so much the more plentiful and nearer at hand.

Secondly, to drink, after the French fashion, but at two meals, and then
very moderately, is to be too sparing of the favours of the god. There
is more time and constancy required than so. The ancients spent whole
nights in this exercise, and ofttimes added the day following to eke it
out, and therefore we are to take greater liberty and stick closer to our
work. I have seen a great lord of my time, a man of high enterprise and
famous success, that without setting himself to't, and after his ordinary
rate of drinking at meals, drank not much less than five quarts of wine,
and at his going away appeared but too wise and discreet, to the
detriment of our affairs. The pleasure we hold in esteem for the course
of our lives ought to have a greater share of our time dedicated to it;
we should, like shopboys and labourers, refuse no occasion nor omit any
opportunity of drinki