on tour au rondeau[12]."

At that rich fountain where the great Boileau,
Corneille, Racine, to whom so much we owe,
Th' immortal Dryden, and the sacred band
Of those bright authors, whom we cannot find,
Whose names, (so does oblivion's power command,)
Alas! we no where know,
Supp'd largely to inebriate their mind.
Here a good versifier, fond of rhime,
Should swill, to make his jingling couplets chime.

From hence, good natur'd B----d, arose your flame,
Hence your inimitable numbers came,
When you so prais'd his house and Buckingham.

And certainly Cicero was much in the wrong, when he said, that "what
people do when they are drunk, is not done with the same approbation as
if they were sober; they hesitate, and often recall themselves, and
frame a weaker judgment of what they see[13]." But had he consulted
experience, he would have found that drunkenness, far from making people
fearful, inspires them with boldness and temerity.

[Footnote 1: Vinum acuit ingenium.]

[Footnote 2: Vinum ingenii fomes.]

[Footnote 3: Hist. des. vii. sag. p. 123.]

[Footnote 4: Non idem sapere possunt qui aquam et qui vinum
bibunt.]

[Footnote 5: Resp. aux Quest. d'un Prov. t. i. ch. 12.]

[Footnote 6: Sive Platoni credimus, frustra poetices fores compos
sui pepulit. Non potest grande aliquid et supra caeteros loqui nisi
mota mens.]

[Footnote 7: 1 Ep. xix. 3.]

[[Footnote 7a: Ovid, _Ex Ponto_ IV.ii.25-26.]]

[Footnote 8: La Motte, Ode Pind. 1.]

[Footnote 9: Ode 2. Pindar.]

[Footnote 10: Ep. xix. 7.]

[Footnote 11: Menagiana, t. i. p. 384.]

[Footnote 12: ---- p. 189.]

[Footnote 13: Ne vinolenti quidem quae faciunt qua' sobrii,
hesitant, revocant se interdum, usque quae videntur, imbecillius
assentiuntur. Acad. Quest. lib. 4.]

CHAP. VI.

THAT WINE MAKES ONE ELOQUENT.

What wretch so dull, but eloquent must grow,
When the full goblets with persuasive wine,
Inebriate with bright eloquence divine?

Faecundi calices quem non fecere disertum?[a]

Let us make a few commentaries on this verse of Horace.

We read, that "the sages of Portugal having undertaken to convert those
of Melinda, gained as much upon them by wine as by reason, which, in the
end, facilitated the conquest of the whole country[1]."

To draw a consequence from this, we say, That one must reasonabl