_Georg_. ii. 392.

which Dryden, contemplating on the red-faced boorish boy astride on a
barrel on our sign-posts, tastelessly sinks into gross vulgarity:

On whate'er side he turns his _honest_ face.

This Latinism of _honestum_ even the literal inelegance of Davidson had
spirit enough to translate, "Where'er the god hath moved around his
_graceful head_." The hideous figure of that ebriety, in its most
disgusting stage, the ancients exposed in the bestial Silenus and his
crew; and with these, rather than with the Ovidian and Virgilian deity,
our own convivial customs have assimilated.

We shall probably outlive that custom of hard-drinking which was so long
one of our national vices. The Frenchman, the Italian, and the Spaniard
only taste the luxury of the grape, but seem never to have indulged in
set convivial parties, or drinking-matches, as some of the northern
people. Of this folly of ours, which was, however, a borrowed one, and
which lasted for two centuries, the history is curious: the variety of
its modes and customs; its freaks and extravagances; the technical
language introduced to raise it into an art; and the inventions
contrived to animate the progress of the thirsty souls of its
votaries.[155]

Nations, like individuals, in their intercourse are great imitators; and
we have the authority of Camden, who lived at the time, for asserting
that "the English in their long wars in the Netherlands first learnt to
drown themselves with immoderate drinking, and by drinking others'
healths to impair their own. Of all the northern nations, they had been
before this most commended for their sobriety." And the historian adds,
"that the vice had so diffused itself over the nation, that in our days
it was first restrained by severe laws."[156]

Here we have the authority of a grave and judicious historian for
ascertaining the first period and even origin of this custom; and that
the nation had not, heretofore, disgraced itself by such prevalent
ebriety, is also confirmed by one of those curious contemporary
pamphlets of a popular writer, so invaluable to the philosophical
antiquary. Tom Nash, a town-wit of the reign of Elizabeth, long before
Camden wrote her history, in his "Pierce Pennilesse," had detected the
same origin.--"Superfluity in drink," says this spirited writer, "is a
sin that ever since we have mixed ourselves with the Low Countries is
counted honourable; but before we knew