their lingering wars, was held in
that highest degree of hatred that might be. Then if we had seen a man
go wallowing in the streets, or lain sleeping under the board, we should
have spet at him, and warned all our friends out of his company."[157]

Such was the fit source of this vile custom, which is further confirmed
by the barbarous dialect it introduced into our language; all the terms
of drinking which once abounded with us are, without exception, of a
base northern origin.[158] But the best account I can find of all the
refinements of this new science of potation, when it seems to have
reached its height, is in our Tom Nash, who being himself one of these
deep experimental philosophers, is likely to disclose all the mysteries
of the craft.

He says--"Now, he is nobody that cannot drink _super-nagulum_;
_carouse_ the hunter's _hoope_; quaff _vpse freeze crosse_; with
_healths, gloves, mumpes, frolickes_, and a thousand such domineering
inventions."[159]

_Drinking super-nagulum_, that is, _on the nail_, is a device, which
Nash says is new come out of France: but it had probably a northern
origin, for far northward it still exists. This new device consisted in
this, that after a man, says Nash, hath turned up the bottom of the cup
to drop it on his nail, and make a pearl with what is left, which if it
shed, and cannot make it stand on, by reason there is too much, he must
drink again for his penance.

The custom is also alluded to by Bishop Hall in his satirical romance of
"_Mundus alter et idem_," "A Discovery of a New World," a work which
probably Swift read, and did not forget. The Duke of Tenter-belly in his
oration, when he drinks off his large goblet of twelve quarts, on his
election, exclaims, should he be false to their laws--"Let never this
goodly-formed goblet of wine go jovially through me; and then he set it
to his mouth, stole it off every drop, save _a little remainder_, which
he was by custom to _set upon his thumb's nail_, and lick it off as he
did."

The phrase is in Fletcher:

I am thine _ad unguem_--

that is, he would drink with his friend to the last. In a manuscript
letter of the times, I find an account of Columbo, the Spanish
ambassador, being at Oxford, and drinking healths to the Infanta. The
writer adds--"I shall not tell you how our doctors pledged healths to
the Infanta and the arch-duchess; and if any left _too big a snuff_,
Columbo would cry, _Supernaculum! supernaculum!