Hall. If
the drinker "could put his finger into the flame of the candle without
playing hit-I-miss-I! he is held a sober man, however otherwise drunk he
might be." This was considered as a trial of victory among these
"canary-birds," or bibbers of canary wine.[164]

We have a very common expression to describe a man in a state of
ebriety, that "he is as drunk as a beast," or that "he is beastly
drunk." This is a libel on the brutes, for the vice of ebriety is
perfectly human. I think the phrase is peculiar to ourselves: and I
imagine I have discovered its origin. When ebriety became first
prevalent in our nation, during the reign of Elizabeth, it was a
favourite notion among the writers of the time, and on which they have
exhausted their fancy, that a man in the different stages of ebriety
showed the most vicious quality of different animals; or that a company
of drunkards exhibited a collection of brutes, with their different
characteristics.

"All dronkardes are beasts," says George Gascoigne, in a curious
treatise on them,[165] and he proceeds in illustrating his proposition;
but the satirist Nash has classified eight kinds of "drunkards;" a
fanciful sketch from the hand of a master in humour, and which could
only have been composed by a close spectator of their manners and
habits.

"The first is _ape-drunk_, and he leaps and sings and hollows and
danceth for the heavens; the second is _lyon-drunk_, and he flings the
pots about the house, calls the hostess w--- e, breaks the glass-windows
with his dagger, and is apt to quarrel with any man that speaks to him;
the third is _swine-drunk_, heavy, lumpish, and sleepy, and cries for a
little more drink and a few more clothes; the fourth is _sheep-drunk_,
wise in his own conceit when he cannot bring forth a right word; the
fifth is _maudlen-drunk_, when a fellow will weep for kindness in the
midst of his drink, and kiss you, saying, 'By God! captain, I love thee;
go thy ways, thou dost not think so often of me as I do of thee: I would
(if it pleased God) I could not love thee so well as I do,' and then he
puts his finger in his eye and cries. The sixth is _martin-drunk_, when
a man is drunk, and drinks himself sober ere he stir; the seventh is
_goat-drunk_, when in his drunkenness he hath no mind but on lechery.
The eighth is _fox-drunk_, when he is crafty-drunk, as many of the
Dutchmen be, which will never bargain but when they are drunk. All
these _species_, and mor