in your
lines, a cheering glass may set things to rights a little. Here, then,
is what he says to his wine-server:--

AD PUERUM.

Boy, that at my drinking-bout
Servest old Falernian out,
Fill me faster cups, and quicker,
With the spirit-stirring liquor.
So Posthumia's law doth say,--
Mistress of the feast to-day;
She more vinous than the grape.
Springs of water--bane of wine--
Where ye please for me and mine,
Avaunt, begone, escape!
Emigrate to men demure.
My bumper is Thyonian pure.

GRATIAN.--I am afraid, Curate, that if you were to take what you please
to call "the cheering glass," such as the jade Posthumia would
recommend, we should have to put you to bed pretty early. It was the
custom, it should seem, of the ancients to make a throw of the dice to
determine the arbiter of the feast--to appoint the drinking. Who threw
_Venus_ (three sixes) was the _magister_; but the _magistra_ is a
novelty; a "Venus Ebria," whose drinking law would throw all; for "wine
is a wrestler, and a shrewd one too." Doesn't Shakspeare say so? Now for
your version, Aquilius.

AQUILIUS.--Curate will say, I am not so close to the original. But, on
such a subject, we may be allowed to walk not quite straight;--a little
zig-zaggy. Spite the coming criticism I venture:--

AD PUERUM SUUM,

(To his Wine-server.)

Pour me out, boy, the generous juice.
The racy, true, the old Falernus;
Such wines as, to Posthumia's thinking,
Are only fit for mortals' use;
When in her glory, drunk, and winking,
The dame would quaff, and wisely learn us
The good old simple law of drinking.

But water shun;--Hence, waters! go,
E'en as ye will, to chill Avernus,
Or whereso'er ye please to flow;--
Be drink for all the dull, the slow,
The sad, the serious, the phlegmatic;
But leave this juice, this pure stomachic,
Its own, its unadulterate glow;--
This--this alone is genuine Bacchic!

GRATIAN.--Well, then, that must be our parting cup for the night, and a
pretty good "_night-cap_" it is. I was afraid, Aquilius, when you came
to the "phlegmatic" you would rhyme it to "rheumatic," and so on to the
"water-cure." You know that is recommended in rheumatic cases; but
perhaps you don't know that I tried it. I had the water-drinking, the
wet sheets, and all the rest of it.

AQUILIUS.--And are here to tell of it!

GRATIAN.--Yes