expect Bacchus to be reinstated among the gods of
song. Blake does not disappoint us, for we find his point of view
expressed, elegantly enough, in his comment on artists, "And when they
are drunk, they always paint best." [Footnote: _Artist Madmen: On the
Great Encouragement Given by the English Nobility and Gentry to
Correggio, etc_.]

As the romantic movement progresses, one meets with more lyrical
expositions of the power in strong drink. Burns, especially, is never
tired of sounding its praise. He exclaims,

There's naething like the honest nappy.
* * * * *
I've seen me daist upon a time
I scarce could wink or see a styme;
Just ae half mutchkin does me prime;
Aught less is little,
Then back I rattle with the rhyme
As gleg's a whittle.
[Footnote: _The First Epistle to Lapraik_.]

Again he assures us,

But browster wives and whiskey stills,
They are my muses.
[Footnote: _The Third Epistle to Lapraik_.]

Then, in more exalted mood:

O thou, my Muse, guid auld Scotch drink!
Whether through wimplin' worms thou jink,
Or, richly brown, ream o'er the brink
In glorious faem,
Inspire me, till I lisp and wink
To sing thy name.
[Footnote: _Scotch Drink_.]

Keats enthusiastically concurs in Burns' statements. [Footnote: See the
_Sonnet on the Cottage Where Burns Was Born_, and _Lines on the Mermaid
Tavern_.]

Landor, also, tells us meaningly,

Songmen, grasshoppers and nightingales
Sing cheerily but when the throat is moist.
[Footnote: _Homer_; _Laertes_; _Agatha_.]

James Russell Lowell, in _The Temptation of Hassan Khaled_,
presents the argument of the poet's tempters with charming sympathy:

The vine is nature's poet: from his bloom
The air goes reeling, typsy with perfume,
And when the sun is warm within his blood
It mounts and sparkles in a crimson flood,
Rich with dumb songs he speaks not, till they find
Interpretation in the poet's mind.
If wine be evil, song is evil too.

His _Bacchic Ode_ is full of the same enthusiasm. Bacchus received
his highest honors at the end of the last century from the decadents in
England. Swinburne, [Footnote: See _Burns_.] Lionel Johnson,[Footnote:
See _Vinum Daemonum_.] Ernest Dowson, [Footnote: See _A Villanelle of
the Poet's Road_.] and Arthur Symonds, [Footnote: See _A Sequence to
Wine_.] vied with one another in praising inebriety as a lyrical agent.
Even the sober Watts-Dunton