ius pleasantly said: "What, shall I bear
a tyrant, I who cannot bear wine?"]

We see our Germans, when drunk as the devil, know their post, remember
the word, and keep to their ranks:

"Nec facilis victoria de madidis, et
Blaesis, atque mero titubantibus."

["Nor is a victory easily obtained over men so drunk, they can
scarce speak or stand."--Juvenal, Sat., xv. 47.]

I could not have believed there had been so profound, senseless, and dead
a degree of drunkenness had I not read in history that Attalus having,
to put a notable affront upon him, invited to supper the same Pausanias,
who upon the very same occasion afterwards killed Philip of Macedon,
a king who by his excellent qualities gave sufficient testimony of his
education in the house and company of Epaminondas, made him drink to such
a pitch that he could after abandon his beauty, as of a hedge strumpet,
to the muleteers and servants of the basest office in the house. And I
have been further told by a lady whom I highly honour and esteem, that
near Bordeaux and about Castres where she lives, a country woman, a
widow of chaste repute, perceiving in herself the first symptoms of
breeding, innocently told her neighbours that if she had a husband she
should think herself with child; but the causes of suspicion every day
more and more increasing, and at last growing up to a manifest proof, the
poor woman was reduced to the necessity of causing it to be proclaimed in
her parish church, that whoever had done that deed and would frankly
confess it, she did not only promise to forgive, but moreover to marry
him, if he liked the motion; whereupon a young fellow that served her in
the quality of a labourer, encouraged by this proclamation, declared that
he had one holiday found her, having taken too much of the bottle, so
fast asleep by the chimney and in so indecent a posture, that he could
conveniently do his business without waking her; and they yet live
together man and wife.

It is true that antiquity has not much decried this vice; the writings
even of several philosophers speak very tenderly of it, and even amongst
the Stoics there are some who advise folks to give themselves sometimes
the liberty to drink, nay, to drunkenness, to refresh the soul:

"Hoc quoque virtutum quondam certamine, magnum
Socratem palmam promeruisse ferunt."

["In this trial of power formerly they relate that the