Footnote 9: Essays, l. ii. cap. 2.]

[Footnote 10: Hist. Aug. Script. ed. 1609. fol. p. 414, and
p. 425.]

[Footnote 11: P. 85.]

[Footnote 12: Hist. of the Turks.]

[Footnote 13: Voyage, t. 3, let. v.]

[Footnote 14: Tavernier's Trav. 1. lib. v. cap. 17.]

[Footnote 15: Tavern. t. 1, lib. v. cap. 17.]

[Footnote 16: Loubere, liv. i. ch. 9.]

[Footnote 17: Bibl. Univ. t. xxiii. p. 44.]

[Footnote 18: Viaggo del Congo.]

[Footnote 19: Chevrean, t. ii. p. 215.]

[Footnote 20: Tavern. t. 1, liv. iii. ch. 9.]

[Footnote 21: Voyag. t. ii. p. 129.]

CHAP. XVII.

OF THE DRUNKENNESS OF THE GERMANS.

The Germans were, in all times and ages, great drinkers, and in the
words of one of their own poets,

"Illic nobilitas, aeterno nomine digna
Exhaurire cados, siccareque pocula longa[1]."

---------------------- worthy eternal fame!
'Tis there a piece of true nobility,
To empty casks, and drink deep goblets dry.

To demonstrate the origin of their bibacity, it is absolutely necessary
to go higher than Tacitus, who in the treatise which he composed in
relation to their customs and manners, thus speaks: "It is no shame with
them to pass whole days and nights in drinking; but quarrellings are
very frequent amongst them, as are usual amongst folks in that respect,
and more often end at daggers drawing than in Billingsgate. It is,
however, in such meetings, that alliances and reconciliations are
formed. Here they treat of the election of princes. In short, of all
affairs, of peace and war. Those opportunities they think most proper,
inasmuch as then people shake off all disguise of thought and
reflection, and the heat of debauch engages the soul of man to
resolutions the most bold and hardy[2]."

Owen, our countryman, has made an epitaph in honour of these our
substantial topers, the Germans; the sense of which is, that if truth
lies hidden in wine, they are the first people in the world that will
find it out. His words are,

Si latet in vino verum, ut proverbia dicunt,
Invenit verum Teuto vel inveniet.

Let us see now what travellers have said on this subject of the Germans:
and we will begin with M. Aug. de Thou[3], an eye-witness thereof.
"There is," says he, "before Mulhausen, a large place, or square, where,
during the fair, assemble a prodigious number of people, of both sexes,
and of all ages; there one may see wives support