ar's time its severity was somewhat
remitted. The ambassadors, and other christians, had leave to make wine
within themselves; and about a year after that, the indulgence for wine
was general, the taverns were opened, and at this day that liquor is as
common as it was before.

[[Footnote a: Horace, _Satire_ I.ii.24.]]

[Footnote 1: Sphinx. Theol. p. 669.]

[Footnote 2: Hist. 7 Sap.]

[Footnote 3: Chevreana, t. i. p. 217.]

[Footnote 4: Hist. 7 Sap.]

[Footnote 5: See his Turkish Hist.]

CHAP. XXVIII.

RULES TO BE OBSERVED IN GETTING DRUNK. I. NOT TOO OFTEN. II. IN GOOD
COMPANY.

To avoid the disorders that drunkenness might cause, here are some rules
that ought to be observed in this important affair of getting drunk;
for, according to Pliny, the art of getting drunk has its laws.

Haec ars suis legibus constat.[a]

I. The first, and principal of these, is not to get drunk too often.
This is what Seneca[1] recommends very much. "You must not," says he,
"do it often, for fear it grow into a habit; it is but only sometimes
you should make your spirits gay in banishing gloomy sobriety."

And if any person objects, That if one gets drunk sometimes, one shall
do it often. I deny the consequence, and say in the words of the
philosopher, an axiom held by both universities, that

Ab actu ad habitum non valet consequentia.

II. Second rule. One must not get drunk but in good company. That is to
say, with good friends, people of wit, honour, and good humour, and
where there is good wine. For example, a man in former times would have
done very ill to get drunk with Heliogabalus, whose historian[2]
reports, that after having made his friends drunk, he used to shut them
up in an apartment, and at night let loose upon them lions, leopards,
and tigers, which always tore to pieces some of them. On the other hand,
the best wine in the world will taste very bad in bad company. It is
therefore that Martial reproaches one, that he spoiled his good wine
with his silly babbling.

------------ Verbis mucida vina facis.[2a]

[[Footnote a: Pliny, _Natural History_ XIV.50
(or XIV.xxviii.146).]]

[Footnote 1: De Tranquillitate.]

[Footnote 2: AElius Lamprid. in Vit. Heliogab.]

[[Footnote 2a: Martial VIII.vi.4.]]

CHAP. XXIX.

THIRD RULE, WITH GOOD WINE.

When one has a mind to get drunk, one should make choice of good wine,
and not drink bad, whic