on questions relating to the use and abuse of wine.
Though he never, or very seldom, exceeded the limits of sobriety, Somers
enjoyed a bottle in congenial society; and though wine never betrayed
him into reckless hilarity, it gave gentleness and comity to his
habitually severe countenance and solemn deportment--if reliance may be
placed on Swift's couplet--

"By force of wine even Scarborough is brave,
Hall grows more pert, and Somers not so grave."

A familiar quotation that alludes to Murray's early intercourse with the
wits warrants an inference that in opening manhood he preferred
champagne to every other wine; but as Lord Mansfield he steadily adhered
to claret, though fashion had taken into favor the fuller wine
stigmatized as poison by John Home's famous epigram--

"Bold and erect the Caledonian stood;
Old was his mutton, and his claret good.
'Let him drink port,' an English statesman cried:
He drunk the poison and his spirit died."

Unlike his father, who never sinned against moderation in his cups,
Charles Yorke was a deep drinker as well as a gourmand. Hardwicke's
successor, Lord Northington, was the first of a line of
port-wine-drinking judges that may at the present time be fairly said
to have come to an end--although a few reverend fathers of the law yet
remain, who drink with relish the Methuen drink when age has deprived it
of body and strength. Until Robert Henley held the seals, Chancellors
continued to hold after-dinner sittings in the Court of Chancery on
certain days of the week throughout term. Hardwicke, throughout his long
official career, sat on the evenings of Wednesdays and Fridays hearing
causes, while men of pleasure were fuddling themselves with fruity
vintages. Lord Northington, however, prevailed on George III. to let him
discontinue these evening attendances in court. "But why," asked the
monarch, "do you wish for a change?" "Sir," the Chancellor answered,
with delightful frankness, "I want the change in order that I may finish
my bottle of port at my ease; and your majesty, in your parental care
for the happiness of your subjects, will, I trust, think this a
sufficient reason." Of course the king's laughter ended in a favorable
answer to the petition for reform, and from that time the Chancellor's
evening sittings were discontinued. But ere he died, the jovial
Chancellor paid the penalty which port exacts from all her fervent
worshippers, and he suffered the acute