“wassails fine,
Not made of ale, but spiced wine,”
yet even these innocent carousals are of Arcadian simplicity. He loves, too, the fare of Devon farmers,—the clotted cream, the yellow butter, honey, and baked pears, and fresh-laid eggs. He loves the Twelfth-Night cake, with “joy-sops,”—alluring word,—the “wassail-bowl” of Christmas, the “Whitsun ale,” the almond paste sacred to wedding-rites, the “bucksome meat and capring wine” that crown the New Year’s board, and, above all, the plenteous bounty of the Harvest Home. In his easy, unvexed fashion, he is solicitous that we, his readers, should learn, not “to labor and to wait,” but to be idle and to enjoy, while idleness and joy still gild the passing day.
“Then while time serves, and we are but decaying,
Come, my Corinna, come, let’s goe a Maying,”
is the gay doctrine preached by this unclerical clergyman. Even when he remembers perforce that he is a clergyman, and turns his heart to prayer, this is the thanksgiving that rises sweetly to his lips:—
“’Tis Thou that crown’st my glittering hearth
With guiltless mirth,
And giv’st me wassail-bowls to drink,
Spiced to the brink.”