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 supporting their husbands, daughters their fathers, tottering upon their horses or asses, a true image of a Bacchanal. The public-houses are full of drinkers, where the young women who wait, pour wine into goblets out of a large bottle with a long neck, without spilling one drop. They press you to drink with pleasantries the most agreeable in the world. People drink here continually, and return at all hours to do the same thing over again.”
This pleasant sight, so new to M. de Thou, continues almost all night. And what is very particular amongst such a great concourse of people, and such a number of drunkards, every thing passes without dispute and quarrelling.
Let us now see what the duke de Rohan says on this head, whose words are these[4]:— “From thence I came to Trent, a place noways agreeable, and famous for nothing but the last council which was held there; and if it was not that it was half Italian, (being glad of coming out of little Barbary, and a universal tippling-house,) I would take no notice of it; being well satisfied, that the mathematicians of our times can no where find out the perpetual motion so well as here, where the goblets of Germans are an evident demonstration of its possibility—they think they cannot make good cheer, nor permit friendship or fraternity, as they call it, with any, without giving the seal brimful of wine, to seal it for perpetuity.”
M. Misson, who was also some time in Germany, gives us yet a larger description. “The Germans,” says he[5], “are, as you know, strange drinkers. There are no people in the world more caressing, more civil, more officious, but still another cup. They have terrible customs on that article of drinking. Every thing is transacted over the bottle; you can do nothing without drinking. One can scarce speak three words at a visit, but you are astonished to see the collation come in, or at least a good quantity of wine, attended with crusts of bread cut into little pieces, upon a plate with salt and pepper, a fatal preparative for bad drinkers. I must instruct you in the laws they observe in their cups; laws sacred and inviolable. You must never drink without drinking some one’s health, which having done, you must immediately present the glass to the party you drank to, who must never refuse it, but drink it to the last drop. Reflect a little, I beseech you, on these customs, and you will see how, and by what means, it is impossible to cease from drinking. After this manner one shall never have done. It is a perpetual circle to drink after the German fashion; it is to drink for ever. You must likewise know, that the glasses too are respected in those countries as much as the wine is loved; they range them all about in ranks and files; most of their rooms are wainscotted up two thirds of the wall, and the glasses are ranged all about, like organ pipes, upon the cornish. They begin with the small, and end with the large ones, which are like melon glasses, and must be taken off at one draught, when they drink any health of importance.”
Let us observe here[6], “That it was the custom of the ancient Greeks to drink largely after meals, and that this custom is now practised in Germany.” This was what Æneas, and the people of his train, used to do, as we learn from these verses of Virgil[7]:—
“Postquam prima quies epulis, mensæque remotæ,
Crateras magnas statuunt et vina coronant.