When shaken by the powerful force of age
The body languid grows, and ev’ry joint
Its proper juice exhal’d, all feeble droops.
And is not the reason plain? because it moistens their dry temperament, and nourishes their radical moisture. Hence came the proverb, which says, “That wine is the milk of old men[2].” Tirellus, in his history, declares the same thing, when he says, “That wine is the nutriment of natural heat[3].” Conformably to this truth that old man acted, of whom Seneca makes mention, who being pressed to drink wine cooled in snow, said, “That his age made him cold enough, and that he did not desire to be more cold than he was[4].” Than which, certainly no answer could be more just and true.
Besides, the infirmities of an advanced age require some consolation and diversion. Let us see what Montaigne says, who was not much given to tippling; for he plainly says, that his gout and complexion were greater enemies to drunkenness than his discourse. His words are these, “The inconveniencies attending old age, which stand in need of some support and refreshment, might with reason produce in me a desire of this faculty, since it is as it were the last pleasure that the course of years steals from us. The natural heat, say the boon companions, begins first at the feet; this is the case of infancy; thence it ascends to the middle region, where it continues a long while, and there produces in my mind the only true pleasures of the corporal life; at last exhaling itself like a vapour, it moves upwards, till it comes to the throat, and there it makes its last little stay[5].”
Athenæus, after Theophrastus, says, That wine drives away those irksome inquietudes to which old people are unhappily subject[6]. And to conclude, the divine Plato assures us, that, “Wine is a medicine as well for the body as the mind, the dryness of old people have great occasion for this kind of moistening, and their severe genius of the brisk gaiety inspired by wine, without which they would not be able to perform their part in the concert, and consequently would be no longer useful members in the commonwealth, which is no other ways supported and preserved than by harmony.”
[1.] Lucret. lib. iii.
[2.] Vinum lac senum.
[3.] Vina calidi innati pabula.
[4.] Ætas meo frigore contenta est.