But before I enter into this detail, I hope I shall be permitted a general remark, which is, that my readers must not expect I should set down a complete list of all the several sorts of topers I just now mentioned; such an exactitude would take up too much time. Much sooner may one reckon up what numbers die away every spring by the doctor; and how many dispose of their maidenheads before marriage.
In every different class you will find no other jolly drinkers, but such as I have met with in my great reading, and as shall occur to my remembrance. Neither shall I be very scrupulous in placing them according to the strict rules of chronology, but put them down as they present themselves to my imagination.
If the antiquity of a custom makes it always good and laudable, certainly drunkenness can never deserve sufficient recommendation. Every one knows, that Noah got drunk after he had planted the vine. There are some who pretend to excuse him, that he was not acquainted with the strength of wine. But to this it may very well be answered, that it is not very probable so wise a man as Noah should plant a vine without knowing its nature and property. Besides, it is one thing to know, whether he got drunk at all: and another, whether he had an intention to do so.
But if we give any credit to several learned persons, Noah was not the first man that got fuddled. Father Frassen maintains, “That people fed on flesh before the flood, and drank wine. There is no likelihood, according to him, that men contented themselves with drinking water for fifteen or sixteen hundred years together. It is much more credible, that they prepared a drink more nourishing and palatable. These first men of the world were endued with no less share of wit than their posterity, and, consequently, wanted no industry to invent every thing that might contribute to make them pass their lives agreeably. Jesus Christ says, that in the days of Noah, before the Flood, men married, and gave their children in marriage. These people, Father Frassen observes, regaled each other, and made solemn entertainments. Now who can imagine, that they drank at those festivals nothing but water, and fed only on fruits and herbs! Noah, therefore, was not the inventor of that use which we make of the grape; the most that he did, was only to plant new vines[1].”
This good father was not singular in his opinion; another very learned person also believed, that from the passage of Scripture above cited, one might draw a very probable argument, that men before the flood drank wine, and that too even to be drunk[2].
As for Procopius of Gaza[3], one of the most ancient interpreters of Scripture, he thinks it no less true, that the vine was known in the world before Noah’s time, but he does not allow that the use of wine was known before that patriarch, whom he believes to be the inventor of it.
[1.] Disq. Biblic. Journ. des Sçavans.
[2.] Jo. Chr. Becman. Annal. Hist.
[3.] Torner de Ebriet. lib. i. c. 3.