JOHN Because your poet-born hath an internal wine, richer than lippara or canaries, yet uncrushed from any grapes of earth, unpressed in mortal wine-presses.
THIRD GENTLEMAN
What may be the name of this wine?
JOHN It hath as many names as qualities. It is denominated indifferently, wit, conceit, invention, inspiration, but its most royal and comprehensive name is fancy.
THIRD GENTLEMAN
And where keeps he this sovereign liquor?
JOHN Its cellars are in the brain, whence your true poet deriveth intoxication at will; while his animal spirits, catching a pride from the quality and neighbourhood of their noble relative, the brain, refuse to be sustained by wines and fermentations of earth.
THIRD GENTLEMAN
But is your poet-born alway tipsy with this liquor?
JOHN He hath his stoopings and reposes; but his proper element is the sky, and in the suburbs of the empyrean.
THIRD GENTLEMAN Is your wine-intellectual so exquisite? henceforth, I, a man of plain conceit, will, in all humility, content my mind with canaries.
FOURTH GENTLEMAN I am for a song or a catch. When will the catches come on, the sweet wicked catches?
JOHN
They cannot be introduced with propriety before midnight. Every man must
commit his twenty bumpers first. We are not yet well roused. Frank
Lovel, the glass stands with you.