| Port | 438 | bottles |
| Lisbon | 220 | „ |
| Madeira | 90 | „ |
| Claret | 168 | „ |
| Champagne | 143 | „ |
| Burgundy | 116 | „ |
| Malmsey, or Sack | 4 | „ |
| Brandy | 4 | „ |
| Hock | 66 | „ |
| Grand Total | 1249 | „ |
There be several remarkable features in the above list. I had imagined that a taste for claret had not been fully acquired by the British ratepayer until some years later than this; whilst the virtues of champagne could not have been fully recognized. Lisbon, I conceive to have been another sort of port, and this seems to have been neck-and-cork above all other vintages in popular favour. The taste for such mawkish stuff as malmsey must have been at vanishing point; whilst one is led to ask what, with only such a minute allowance of sack, did these feasters drink with their soup? Was the succulency of calipash and calipee known in those days; and if so, where was the harmless necessary milk-punch? But the most remarkable feature of all in the above catalogue is the meagre allowance of brandy for the crowd. The parable of the loaves and fishes would not appear more miraculous than that, in these later days, a multitude could be filled, after a big dinner, with four bottles of cognac! And this despite the fact of whisky having almost entirely usurped the place of the other strong-water. {18}
One hundred years ago, to be “drunk as a lord” was considered the height of human happiness. And at this period the Church had not severed its old connection with alcohol. In fact intemperance was encouraged by our pastors and masters; and in certain districts of England the churchwardens, at Whitsuntide, made collections of malt from the parishioners, and this was brewed into strong ale, and sold in the churches, the money so obtained being expended on the repairs of the sacred edifices; and it was a frequent and a saddening spectacle to see men who had drunk not wisely reeling about the aisles. Until as late as 1827—in which year the license was withdrawn—a church and a tavern were covered by the same roof, in the parish of Deepdale, a village between Derby and Nottingham; and a door which could be opened at will led from the altar to the tap-room.
A Romish priest wrote in praise of the bowl as follows:—
Si bene commemini, causae sunt quinque bibendi:
Hospitis adventus; praesens sitis; atque futura;
Aut vini bonitas; aut quaelibet altera causa.
Which comforting and jovial sentiments were thus adapted for the use of colleges and private bars, by Dean Aldrich, D.D., the great master of logic at Oxford:—
There are, if I do rightly think,
Five reasons why a man should drink: