Moore’s Diary, however, proves that if he did not care to praise the wine in verse, it was not for want of opportunities of becoming acquainted with it. Witness his ‘odd dinner in a borrowed room’ at Horace Twiss’s in Chancery-lane, with the strangely incongruous accompaniments of ‘Champagne, pewter spoons, and old Lady Cork.’[371]
CAPTAIN CHARLES MORRIS
(After Gilray).
As to that most convivial of songsters, Captain Charles Morris, poet-laureate of the Ancient Society of Beefsteaks, he labours under a similar reproach. Though he has filled several hundred octavo pages of his Lyra Urbanica with verses in praise of wine, the liquor with which he crowns ‘the mantling goblet,’ ‘the fancy-stirring bowl,’ or ‘the soul-subliming cup,’ usually figures under some such fanciful designation as ‘the inspiring juice,’ ‘the cordial of life,’ or ‘Bacchus’ balm.’ Champagne he evidently ignores as a beverage of Gallic origin, utterly unfitted for the praise of so true a Briton as himself; and the only vintage which he does condescend to mention with approbation is the favourite one of our beef-eating, hard-drinking, frog-hating forefathers, ‘old Oporto’ from ‘the stout Lusitanian vine.’
Strange as it may seem, the manlier Muse of Scott used at times to dip her wing into the Champagne cup, although she has failed to express any verbal gratitude to this source of inspiration. ‘In truth,’ says his biographer, ‘he liked no wines except sparkling Champaign and Claret; but even as to this last he was no connoisseur, and sincerely preferred a tumbler of whisky-toddy to the most precious liquid ruby that ever flowed in the cup of a prince. He rarely took any other potation when alone with his family; but at the Sunday board he circulated the Champaign briskly during dinner, and considered a pint of Claret each man’s fair share afterwards.’[372] Scott himself, wearied with a round of London festivities, is impelled to write, ‘I begin to tire of my gaieties. I wish for a sheep’s head and whisky-toddy against all the French cookery and Champaign in the world.’[373] Lockhart, in his Life of Scott, notes the excellent flavour of some Champagne sent to Abbotsford by a French admirer of the Northern Wizard in return for a set of his works, and more than once incidentally refers to the presence of the wine at Scott’s table on festive gatherings.
Byron, who furnished in the course of his career a practical exemplification of the maxim that
‘Comus all allows
Champaign, dice, music, or your neighbour’s spouse,’[374]
did the vintage of the Marne justice in his verses. In Don Juan he shows himself not insensible to the charms of