‘Bold Burgundian ever glories
With stout Remois to get mellow;
Each well filled with vinous lore is
Each a jolly tippling fellow.’[160]
And the learned Canon Maucroix of Reims exhibited a similar conciliatory spirit in the ingenious parallel which he drew between the two greatest orators of antiquity and the wines of the Marne and the Côte d’Or. ‘In the wine of Burgundy,’ he observes, ‘there is more strength and vigour; it does not play with its man so much, it overthrows him more suddenly,—that is Demosthenes. The wine of Champagne is subtler and more delicate; it amuses more and for a longer time, but in the end it does not produce less effect,—that is Cicero.’[161]
REMAINS OF THE GATE OF BACCHUS, NEAR REIMS UNIVERSITY.
The national disasters which marked the close of the reign of Louis XIV. diverted public attention in some degree from the nugatory contest;[162] and though Fontenelle sought to prove that a glass of Champagne was better than a bottle of Burgundy,[163] the impartially appreciative agreed with Panard that
‘Old Burgundy and young Champagne