is from a panegyrist of the more legitimate school of trade.
Altogether it is tolerably certain that Champagne—genuine or fictitious, from grape or gooseberry—played a more important part in the conviviality of the early portion of the eighteenth century than might be supposed from the imports of the epoch, whilst there is little doubt but that it helped to inspire some of the finest productions of the Augustan age of English literature.
Gay places it first amongst the wines offered to a party of guests entering a tavern, making the drawer exclaim:
‘Name, sirs, the wine that most invites your taste,
Champaign or Burgundy, or Florence pure,
Or Hock antique, or Lisbon new or old,
Bourdeaux, or neat French wine, or Alicant.’[307]
This reference to Champagne most likely relates to the still wine; but it is probably the sparkling variety which is alluded to in the verses which Gay addressed to Pope on the completion of the Iliad in 1720, and wherein he represents General Wilkinson thus apostrophising as the ship conveying the poet passes Greenwich:
‘Come in, my friends, here shall ye dine and lie;
And here shall breakfast and shall dine again,