We meet it also in the ballad, “Old England is now a brave Barbary,” i.e. horse, from a “Collection of Loyal Songs,” reprinted in 1731, vol. ii., p. 231,—
“But Nol, a rank rider, gets first in the saddle,
And made her show tricks, and curvate, and rebound;
She quickly perceiv’d he rode widdle-waddle,
And like his coach-horses[657] threw his highness to ground.
“Then Dick, being lame, rode holding the pummel,
Not having the wit to get hold of the rein;
But the jade did so snort at the sight of a Cromwell,
That poor Dick and his kindred turn’d footmen again.”
Dick’s bacchic propensities are also sung in many an old song. Two of the Luttrell Ballads, vol. ii., pp. 11 and 36, allude to his weakness in this respect:—
“Then thirdly Oliver he took place,
And set up young Dick the fool of his race;
Dick loved a cup of nectar.”
In another:—
“Drunken Dick was a lame Protector.”
Perhaps to the same origin may be referred the sign of Soldier Dick, which occurs near Disley, Stockport; and Happy Dick, at Abingdon. Tumbling-down Dick was also the name of a dance in the last century, which gives additional strength to the supposition that Dick Cromwell was intended, since otherwise an ordinary signboard would scarcely have come to such honour.
The Jolly Toper is a common public-house sign, probably put up as a good example to the customers; in London, there is a Tippling Philosopher, “the right man in the right place,” for he “hangs out” in Liquor Pond Street, opposite Reid’s great brewery. Here we have l’embarras du choix; which philosopher was intended by the sign, for they all, more or less, “pleaded guilty to the soft impeachment.” Theophrastus, in his “Treaty on Drunkenness,” tells us that the seven sages of Greece often met together to indulge in a cheerful glass. Plato not only excuses a drop too much occasionally, but even orders it. Heraclitus, the weeping philosopher, never laughed but when he was “half seas over.” Xenocrates gained a golden crown, awarded by Dionysius the tyrant to the deepest drinker. Seneca states that Solon and Arcesilaus are believed to have “indulged in wine,” and Cornelius Gallus says that Socrates “carried off the palm from his contemporaries by his drinking capacities.” Cato, we know from various sources, liked his glass; Horace tells us—
“Narratur et prisci Catonis
Sæpe mero caluisse virtus;”[658]