David Hume ate a swinging great dinner,
And grew every day fatter and fatter;
And yet the huge hulk of a sinner
Said there was neither spirit nor matter.
Now there's no sober man in the nation,
Who such nonsense could write, speak, or think:
It follows, by fair demonstration,
That he philosophiz'd in his drink.
As a smuggler, even Priestley could sin;
Who, in hopes the poor gauger of frightening,
While he fill'd the case-bottles with gin,
Swore he fill'd them with thunder and lightning.[6]
In his cups, (when Locke's laid on the shelf),
Could he speak, he would frankly confess t' ye,
That unable to manage himself,
He puts his whole trust in Necessity.
If the young in rash folly engage,
How closely continues the evil!
Old Franklin retains, as a sage,
The thirst he acquired when a devil.[7]
That charging drives fire from a phial,
It was natural for him to think,
After finding, from many a trial,
That drought may be kindled by drink.
A certain high priest could explain,[8]
How the soul is but nerve at the most;
And how Milton had glands in his brain,
That secreted the Paradise Lost.
And sure it is what they deserve,
Of such theories if I aver it,
They are not even dictates of nerve,
But mere muddy suggestions of claret.
Our Holland Philosophers say, Gin
Is the true philosophical drink,
As it made Doctor Hartley imagine
That to shake is the same as to think.[9]
For, while drunkenness throbb'd in his brain,
The sturdy materialist chose (O fye!)
To believe its vibrations not pain,
But wisdom, and downright philosophy.
Ye sages, who shine in my verse,
On my labours with gratitude think,
Which condemn not the faults they rehearse,
But impute all your sin to your drink.
In drink, poets, philosophers, mob, err;
Then excuse if my satire e'er nips ye:
When I praise, think me prudent and sober,
If I blame, be assur'd I am tipsy.
[1] Roger Bacon, the father of experimental philosophy. He flourished in the thirteenth century.
[2] See The Spectator, No. 47.
[3] Hobbes was a great smoker, and wrote what some have been pleased to call a Translation of Homer.
[4] He taught that the external universe has no existence, but an ideal one, in the mind (or spirit) that perceives it; and he thought tar-water a universal remedy.