The scientific writer Dunovan, in his Domestic Economy, makes us acquainted with a few of the drugs with which beer is doctored.
It is absolutely frightful to contemplate the list of poisons and drugs with which malt liquors have been (as it is technically and descriptively called) doctored. Opium, henbane, cocculus indicus, and Bohemian rosemary, which is said to produce a quick and raving intoxication, supplied the place of alcohol; aloes, quassia, gentian, sweet-scented flag, wormwood, horehound, and bitter oranges, fulfilled the duties of hops; liquorice, treacle, and mucilage of flax seed, stood for attenuated malt sugar. Capsicum, ginger, and cinnamon, or rather cassia-buds, afforded to the exhausted drink the pungency of carbonic acid. Burnt flour, sugar, or treacle, communicated a peculiar taste, which porter-drinkers generally fancy. Preparations of fish, assisted, in cases of obstinacy, with oil of vitriol, procured transparency. Besides these, the brewer had to supply himself with lime, potash, salt, and a variety of other substances, which are of no other use, than in serving the office of more valuable materials, and defrauding the customer.
But the subject is, like the frauds practised, without a limit; references can only be subjoined.[196]
The principal writer in the Tatler, that censor morum, Richard Steele, was a prominent figure in the convivial circle. Wine and extravagance were his bane. He loved drink and was fond of acknowledging it. The author of the Christian Hero wrote his devotional treatise in drink and in debt. The arrival of a hamper of wine could interrupt his moments of tenderest grief. The emotions were forgotten as he sent for his friends, who join him in drinking ‘two bottles apiece, with great benefit to themselves, and not separating till two o’clock in the morning.’
A story told of him by Dr. Hoadley is characteristic of the man:—
My father, when Bishop of Bangor, was, by invitation, present at one of the Whig meetings, held at the Trumpet in Shoe Lane, when Sir Richard, in his zeal, rather exposed himself, having the double duty of the day upon him, as well to celebrate the immortal memory of King William, it being the 4th November, as to drink his friend Addison up to conversation pitch, whose phlegmatic constitution was hardly warmed for society by that time. Steele was not fit for it. Two remarkable circumstances happened. John Sly, the hatter of facetious memory, was in the house; and John, pretty mellow, took it into his head to come into the company on his knees, with a tankard of ale in his hand to drink off to the immortal memory, and to return in the same manner. Steele, sitting next my father, whispered him—Do laugh. It is humanity to laugh. Sir Richard, in the evening, being too much in the same condition, was put into a chair, and sent home. Nothing would serve him but being carried to the Bishop of Bangor’s, late as it was. However, the chairmen carried him home, and got him upstairs, when his great complaisance would wait on them downstairs, which he did, and then was got quietly to bed.
One of his own letters to Mrs. Scurlock reveals the man:—
I have been in very good company, where your health, under the character of the woman I loved best, has been often drunk; so that I may say that I am dead drunk for your sake, which is more than I die for you.
Matthew Prior, the poet, demands a notice. Whether he was the son of a vintner or a joiner is a moot point. He was certainly nephew to Samuel Prior, landlord of the Rummer Tavern at Charing Cross, at which house, in 1685, was held the annual feast of the nobility and gentry living in the parish of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. By this uncle he was brought up and sent to Westminster School, after which he was employed, it is said, at his uncle’s as server. Taken up by Lord Dorset, his career was remarkable, as author, as secretary to successive embassies, as member of Parliament, as favourite of the king. Dr. Johnson remarks that a survey of Prior’s life and writings may exemplify a sentence which he doubtless understood well when he read Horace at his uncle’s:—
The vessel long retains the scent which it first receives.