Iago. I learned it in England, where (indeed) they are most potent in potting. Your Dane, your German, and your swag-bellied Hollander,—Drink, oh!—are nothing to your English.
Cassio. Is your Englishman so expert in his drinking?
Iago. Why he drinks you with facility your Dane dead drunk; he sweats not to overthrow your Almain; he gives your Hollander a vomit ere the next pottle can be filled.
Cassio. To the health of our general!
Mon. I am for it, lieutenant, and I’ll do you justice.
Iago. O sweet England!
How like is human nature at all periods! Iago’s drinking song reminds us of the half-gay, half-melancholy campaigning song, said to have been composed by General Wolfe, and sung by him at the mess-table on the eve of the storming of Quebec, in which he fell so gloriously:—
Why, soldiers, why
Should we be melancholy, boys?
Why, soldiers, why,
Whose business ‘tis to die?
For should next campaign
Send us to Him who made us, boys,
We’re free from pain;
But should we remain,
A bottle and kind landlady
Will set all right again.
This song was a favourite with Sir Walter Scott—see Washington Irving’s Abbotsford and Newstead.
VI. The bane of ardent spirits and of that to which they conduce—intemperance. Thus Othello, act ii. scene 3:—