From Herbert’s Jacula Prudentum may be extracted—
A drunkard’s purse is a bottle.
Choose not a house near an inn.
Take heed of the vinegar of sweet wine.
The wine in the bottle doth not quench thirst.
A morning sun, and a wine-bred child, and a
Latin-bred woman, seldom end well.
Once more, from the Church Porch,—
Drink not the third glasse, which thou canst not tame
When once it is within thee; but before
Mayst rule it, as thou list: and poure the shame,
Which it would poure on thee, upon the floore.
It is most just to throw that on the ground
Which would throw me there, if I keep the round.
He that is drunken may his mother kill
Bigge with his sister: he hath lost the reins,
Is outlaw’d by himselfe; all kinde of ill
Did with his liquor slide into his veins.
The drunkard forfets Man, and doth divest
All worldly right, save what he hath by beast.
Shall I, to please another’s wine-sprung minde,
Lose all mine own? God hath giv’n me a measure
Short of his canne, and bodie.
* * * *
Be not a beast in courtesie, but stay,
Stay at the third cup, or forego the place.
Wine above all things doth God’s stamp efface.
Bishop Hall was unsparing in his lashes of the vices of his time, and amongst these of intemperance. We hear him in verse and prose, in critique and sermon. Thus, in his Satire on the Stage,[125]—
Soon as the sun sends out his piercing beams
Exhale out filthy smoke and stinking streams,
So doth the base and the fore-barren brain,
Soon as the raging wine begins to reign.
In his Contemplation on Lot he remarks, ‘Drunkenness is the way to all bestial affections and acts. Wine knows no difference either of persons or sins.’ In his sermon preached at Paul’s Cross, on Good Friday, 1609, we find ‘Every of our sins is a thorn, and nail, and spear to Him; while thou pourest down thy drunken carouses, thou givest thy Saviour a portion of gall.’ Why are not the preachers of to-day equally outspoken? One of his apophthegms can scarcely be forgotten:[126] ‘When drinke is in, wit is out; but if wit were not out, drinke would not be in;’ and, lastly,—
Wine is a mocker. When it goes plausibly in, no man can know how it will rage and tyrannise. He that receives that traitor within his gates shall too late complain of surprisal. It insinuates sweetly, but in the end it bites like a serpent and hurts like a cockatrice. Even good Uriah is made drunk. The holiest may be overtaken.
But it is time to pass from precept to law.
In 1603 the power of licensing inns and ale-houses was granted by letters patent to certain persons, in which it was enacted that no victualler could sell less than one full quart of the best ale for one penny, and two quarts of the smaller sort for the same. The preamble of the statute of 1604 is most valuable for the information it affords as to what the ancient Parliaments considered to be the legitimate use of a tavern.