[8] Botanic Garden.
[9] Rede’s Memoir of the Right Hon. George Canning.
[10] The old gentleman who is represented as speaking, in Bunbury’s admirable caricature of the “Long Story,” furnishes one of the best illustrations I have ever seen of this variety. It is worth consulting, both on account of the story-teller, and the effect his tedious garrulity produces upon the company.
[11] Alcohol appears to exist in wines, in a very peculiar state of combination. In the Appendix, I have availed myself of Dr. Paris’s valuable remarks on this subject.
[12] There is reason to believe that the Sack of Shakspeare was Sherry.—“Falstaff. You rogue! here’s lime in this Sack too. There is nothing but roguery to be found in villanous man. Yet a coward is worse than a cup of Sack with lime in it.”—Lime, it is well known, is added to the grapes in the manufacture of Sherry. This not only gives the wine what is called its dry quality, but probably acts by neutralizing a portion of the malic or tartaric acid.
[13] “It is recorded of a Welsh squire, William Lewis, who died in 1793, that he drank eight gallons of ale per diem, and weighed forty stones.”—Wadd’s Comments on Corpulency.
[14] “The law of Mahomet, which prohibits the drinking of wine, is a law fitted to the climate of Arabia; and, indeed, before Mahomet’s time, water was the common drink of the Arabs. The law which forbade the Carthagenians to drink wine, was also a law of the climate.”—Montesquieu, Book xiv., Chap. x.
[15] The following description, by a modern traveller, of a scene witnessed by him in the East, gives a lively picture of the effects of this drug:—
“There is a decoction of the head and seeds of the poppy, which they call Coquenar, for the sale of which there are taverns in every quarter of the town, similar to our coffee-houses. It is extremely amusing to visit these houses, and to observe carefully those who resort there for the purpose of drinking it, both before they have taken the dose, before it begins to operate, and while it is operating. On entering the tavern, they are dejected and languishing: soon after they have taken two or three cups of this beverage, they are peevish, and as it were, enraged; every thing displeases them. They find fault with every thing, and quarrel with one another, but in the course of its operation they make it up again;—and, each one giving himself up to his predominant passion, the lover speaks sweet things to his idol—another, half asleep, laughs in his sleeve—a third talks big and blusters—a fourth tells ridiculous stories. In a word, a person would believe himself to be really in a mad-house. A kind of lethargy and stupidity succeed to this disorderly gaiety; but the Persians, far from treating it as it deserves, call it an ecstasy, and maintain that there is something exquisite and heavenly in this state.”—Chardin.
[16] Equal to nearly three thousand drops of laudanum.