Quod curas abigat, quod cum spe divite manet
In venas, animumque meum, quod verba ministret.
My wines of generous and of smoother kind,
To drive away my cares, and to the soul,
Through the full veins, with golden hopes to roll.
With flowing language to inspire my tongue,
And make the list’ning fair one think me young.
Francis’s Hor. lib. 1. ep. 15.
But avoid those small wines which have less of the nature of wine than vinegar, and rather irritate than strengthen. Remember that wine is an antidote against the miseries of life and the tediousness of idleness; cares are banished by wine, whilst the reason is intoxicated: but does such a drink become the learned? And this puts me in mind of another sort of intoxication, I mean that caused by smoking tobacco, which abounds with an acrimonious salt and sulphur, together with a narcotic oil. I have elsewhere enlarged upon the folly of smoking; here I shall add more concisely, that the narcotic principle hurts the stomach, causes a stuffing up of the head, head-achs, vertigos, anxiety, lethargy, apoplexy, and finally all the effects of opium, as the great Lord Bacon has observed. Tobacco, says he, the use of which herb has greatly prevailed in the present age, is a species of henbane; it is evident that it disturbs the head like opiates. Therefore, young men, avoid a dirty pleasure, equally injurious both to your health and your studies, and which should be left to those who have recourse to it for the killing of time. The muses fly those studies that smell like a stable, and delight in a purer air; for one of the chief sources of health or sickness is the air which environs us, in which we live, and by which not only our bodies are affected, but whose power our very minds experience. Thus the air of Bœotia, or Thrace, rendered dull those whom that of Athens revived:
Bœotum in crasso jurares ære natum[48].