And two ales more, or else I needs must lie.
But to conclude this drinking aley tale
We had a sort of ale called scurvy ale."
It would seem that in most of these drinks, the chief object was to impart an exciting but not disagreeable bitterness to the beverage, groping as it were, by instinct, after that enduring and gratifying bitter now universally derived from the hop. Wormwood, hyssop, rosemary, sage, bettony, each furnished its peculiar temptation to the Manchester drinkers, who some two centuries ago wanted an "excuse for the glass." Can any of your correspondents state what were the components of the scurvy ale spoken of by Taylor? This was, perhaps, a really medicated drink.
It may not be generally known, that even at this day, In some of the gin shops and taverns of London, gin, in which the herb rue is infused, is a constant article of sale; and many, who assume a most respectable blueness of physiognomy at the bare mention of "old Tom" in his undisguised state, scruple not to indulge in copious libations of the same popular spirit, provided it be poured from a bottle in which a few sprigs of rue are floating. But what was scurvy ale?
ROYAL LIBRARY.
(Vol. iii., p. 427.)
In the following passage (extracted from the Quarterly Review, No. CLXXV., Dec. 1850, p. 143.) it is declared that the nation did "pay" for this "munificent present." The writer is understood to be Mr. R. Ford; and if his statement is not refuted, the business will henceforth take its place as a sale which the nation was duped into regarding as a gift:—
"The secret history," says the reviewer, "was this: King George IV., having some pressing call for money, did not decline a proposition for selling the library to the Emperor of Russia. Mr. Heber, having ascertained that the books were actually booked for the Baltic, went to Lord Sidmouth, then Home Secretary, and stated the case; observing what a shame it would be that such a collection should go out of the country: to which Lord Sidmouth replied: 'Mr. Heber, it shall not!'—and it did not. On the remonstrance of Lord Sidmouth, of whose manly and straightforward character George IV. was very properly in awe, the last of the grands monarques presented the books to the British Museum, on the condition that the value of the rubles they were to have fetched should be somehow or other made good to him by ministers in pounds sterling. This was done out of the surplus of certain funds furnished by France for the compensation of losses by the Revolution. But his ministers, on a hint from the House of Commons that it was necessary to refund those monies, had recourse, we are told, to the droits of the Admiralty."
So that the books were not given, but paid for, out of public monies: which ministers could not have made the object of a bargain, had they been the king's, and not the nation's. And the inscription in the Museum—like many others—"lifts its head and lies," i. e. unless the Quarterly Review has been inventing a story, instead of telling a true bit of secret history, decidedly worth noting if true.