The Essays, vol 9 | Page 8

principal office of wisdom was to distinguish good from evil, we, the
best of whom are vicious, ought also to say the same of the science of
distinguishing betwixt vice and vice, without which, and that very
exactly performed, the virtuous and the wicked will remain confounded
and unrecognised.
Now, amongst the rest, drunkenness seems to me to be a gross and
brutish vice. The soul has greater part in the rest, and there are some
vices that have something, if a man may so say, of generous in them;
there are vices wherein there is a mixture of knowledge, diligence,
valour, prudence, dexterity, and address; this one is totally corporeal
and earthly. And the rudest nation this day in Europe is that alone
where it is in fashion. Other vices discompose the understanding: this
totally overthrows it and renders the body stupid:
"Cum vini vis penetravit . . . Consequitur gravitas membrorum,
praepediuntur Crura vacillanti, tardescit lingua, madet mens, Nant oculi;
clamor, singultus, jurgia, gliscunt."
["When the power of wine has penetrated us, a heaviness of the limbs
follows, the legs of the tottering person are impeded; the tongue grows
torpid, the mind is dimmed, the eyes swim; noise, hiccup, and quarrels
arise.--"Lucretius, i. 3, 475.]
The worst state of man is that wherein he loses the knowledge and
government of himself. And 'tis said amongst other things upon this
subject, that, as the must fermenting in a vessel, works up to the top
whatever it has in the bottom, so wine, in those who have drunk beyond
measure, vents the most inward secrets:
"Tu sapientum Curas et arcanum jocoso Consilium retegis Lyaeo."
["Thou disclosest to the merry Lyacus the cares and secret counsel of
the wise."--Horace, Od., xxi. 1, 114.]
[Lyacus, a name given to Bacchus.]

Josephus tells us that by giving an ambassador the enemy had sent to
him his full dose of liquor, he wormed out his secrets. And yet,
Augustus, committing the most inward secrets of his affairs to Lucius
Piso, who conquered Thrace, never found him faulty in the least, no
more than Tiberias did Cossus, with whom he intrusted his whole
counsels, though we know they were both so given to drink that they
have often been fain to carry both the one and the other drunk out of the
Senate:
"Hesterno inflatum venas ut semper, Lyaeo."
["Their veins full, as usual, of yesterday's wine." --Virgil, Egl., vi. 15.]
And the design of killing Caesar was as safely communicated to
Cimber, though he would often be drunk, as to Cassius, who drank
nothing but water.
[As to which Cassius pleasantly said: "What, shall I bear a tyrant, I who
cannot bear wine?"]
We see our Germans, when drunk as the devil, know their post,
remember the word, and keep to their ranks:
"Nec facilis victoria de madidis, et Blaesis, atque mero titubantibus."
["Nor is a victory easily obtained over men so drunk, they can scarce
speak or stand."--Juvenal, Sat., xv. 47.]
I could not have believed there had been so profound, senseless, and
dead a degree of drunkenness had I not read in history that Attalus
having, to put a notable affront upon him, invited to supper the same
Pausanias, who upon the very same occasion afterwards killed Philip of
Macedon, a king who by his excellent qualities gave sufficient
testimony of his education in the house and company of Epaminondas,
made him drink to such a pitch that he could after abandon his beauty,
as of a hedge strumpet, to the muleteers and servants of the basest
office in the house. And I have been further told by a lady whom I
highly honour and esteem, that near Bordeaux and about Castres where

she lives, a country woman, a widow of chaste repute, perceiving in
herself the first symptoms of breeding, innocently told her neighbours
that if she had a husband she should think herself with child; but the
causes of suspicion every day more and more increasing, and at last
growing up to a manifest proof, the poor woman was reduced to the
necessity of causing it to be proclaimed in her parish church, that
whoever had done that deed and would frankly confess it, she did not
only promise to forgive, but moreover to marry him, if he liked the
motion; whereupon a young fellow that served her in the quality of a
labourer, encouraged by this proclamation, declared that he had one
holiday found her, having taken too much of the bottle, so fast asleep
by the chimney and in so indecent a posture, that he could conveniently
do his business without waking her; and they yet live together man and
wife.
It is true that antiquity has not much decried this vice; the writings even
of several philosophers speak very