University of Virginia Library

V.
Notables and Potables.

“My dear learned friend,” said Dr. Bushwhacker,
putting down his half-empty
goblet of claret, “that is the finest wine I ever tasted.
A man, sir, should go down on his knees when he drinks
such wine; it inspires me, sir, with humility and devotion.
Six months' retirement and study, with a liberal
allowance of claret like that would induce an epic poem,
sir!”

“Retirement and study would do much, Doctor; but
as for the claret I have my doubts. France, with all her
clarets, has no great poet.”

“Sir,” replied Doctor Bushwhacker, “France has Corneille,
Racine, Molière!”

“True.”

“La Fontaine, Voltaire, and Boileau.”

“True.”

“Jongleurs, Troubadours, Trouveres, without number,
sir!”

“I know it.”

“Béranger, Lamartine, Victor Hugo, and—what is the
name of that barber-poet?—ah! Jasmin.”

“Yes, Jasmin.”

“And,” continued the Doctor, “there was Du Bartas,
sir, who wrote the `Divine Week' and the `Battle of
Ivry,' sir!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Claret,” said Dr. Bushwhacker significantly.

“Great thing for wit, Doctor!”

“My dear learned friend, it is,” replied the Doctor,
emptying his goblet, and giving a triumphant snort, “and
for poetry, too.”

“How is it, then, that with all her great poets, France
has not produced a great poem?”

“Sir,” asked Dr. Bushwhacker, “did you ever read
the œdipe of Corneille?”

“No, sir.”

“Then I would advise you to read it, sir.”

“My learned friend,” continued Dr. Bushwhacker,
after an impressive pause, “I have a theory that certain
wines produce certain effects upon the mind. I believe,
sir, that if I were to come in upon a dinner-party about
the time when conversation had become luminous and
choral, I could easily tell whether Claret, Champagne,
Sherry, Madeira, Burgundy, Port, or Punch, had been
the prevailing potable. Yes, sir, and no doubt a skillful
critic could determine, after a careful analysis of the subject,
upon what drink, sir, a poem was written. Yes, sir,
or tell a claret couplet from a sherry couplet, sir, or distinguish

the flavor of Port in one stanza, and Madeira in
another, from internal evidence, sir.”

“Suppose, Doctor, the poet were a water-drinker?”

“My dear learned friend,” replied the Doctor vehemently,
“if you can find in the whole range of literature
—and I will go farther than that—if you can find in the
whole range of intelligence, either poet, statesman, orator,
artist, hero, or divine, who was a water-drinker, and worth
one (excuse me) curse! then, sir, I will renounce the
practice of my profession, and occupy my time in a water-cure
establishment. On the contrary, look at the illus
trious writers of all ages and nations, sir; look at Homer.
There is no end to the juncketings in the Iliad, sir; and
the Greek heaven, sir, is pretty well supplied with every
thing else but water, I believe.

“What was Homer's peculiar tipple, Doctor?”

“The wine of Chios, sir, undoubtedly. In this island,
it is said, the first wines were made by œnopion, son of
Bacchus; and here, too, it is said Homer was born. I
believe both, sir. From the island of Chios came the

first wine and the first epic, sir; hand in hand they came
into the world, and hand in hand they will go out of it,
sir!”

“The Romans, Doctor, were great wine-drinkers.”

“Yes, my learned friend. Falernian and Massic, sir,
inspired Virgil and Horace, and the poets have made
the wines immortal. Martial praises his native wine
of Tarragonia, sir; he was an old sherry drinker.
And had the Italian vine, sir, perished with the Roman
Empire, I have my doubts whether Dante, Pulci, Tasso,
Petrarch, Boïardo, and Ariosto would have been what
they now are in the eyes of an admiring posterity. Yes,
sir, and there is Redi, too! Why, the whole of Italy is
in his `Bacco in Toscana.'”

“What wine do you suppose Shakspeare preferred,
Doctor?”

“Sack! my learned friend—dry Sherry or Canary, sir.
All the poets of the Elizabethan age, sir, were sack-drinkers—Ben
Johnson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Marlowe, Raleigh,
Chapman, Spencer, Sydney—so, too, was Herrick,
as he says:

and the other writers of his time, sir—Carew, Wither,
Cowley, Waller, Crashaw, Broome—
That was the burthen of a song in the time of the Rump,
sir! It was a `Rump and dozen' in those days, my
learned friend.”

“One writer of that period was an exception, Doctor.”

“What writer, sir?”

“Milton.”

“Died of the gout, sir—died of the gout, sir. Milton,
my dear friend, died of the gout.”

“Cervantes was a Sherry-drinker, Doctor?”

“Of course, my learned friend. And, no doubt, the
`Val de Peñas' of La Mancha was a favorite beverage
with him. But, sir,” continued Dr. Bushwhacker suddenly,
sitting upright and holding his head like a poised
avalanche, “by speaking of Cervantes, sir, you have put
a keystone into the arch of my theory, sir. The Elizabethan
era should be called the age of Sack, sir. Look
at those two great writers, Shakspeare and Cervantes,
each a transcendant genius, sir; both living at the same
time, sir; both dying on the same day, sir—on the 23d
of April, 1616.”

“Well, Doctor?”

“And both drinking Sack, sir, or Sherry, constantly.
`If I had a thousand sons, the first human principle I
would teach them should be, to forswear thin potations,
and to addict themselves to Sack.' Shakspeare, sir! King
Henry Fourth, part second, act fourth, scene third, sir!”

“How long did this golden age of Sack continue,
Doctor?”

“Until Charles the Second returned from France, and
brought Claret into fashion. You can see the light, delicate,
fanciful potable, sir, in the literature of this period
as plain as sunlight. Next came the age of Port, sir, in
Queen Anne's reign.”

“Ah! I remember, the Methuen treaty.”

“Yes, sir, the treaty of 1703. Port was encouraged
by low duties, and lighter and better wines of other countries
interdicted by enormous imposts, and in consequence
we have a new school of literature, sir. The imaginative,
the nervous, the pathetic, the humorous, and the sublime
departed with the age of Sack; the gay, the witty, the
amorous, and the fanciful, with the age of Claret; and
the artificial, the critical, the satirical, and the commonplace
arose, sir, with the age of Port! But bless my
heart,” said Doctor Bushwhacker, rising and looking at
his watch, “I must look after my patients. The next
time we meet we will have a talk over modern wines and
authors, and that will be more interesting, I dare say.”

Notables and Potables=Continued.

“The last discourse we had, my learned friend,” said
Dr. Bushwhacker, “was about wine and wisdom. What
shall be the next?”

“Pardon me, Doctor, we are not yet through with

that. We reached Port and Queen Anne; what followed
after the age of Pope and Addison?”

“The prohibition of wine, sir,” replied the Doctor,
solemnly, “led to the substitution of spirits. You see
how Hogarth, in his immortal pictures, shows its progress
in Gin Lane. Well, sir, if you wish to see how
intimate are the relations between drinking and thinking,
mark the host of clever literary vagabonds of this period.
Genius in rags, sir; genius with immortal thoughts in his
brain and no crown to his hat; Pegassus, with every thing
but his wings, in the pawnbroker's shop. The long exhausting
toil of literary occupation, which needs a natu
ral stimulant, such as wine, (for men of sedentary habits
must have it, sir,) was relieved by stronger stimulants,
because they were cheaper. And now, sir, mark the two
great geniuses of the middle of the last century, Fielding
and Smollett; see the wonderful power of those writers,
and observe the characteristic coarseness of their works,
and what else is there to say `to point a moral,' farther,
than that Smollett, with a shattered constitution, went to
Leghorn, to die there; and Fielding, with a shattered
constitution, went to Lisbon, to die there. Fielding, at
the age of 47, and Smollett at the age of 50, sir.”

“What would you infer from that, Doctor?”

“Sir,” replied the Doctor, “I leave you to draw the
inference. Now, sir, we come to another epoch. A
period, sir, of great mental brilliancy, and I wish you to
observe that fine wine drinking had again become fashionable.

Claret was monstrously expensive, but claret was
the mode. Now, sir, we have Fox, and Pitt, and Sheridan,
and Burke, and Chesterfield, and Garrick, and Sir
Joshua Reynolds, and Goldsmith. And among this brilliant
cluster there stands out conspicuous a remarkable
figure. Not that he was greater than these, not that his
genius was superior, nor his wisdom more profound, yet
still the most conspicuous figure in the group was—”

“Dr. Samuel Johnson.”

“Dr. Jamuel Johnson,” echoed Dr. Bushwhacker.
“Did you ever know, sir, leaving out a few of our prominent
hydrophobists, a man so eminent for invective,
asperity, bitterness, insolence, dogmatic assumption, and
gluttony, as the Ursa Major of English literature? And,
sir, he was a total abstinent. To use his own words: `I
now no more think of drinking wine than a horse does.
The wine upon the table is no more for me than for the
dog who is under the table.' But he could drink, sir,
twenty-three cups of tea at poor Mrs. Thrale's table at a
sitting, until four o'clock in the morning, sir, which may
be set down as a fair sample of teetotal debauchery, my
learned friend.”

“Dr. Johnson was a very good hearted man, I
believe.”

“A good man, sir, a good man, sir. His charity, his
candor, his tenderness, his attachment to his friends, his
love of the poor, his rigid honesty, his piety, and his filial
affection, were wonderful, sir, We all love this Samuel

Johnson. But, sir, there was also another character; an
irritable, uncouth, imperious, ill-tempered, gluttonous,
rude, prejudiced, intolerant, violent, unsparing old cynic;
and this Samuel Johnson we do not love. Sir, human
nature has scarcely formed a character so disproportionate.
He was a great man, sir, and a great bear, sir.”

“I thought you said no water drinker ever was a great
man, Doctor?”

“My learned friend,” replied the Doctor, growing
slightly purple, “Dr. Samuel Johnson was a tea drinker,
and used to be a wine drinker! But hand me the
Maderia, if you please, and a handful of filberts. At the
next dinner we will talk of the writers of this century.
What is this wine?”

“Virginia Reserve, Doctor.”

“Then we will drink it, sir; Virginia is a noble State,
and it is full of noble men—”

“And women, Doctor.”

“God bless you, my dear friend—and women!”

Notables and Potables=Continued.

“What do you think of whiskey-punch, Doctor, as a
potable?”

“Bless my heart!” said the Doctor, shaking his bushy
mane, “by all means; I never refuse it.”

(Enter a tray, two lemons, hot water, a silver sugar
bowl, and the Islay.)

“Punch,” said Doctor Bushwhacker, “was the
chief inspirer of the hearty, homely, natural, vigorous
writers of this century. You see how the great Sir
Walter used it, sir; there is a touch of `mountain dew'
in his tenderest productions, sir; the Heart of Mid-Lothian
could never have been written by a cold-water
drinker—no, sir; nor was it. I may even go a little farther
back, to a more unfortunate child of genius—Burns, sir!
Robert of Ayrshire loved the barley broo—`not wisely,
but too well'—for himself; he was improvident; but
then he made posterity rich. (A little more of the Islay;
thank you.”)

“Byron, Doctor?”

“Drank gin; that we know pretty well, I believe, my
learned friend. There is a touch of juniper in all Bryon
—a mixture of the bitter and the aromatic.”

“And Coleridge?”

“Coleridge,” said the Doctor, gravely, with a sort of
emphatic spill of the hot fluid, “illustrates my theory in
a remarkable manner, sir—Coleridge and De Quincey,
both. What idea do you have of the Vision of Kubla
Khan, and the Suspiria de Profundis, taken together?
My learned friend, he begins to dream who is absorbed
in the pages of either: the world, yea, the great globe
itself, becomes intangible; he is floating away, on a sea
of ether, in space more illimitable than human thought
could scan before; his vision is dilated, yet undefined;
the procession of time sweeps on, measured by centuries;

events accumulate with supernatural aggregation; the
scenery by which he is surrounded has surpassed sublimity
itself, and he listens to the river that runs

“Well, Doctor?”

“Opium, sir!” replied the Doctor, with awful solemnity.

“What of Charles Lamb, Doctor?”

“Lamb? Dear Charles, has certainly lisped of hot gin
and water in his inimitable letters,” replied the Doctor,
“or, as he would say, `hot water, with a s-s-s-entiment
of gin.' ”

“That sounds Lambish, Doctor.”

“My learned friend,” replied Dr. Bushwhacker, “I
know it; I have got Charles Lamb by heart, sir. By the
way, a new anecdote of Elia: he had a friend one night
at No. 4 Inner Temple Lane; negus was the potable of
the evening, from tenderness to Mary's feelings, who
sometimes shook her sisterly head at the `s-s-s-entiment.'
It seems a poor cur dog had attracted the attention of the
gentle-hearted Charles that day, and he had invited him
in, fed him, and tied him up slightly in the little yard
back of the house. Charles was talking in his phosphroresent
way over the negus, when Mary interrupted him:

Charles, that dog yelps so.' Elia flashed on. `Charles,
that dog—' `What i-i-is it, Mary? Oh! the dog?

He-he-he-he's enjoying him-s-s-self.' `Enjoying himself,
Charles?' `Ye-ye-yes—as well as he can with `whine and
water.' ”

“Capital story, Doctor. What of the Laureate?”

“In reading Southey,” replied Doctor Bushwhacker,
“you feel the want of the rare old vinous smack peculiar
to the writings of authors of eminence, sir. I may
say the same, too, of Wordsworth. Both were tolerably
abstinent; but Southey had his wine-cellar at Greta Hall,
and Wordsworth, in celebrating his first visit to the
rooms once occupied by Milton at Christ College, was a
little overcome, sir, by—a—his visit, sir. Southey, in his
personal character, manners, and habits, must have resembled
our dear Henry Inman, sir.”

“And Hazlitt?”

“Misanthropic, cynical, Hazlitt, sir, used to drink
black tea, sir, of the intensest strength. He is another
illustration of my theory, sir.”

“And Keats?”

“Read Keats over, my learned friend; and if you can
unlatch the tendrils of the vine from any of his superexquisite
poems, great or small, then sir, I will bury my
lancet. What a delicate taste for wine he must have had!”

“And Shelley, Doctor?”

“My dear friend,” said the Doctor, rising, and upsetting
his tumbler, “Shelley never understood the human
aspect of existence. I fear me he was not a wine-drinker.
Suppose we say, or admit he was a solitary exception?”

Notables and Potables=Continued.

“Do you know,” said Dr. Bushwhacker, as he stretched
out his full glass to be touched, “how this custom
originated?—this ringing of wine-bells or kissing of
beakers, sir?”

We replied in the negative.

“Then, sir, I will tell you,” replied the Doctor. “It
was the invention of a learned French philosopher, to illustrate
the five senses. The beautiful color of wine
delights the eye—seeing, the delicate boquet gratifies
the nose—smelling, the cool glass suggests a pleasure to
the fingers—feeling, and, sir, by drinking it we gratify
exquisitely—the taste. Now, sir, touch glasses for the
finest chime in the world, that rings out good fellowship,
sir, and we have the fifth sense—hearing.”

“Quite a little poem, Doctor, in five lines.”

“Put it in verse, sir, put it in verse—I give you the
idea.”

“Appropos, Doctor, I have a German song here, translated
by a friend: Let me read it to you.” (Editor reads.)

“LOVE, SONG, AND WINE.

“Excellent!” said the Doctor, shaking his bushy head.
“By the way, what grand old songs those Rhine songs
are! And the vineyards of the Rhine are reflected in
the songs as they are in the river. `O! the pride of the
German heart is this noble River! and right it is; for of
the rivers of this beautiful earth, there is none so beautiful
as this. There is hardly a league of its whole course,
from its cradle in the snowy Alps to its grave in the sands
of Holland, which boasts not its peculiar charms. By

heavens! if I were a German, I would be proud of it,
too; and of the clustering grapes that hang about its
temples, as it reels onwards through vineyards in a trinmphal
march, like Bacehus, crowned and drunken.'
There, sir, what do you think of that?”

“Grand, Doctor, like the triumphant chanting of an
organ. Who wrote it?”

“Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, sir!Hyperion, sir,
Read it over, and get it by heart.”

“The German writers all use the wines of Fatherland,
Doctor.”

“Nearly all, from Martin Luther down. I say nearly
all—Goethe was an exception. The courtly Goethe used
to drink the fine Burgundies and Bordeaux of France.
But Schiller, sir, was a Rhine-wine drinker. In fact his
writing-table was always supplied with the golden potable
of the Rhine. Now, sir, we see between these two
men of eminent genius, two separate and distinguishing
characteristics. Goethe was different from all other
German poets—but Schiller was above all other German
poets, including Goethe himself.”