Norfolk Gazette And Publick Ledger

LEVITY.

Panegyrick on Drunkenness.

Who by disgrace or by ill fortune sunk,
Feels not his soul enliven'd when he's drunk.
Swift.

Hippocrates says, that it does a man good to get drunk once a month. I won't say it follows, that it must, of course, do him much more good to get drunk daily; but, I know there are many people who from practice seem firmly persuaded of it. Horace next tells us, that poets who drink water can never make good poetry; and Anacreon assures us, that Alcaeus and Aristophanes wrote poetry when they were intoxicated. Socrates, too was a clever fellow; and he according to Lucian was always drunk, for, in conformity to his own confession, he saw all things double. Further, let us take the word methe; what does it signify? why both mirth (the son of Bacchus) and Drunkenness, so nearly are they allied. Then Flaccus affirms that wine makes us eloquent; and this is confirmed by Kotzebue, in his Benyowski, where we read that fish are mute for no other reason than that they drink nothing but water.

Beside when are men so full of morality, truth, and charity, as when they are half seas over? And let me add, that Hogarth observes, that "all the common and necessary motions, for the purposes of life, are performed by men in straight lines; but the graceful and ornamental movements are made in curved lines." Such are all the movements of a drunken man; he must therefore, be the most graceful of men. It may be said, indeed, that the vine has produced much evil; and I may be told, as a proof, that Erigone was discovered by Bacchus in the shape of a bunch of grapes. Well I know it; and I know also that Erigone is not the only girl that has been discovered by means of the grape. But now in opposition to that circumstance, which is so trifling when compared to the advantages I have already stated: let me ask whether soberness has not its direful evils: was not Hermagoras banished Ephesus for too great sobriety? could inebriety cause any thing more afflicting than banishment?