Postscript
Having received the following letter from a merry friend, wherein are some (not unpleasant) remarks on the foregoing treatise, I thought fit to send it to the press, which the reader, as he is at liberty either to read, or let alone, so it is the same thing to me, whether he does read it, or let it alone.
To the renowned Boniface Oinophilus de Monte Fiascone, A. B. C. author of the most inimitable (and non-pareil) treatise, Ebrietatis Encomium, to be left with that mirror of privative perspicuity, Signor Edemondo Curluccio, at the Bible and Dial, over against Catherine-Street, in the Strand.
Right trusty, and well-beloved, I greet you well,
Having perused (at the bookseller’s, who shewed me the sheets) your Ebrietatis Encomium all through, even unto Finis, or the End, I own I was not a little diverted thereat. But as I never flatter any body, so my friends may least of all expect I should begin with them. I must, therefore, be frank and free with you, most renowned and never-to-be-forgotten Boniface, post nullos memorande sodales, and tell you, that you have omitted several things very material, and highly conducible to the elucidation, or illustration, (choose you whether) of your agreeable subject. But perhaps they either did not occur to your memory; or, which is the same thing, (quoad lectorem) you were entirely ignorant of them, but which take as follow.
First and foremost, amongst your philosophers, you have taken no notice of the stupendous Des Cartes, with his wonderful system of whirlpools (vortices) and particles, cubic, conic, striate, oblong, globular, hooked, crooked, spiral and angular: for who the devil but a mere tipsy, giddy brains, could have dished up such a confounded hotch-potch and gallimatias of whimsical rotations, or fancied that the whole earth whirled round like a town-top, had not Vinorum materia subtilis, the circling effluvia of Liber Pater, abundantly invaded his capital regions.
So have I seen in days of yore a dame,
At Winchester, who seventy winters knew,
Not more nor less, my mistress then yclept,
Hight Margaret, deceas’d long since I trow,
Whose fate I thus bemoan’d in song sublime.
She’s gone, alas! the beauteous nymph is dead,
Dead to my hopes, and all my eager wishes:
Such is the state of poor unhappy man,
All things soon pass away, nought permanent,
That rolls beneath the vortex of the moon.
So when we’ve screw’d up to the highest Peg1
Our ample lines of future happiness,
Some disappointments dire, or chance disastrous,
Snaps the extended chords. Oh! then farewell,
No more shall visual ray of form acute
Affect her wondrous mien. Farewell those lips
Of sapphire tincture, gums of crocus die
Freed from th’ungrateful load of cumbrous teeth.
Mantle farewell, of grograin brown compos’d,
Studded with silver clasp in number plural:
With jacket short, so famous, tory red,
Not hemm’d, but bound about with good galloon
Of deepest mazarine (delightful hue!)
Farewell (I sighing speak) those non-such shoes
Of obfusc colour (heel of form cylindrous)
Worn only upon days non-ferial.
In love’s true knot of verdant ferrit tied.
But Oh! farewell, a long and last farewell,
To large Ampull with vital water fraught,
Wherein the effluvia soft and delicate
Of dulcet aniseseed (not coriander)
In its capacious rim of form anguillar
Whirl in sweet vortex. Hence it was observ’d,
The subtile matter, when in throat retir’d,
Kept still its roulant quality, and oft
Would mount in circling spires to pericranium
Of she-philosopher, when in elbow chair,
Deep and profound, would the grave matron reve,
And learnedly pronounce (like great Renatus2)
With equal verity the world turns round.
Secondly and foremost, you should have added at the end of the philosophers chapter, the song of the Tippling Philosophers, which I send you here enclosed.
The bookseller to whom I mentioned this, fancied truly, that you might think it too mean and trifling to insert. But without troubling myself to know, whether this be your sentiment, or whether he spoke this of his own head, I shall trouble myself to tell you, as this song is taken from an excellent French one, which you may find in a very famous book3, and which (to follow your method) you may know by the note at the bottom. The song (whether you have ever seen it, or not, I neither know, nor do I care) is as follows, and will go with the same tune as the English (if I am not mistaken).
1. You must remember my Mrs.’s name was Margaret.
2. Des Cartes’s christian name.
3. Fureteriana, p. 205.