Chap. V That Wine Creates Wit
As wine increases the quantity of animal spirits, by the fumes which it sends to the brain, it is easy to comprehend that it cannot but be of great advantage to dull and heavy wits; so that one may particularly apply to them the common proverb, “Wine sets an edge to wit1.” And the emblem of Adr. Junius, in which he represents Bacchus as a youth with wings on, and with this inscription, “Wine kindles wit2,” agrees admirably well with these people. But the application of both proverb and emblem is no less just in relation to all the world; for it is most certain, that the god Bacchus, by warming the thoughts, renders them more acute, and inspires a greater plenty of witty sallies. For “Bacchus had not the name of Lysian, or Opener, if I may use the term, bestowed upon him for nothing but purely because he opens the mind, by putting it into an agreeable humour, and renders it more subtile and judicious3.” For this reason it is grown into a proverb, That water-drinkers are not near so knowing as those who drink wine4.
Plutarch assures us, That wine collects and increases the powers of the mind. He observes also, That it produces excellent effects on the minds of persons, who, though naturally timid, want no penetration. Plato maintains, as I have observed in the foregoing chapter, That wine warms as well the mind as the body. Monsieur Hofman says a great deal more, viz. That experience proves, that those climates which produce good wine, produce also people that “have infinitely more wit than those of the north, who drink nothing but beer. Gryllus believes, That the Greeks were called fathers of wisdom, on account of the excellency of their wine; and, that they lost their ancient lustre by reason of the Turks rooting out their vines. The Heathens placed Pallas and Bacchus in the same temple, to shew, that wine increased their wisdom, and that the Gods were represented wiser than men, only because they drank nectar and ambrosia.”
In respect of poets the world was always so sensible of the necessity they lay under, of having their imagination roused by wine, that nobody ever had any good opinion of the productions of a poet that drank water, that Non est Dythyrambus si aquam bibat; and wine was called the poets great horse. “There never were any excellent poets,” says Mr. Bayle, “that could versify, till after drinking pretty plentifully5.”
And if we believe Plato, “He could never open the gates of poesy till he was a little beyond himself. The soul can speak nothing grand, or above the common, if it be not somewhat agitated6.”
Horace7, who knew by experience this truth, goes yet farther.
Nulla placere diu, nec vivere carmina possint,
Quæ scribuntur aquæ potoribus.
Poor water-drinkers sing an irksome tune,
Short-liv’d their numbers, and their airs jejune.
Ovid bewailed himself very bitterly for want of wine in his exile.
“Impetus ille sacer, qui vatum pectora nutrit
Qui prius in nobis esse solebat, abest.”7a
That sacred rage that feeds a poet’s breast,
Common to me, is now no more possest.
La Motte8, my beloved Frenchman, has something not unlike it.
“Loin une raison trop timide
Les froids poetes qu’elle guide
Languissent et tombent souvent.
Venez yvresse temeraire,
Transports ignorez du vulgaire
Tels que vous m’agitiez vivant.”
Away, too fearful reason, haste, be gone,
Those frozen poets, whom thy phantoms guide,
Languish, and often feebly slide,
Down to the lowest ebb of wretchless song,
Insipid notes, and lifeless numbers sing.
O come, sweet drunkenness, thou heady thing,
With transports to the vulgar herd unknown,
Which agitates my soul, and gives it wing.
With kind enthusiasms then ecstatic grown,
It takes unusual flights, sublimely soars,
Spurns the dull globe below, and endless worlds explores.
One may very well apply to Bacchus, what the same gentleman says of the graces in this ode9.
“Tout fleurit par vous au Parnasse,
Apollon languit, et nous glace,
Sitot que vous l’avez quitté,
Mieux que les traits les plus sublimes
Vous allez verser sur mes rimes
Le don de l’immortalité.
The sprightly influence you shed,
Bright constellation! makes Parnassus gay.
Apollo droops and hangs his head,
His frozen fingers know not how to play;
And we his sons the sad distemper find,
Which chills the fancy, and benumbs the mind,
When cruel you withdraw your magic ray.
You finely paint on ev’ry rhyme
Features most noble and sublime,
Resplendent all the images,
In rich immortal draperies.
You give me colours that can never die,
But baffle time, and live through all eternity.
It is to wine we owe the productions of Eschylus and Anacreon, whose muses were very chilly, till Bacchus warmed them. Aurelius, the sophist, composed his best declamations in his cups. Herodes, called Saginatus Orator, the fattened Orator, never talked better, than after drinking pretty plentifully. And according to Horace, this was the case with Ennius.
“Ennius ipse pater nunquam nisi potus ad arma
Prosiluit dicenda —————— 10.”
Ennius himself ne’er sung of arms,
Martial exploits and wars alarms,
Till the good father’s face did shine,
Enrich’d with ruby beams of wine.
Alcæus, the famous poet, never sat down to compose tragedy till he was tipsy. The disciples of the great Paracelsus took the opportunity, when he was fuddled, to make him dictate. The venerable Messire Francis Rabelais composed over the bottle the acts and jests of Gargantua, and his son Pantagruel, a work which gained him such great reputation. “Pontius de Thiard, bishop of Chalons sur Saone, had greater obligations to Bacchus than Apollo for his good verses; who, not reckoning what wine he drank all day long, never slept without drinking a pretty large bottle11.” So true is it, that
“A la fontaine ou s’enyvre Boileau
Le grand Corneille et le sacré troupeau
De ces auteurs que l’on ne trouve guere
Un bon rimeur doit boire a pleine éguyere,
S’il veut donner un bon tour au rondeau12.”
At that rich fountain where the great Boileau,
Corneille, Racine, to whom so much we owe,
Th’ immortal Dryden, and the sacred band
Of those bright authors, whom we cannot find,
Whose names, (so does oblivion’s power command,)
Alas! we no where know,
Supp’d largely to inebriate their mind.
Here a good versifier, fond of rhime,
Should swill, to make his jingling couplets chime.
From hence, good natur’d B——d, arose your flame,
Hence your inimitable numbers came,
When you so prais’d his house and Buckingham.
And certainly Cicero was much in the wrong, when he said, that “what people do when they are drunk, is not done with the same approbation as if they were sober; they hesitate, and often recall themselves, and frame a weaker judgment of what they see13.” But had he consulted experience, he would have found that drunkenness, far from making people fearful, inspires them with boldness and temerity.
1. Vinum acuit ingenium.
2. Vinum ingenii fomes.
3. Hist. des. vii. sag. p. 123.
4. Non idem sapere possunt qui aquam et qui vinum bibunt.
5. Resp. aux Quest. d’un Prov. t. i. ch. 12.
6. Sive Platoni credimus, frustra poetices fores compos sui pepulit. Non potest grande aliquid et supra cæteros loqui nisi mota mens.
7. 1 Ep. xix. 3.
7a. Ovid, Ex Ponto IV.ii.25-26.
8. La Motte, Ode Pind. 1.
9. Ode 2. Pindar.
10. Ep. xix. 7.
11. Menagiana, t. i. p. 384.
12. —— p. 189.
13. Ne vinolenti quidem quæ faciunt qua’ sobrii, hesitant, revocant se interdum, usque quæ videntur, imbecillius assentiuntur. Acad. Quest. lib. 4.