1869 Drinking Cups and their Customs (Mixellany)

OUTS AND THEIB, CUSTOMS,

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handles and the covers are of silver/* &c. Worthy Master Perlin seems hardly to have got on with his spelling of the English tongue while he was studying our habits ; his account, however, of olden customs is reliable and curious. The custom of pledging and drinking healths is generally stated to have originated with the Anglo-Saxons j but, with such decided evidence before us of similar customs among the Greeks and Romans, we must at any rate refer it to an earlier periodj and indeed we may rationally surmise that, in some form or other, the custom has existed from time immemorial. In later times the term i€ toasting n was employed to designate customs of a similar import, though the precise date of the application of this term is uncertain; and although we cannot accept the expla- nation given in the 24th number of the ' Tatler/ yet, for its quaintness, we will quote it:—• " It is said that while a celebrated beauty was in- dulging in her bath, one of the crowd of admirers who surrounded her took a glass of the water in which the fair one was dabbling, and drank her health to the company, when a gay fellow offered to jump in, saying, s Though he liked not the liquor, lie would have the toast**" This tale proves that toasts were put into beverages in those days, or the wag would not have applied the simile to the fair bather j and in the reign of Charles II., Earl Eochester writes, i{ Make it so large tliat,fiE'cl with sack Up to the swelling Ibiim,

Vast tomis on tlie delicious lake ? Uke ships at sea, may swim."