1863 Cups and their customs

CUPS AND THEIR CUSTOMS.

23

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, ^ Though he liked not the liquor, he would have the toast J"^ 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 Rochester writes Vast toasts on the delicious lake, Like ships at sea, may swim." And in a panegyric on Oxford ale, written by Warton in 1720, we have the lines With toast embrown'd, and fragrant nutmeg fraught, While the rich draught, with oft-repeated whiffs, Tobacco mild improves." Johnson, in his translation of Horace, makes use of the expression in Ode I. Book IV. thus : ^' My sober evening let the tankard bless, '^ Make it so large that, fill'd with sack Up to the swelling brim,

make him thine host^

^^ There jest and feast ;

If a fit liver thou dost seek to toast -^^^

and Prior, in the '^ Camelion,^^ says,

'' But if at first he minds his hits,

And drinks champaign among the wits, Five deep he toasts the towering lasses, Bepeats your verses wrote on glasses."