1863 Cups and their customs

CUPS AND THEIR CUSTOMS.

26

not refuse acknowledgment of the part played in such deeds by the cup of kindness. Be it remembered, however^ such bright oases in social history do not shine from gluttonous tables — are not the property of hard-drinking circles, with their attendant vices. We seek for them in vain at the so-called social boards of the last century, where men won their spurs by exces- sive wine-drinking, and " three-bottle men ^^ were the only gentlemen] neither do we meet them amid the carousals of Whitehall and Alsatia, or, nearer to our own day, among the vicious coteries of the Regency. The scenes we like to recall and dwell upon are those of merry-makings and jollity; or of friendly meetings, as when gentle Master Isaac, returning from his fish- brings with him two-legged fish to taste his brewage (and a very pleasant and commendable cup the great master of the gentle art will drink with them). Or when pious Master Herbert chances to meet with a man he liketh, who hath the manner of loving all things for the good that is in them, and who, like his greater companion, (for no one in that quality of mind was greater than Herbert,) had a respect for what, in others, were occasions of stumbling, could use good gifts with- out abusing them, and think the loving-cup of spiced wine an excellent good cordial for the heart. Or when Dr. Donne (scarce a man in England wiser than he), laying aside for the time his abstruse learning, mixed a mighty cup of gillyflower sack, and talked over it with Sir Kenelm Digby (hardly a lesser man than himself), of the good gifts lavishly ofi'ered, but by some rudely ing,