1892 Drinks of the world

DRINKS.

138

".

. Left with her last glass alone.

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Thus loud laments her lot, the squeaking crone : Farewell, my life and beauty, thou art sped. Faithful companion of my board and bed. My earthly term fain with thee would I live, Who to my sorrowing heart can'st solace give. Bereft of gin, alas ! am I for aye The Act is passed. 'Tis all in vain to pray. Go where the Fates may call, and know that I Living, with thee would live, and dying, die !

Hogarth's Gin Lane was advertised in 1751, with a note that, as its subject was calculated to reform some reigning vices peculiar to the lower class of people, in hopes to render them of more extensive use, the author had published them in the cheapest manner possible. "The cheapest manner possible" was one shilling which in those days was a fairly good price for a print. The following lame and defamatory verse was com- posed for the occasion by the Rev. James Townley : " Gin Lane. Gin, cursed fiend, with fury fraught, Makes human race a prey ; It enters by a deadly drought, And steals our life away. Virtue and Truth, driven to despair, Its rage compels to fly ; But cherishesj with hellish care, Theft, murder, perjury. Damned cup, that on the vitals preys, That liquid fire contains ; Which madness to the heart conveys, And rolls it through the veins." Hogarth tells us that in Gin Lane evtry circumstance of the horrid effects of gin drinking is brought to view