As to the Prince Regent's brothers, we know that the Duke of York was such a powerful toper, that 'six bottles of Claret after dinner scarce made a perceptible change in his countenance,'[362] and remember the Duke of Clarence making his appearance at the table of the Royal household at Windsor, and getting so helplessly drunk on Champagne as to be utterly incapable of keeping his promise to open the ball that evening with his sister Mary.[363] Two prominent orators of that day are credited with _mots_ upon Champagne. Curran said, _apropos_ of the rapid but transient intoxication produced by this wine, that 'Champagne made a runaway rap at a man's head;' while Canning maintained that any man who said he really liked dry Champagne simply lied. After Waterloo, although a few _gourmets_ continued to prefer the still wine, sparkling Champagne became the almost universally accepted variety. Nevertheless, Henderson, while noting that 'by Champagne wine is usually understood a sparkling or frothy liquor,' gives the foremost place to the wine of Sillery, which, he remarks, 'has always been in much request in England, probably on account of its superior strength and durable quality.' He extols the Ay wine as 'an exquisite liquor, lighter and sweeter than the Sillery, and accompanied by a delicate flavour and aroma somewhat analogous to that of the pine-apple.'[364] The poets of the first half of the present century have hardly done justice to Champagne. Tom Moore, the most Anacreontic of them all, although ready, like his Grecian prototype, to 'pledge the universe in wine,' the merits of which he was continually chanting in the abstract, has seldom been so invidious as to particularise any especial vintage. Champagne, the wine of all others best fitted to inspire his bright and sparkling lyrics, has received but scant attention in his earlier productions. Bob Fudge, writing from Paris in 1818, is made to speak approvingly of Beaune and Chambertin, but only mentions Champagne as a vehicle in which to _sauter_ kidneys;[365] and in the _Sceptic_ it is simply brought in to point a moral respecting the senses: 'Habit so mars them, that the Russian swain Will sigh for train-oil while he sips Champagne.'[366] In two instances only the poet who sang in such lively numbers of woman and wine pointedly refers to the vintage of the Champagne. One is when he says: 'If ever you've seen a party Relieved from the presence of Ned, How instantly joyous and hearty They've grown when the damper was fled. You may guess what a gay piece of work, What delight to Champagne it must be, To get rid of its bore of a cork, And come sparkling to you, love, and me.'[367] And his description of a summer _fête_ is indeed 'a mere terrestrial strain Inspired by naught but pink Champagne;'[368] such as might be penned