The partisanship quickly spread throughout the country, and the respective admirers of Burgundy and Champagne pitilessly pelted each other in prose and verse; for the two camps had their troubadours, who, like those of old, excited the courage and ardour of the combatants. The first to sound the warlike trumpet was Benigné Grenan, professor at the college of Harcourt, who, with the rich vintage of his native province bubbling at fever-heat through his veins, sought in 1711 to crush Champagne by means of Latin sapphics, a sample of which has been thus translated: 'Lift to the skies thy foaming wine, That cheers the heart, that charms the eye; Exalt its fragrance, gift divine, Champagne, from thee the wise must fly! A poison lurks those charms below, An asp beneath the flowers is hid; In vain thy sparkling fountains flow When wisdom has their lymph forbid. 'Tis, but when cloyed with purer fair We can with such a traitress flirt; So following Beaune with reverent air, Let Reims appear but at dessert.'[147] The gauntlet thus contemptuously thrown down was promptly and indignantly picked up by the Rector of the University of Beauvais, the learned Dr. Charles Coffin, a native of Buzancy, near Reims, who in the quiet retirement of the Picardian _Alma Mater_ had evidently not forgotten to keep up his acquaintance with the vintage of his native province. The Latin poem he produced in reply, under the title of _Campania vindicata_,[148] had nothing in common with his lugubriously sepulchral name, as may be seen by the following somewhat freely translated extracts from it. After invoking the aid of a bottle of the enlivening liquor whose praises he is about to sing, he exclaims: 'As the vine, although lowly in aspect, outshines The stateliest trees by the produce it bears, So midst all earth's list of rich generous wines, Our Reims the bright crown of preëminence wears. The Massica, erst sang by Horace of old, To Sillery now must abandon the field; Falernian, nor Chian, could ne'er be so bold To rival the nectar Ay's sunny slopes yield. As bright as the goblet it sparklingly fills With diamonds in fusion, it foaming exhales An odour ambrosial, the nostril that thrills, Foretelling the flavour delicious it veils. At first with false fury the foam-bells arise, And creamily bubbling spread over the brim, Till equally swiftly their petulance dies In a purity that makes e'en crystal seem dim.'[149] [Illustration] Praising the flavour of this nectar, which he declares is in every way worthy of its appearance, he stoutly defends the wine from the charge of unwholesomeness adduced against it by Grenan: