BAC. Why, Summer, Summer, how wouldst do but for rain? What's a fair house without water coming to it! Let me see how a smith can work, if he have not his trough standing by him. What sets an edge on a knife? the grindstone alone? No, the moist element poured upon it, which grinds out all gaps, sets a point upon it, and scours it as bright as the firmament. So I tell thee, give a soldier wine before he goes to battle; it grinds out all gaps, it makes him forget all scars and wounds, and fight in the thickest of his enemies, as though he were but at foils among his fellows. Give a scholar wine going to his book, or being about to invent; it sets a new point on his wit, it glazeth it, it scours it, it gives him _acumen_. Plato saith, _Vinum esse fomitem quendam, et incitabilem ingenii virtutisque_. Aristotle saith, _Nulla est magna scientia absque mixtura dementia_! There is no excellent knowledge without mixture of madness, and what makes a man more mad in the head than wine? _Qui bene vult [Greek: Pioein] debet ante [Greek: pinein]_: He that will do well must drink well. _Prome, prome, potum prome_! Ho, butler, a fresh pot! _Nunc est libendum, nunc pede libero terra pulsanda_:[86] a pox on him that leaves his drink behind him. _Rendezvous_! SUM. It is wine's custom to be full of words. I pray thee, Bacchus, give us _vicissitudinem loquendi_. BAC. A fiddlestick! ne'er tell me I am full of words. _Faecundi calices, quem non fecere disertum; aut bibe[87] aut abi_; either take your drink, or you are an infidel. SUM. I would about thy vintage question thee. How thrive thy vines? hadst thou good store of grapes? BAC. _Vinum quasi venenum_; Wine is poison to a sick body. A sick body is no sound body; _ergo_, wine is a pure thing, and is poison to all corruption. Try-lill! the hunters whoop to you. I'll stand to it: Alexander was a brave man, and yet an arrant drunkard. WIN. Fie, drunken sot! forgett'st thou where thou art? My lord asks thee what vintage thou hast made? BAC. Our vintage was a vintage, for it did not work upon the advantage: it came in the vauntguard of Summer. And winds and storms met it by the way, And made it cry, alas, and well-a-day! SUM. That was not well; but all miscarried not? BAC. Faith, shall I tell no lie? Because you are my countryman, and so forth; and a good fellow is a good fellow, though he have never a penny in his purse.[88] We had but even pot-luck--little to moisten our lips and no more. That same Sol is a pagan and a proselyte: he shined so bright all summer, that he burnt more grapes than his beams were worth, were every beam as big as a weaver's beam. _A fabis abstinendum_; faith, he should have abstained, for what is flesh and blood without his liquor?