Anglo-Saxons; but, with such decided evidence before us of similar customs among the Greeks and Romans, we must at any rate refer it to an earlier period; and indeed we may rationally surmise that, in some form or other, the custom has existed from time immemorial. In later times the term "toasting" was employed to designate customs of a similar import, though the precise date of the application of this term is uncertain; and although we cannot accept the explanation given in the 24th number of the 'Tatler,' yet, for its quaintness, we will quote it:-- "It is said that while a celebrated beauty was indulging in her bath, one of the crowd of admirers who surrounded her took a glass of the water in which the fair one was dabbling, and drank her health to the company, when a gay fellow offered to jump in, saying, 'Though he liked not the liquor, he would have the _toast_.'" This tale proves that toasts were put into beverages in those days, or the wag would not have applied the simile to the fair bather; and in the reign of Charles II., Earl Rochester writes, "Make it so large that, fill'd with sack Up to the swelling brim, Vast _toasts_ on the delicious lake, Like ships at sea, may swim." And in a panegyric on Oxford ale, written by Warton in 1720, we have the lines-- "My sober evening let the tankard bless, With _toast_ embrown'd, and fragrant nutmeg fraught, While the rich draught, with oft-repeated whiffs, Tobacco mild improves." Johnson, in his translation of Horace, makes use of the expression in Ode I. Book IV. thus-- "There jest and feast; make him thine host, If a fit liver thou dost seek to _toast_;" and Prior, in the "Camelion," says, "But if at first he minds his hits, And drinks champaign among the wits, Five deep he _toasts_ the towering lasses, Repeats your verses wrote on glasses." This last line has reference to the custom pursued in the clubs of the eighteenth century, of writing verses on the brims of their cups; they also inscribed on them the names of the favourite ladies whom they toasted: and Dr. Arbuthnot ascribes the name of the celebrated Kit-Cat Club to the toasts drank there, rather than to the renowned pastry-cook, Christopher Kat; for he says, "From no trim beaux its name it boasts, Grey statesmen or green wits; But from its pell-mell pack of toasts, Of old Cat and young Kits."