Pour out the wine without restraint or stay, Pour not by cups but by the bellyful. Pour out to all that wull, And sprinkle all the posts and walls with wine, That they may sweat and drunken be withal. These are dissimilar strains to those of the good Sir Guyon, In whom great rule of Temperance goodly doth appear. And shall we here stop short? Certainly not. The Bard of Avon, William Shakespeare, offers many a caution to the falling and fallen. To attempt to quote him fully would be beside the present purpose. It must suffice to gather from his works five or six prominent reflections.[106] I. The constant use of strong drink impairs its _remedial_ effect. Thus in the _Tempest_, act ii. scene 3, Stephano is made to say, ‘He shall taste of my bottle; if he have never drank wine afore, it will go near to remove his fit.’ II. That strict temperance is a source of health. Thus in _As You Like It_, act ii. scene 3, Adam declares-- Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty; For in my youth I never did apply Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood, Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo The means of weakness and debility; Therefore my age is as a lusty winter, Frosty, but kindly. III. That the Danes had an established character for deep drinking. Thus _Hamlet_, act i. scene 4:-- _Hamlet._ The king doth awake to-night and takes his rouse, Keeps wassel, and the swaggering upspring reels; And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down, The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out The triumph of his pledge. _Hor._ Is it a custom? _Ham._ Ay, marry, is’t; But to my mind--though I am native here And to the manner born--it is a custom More honour’d in the breach than the observance. This heavy-headed revel, east and west, Makes us traduced and taxed of other nations: They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase Soil our addition; and indeed it takes From our achievements, though perform’d at height, The pith and marrow of our attribute. ‘They clepe us drunkards.’ And well our Englishmen might, for in Queen Elizabeth’s time there was a _Dane_ in London, of whom the following mention is made in a collection of characters, entitled _Looke to it, for Ile stab ye_ (no date):-- You that will drinke _Keynaldo_ unto deth, The _Dane_ that would carouse out of his boote. Mr. W. Mason adds that ‘it appears from one of Howell’s letters, dated at Hamburg in the year 1632, that the then King of Denmark had not degenerated from his jovial predecessor. In his account of an entertainment given by his majesty to the Earl of Leicester, he tells us that the king, after beginning thirty-five toasts, was carried away in his chair, and that all the officers of the court were drunk.’