A writer quite as voluminous, and equally with Decker a scourge of iniquity, was George Wyther (persistently called by so many--Hazlitt and Brand among the number--Wythers). In 1613 he brought out his satirical essays, _Abuses Stript and Whipt_, the truth and beauty of which, to his honour be it said, touched the heart of Charles Lamb, who observes:[121] The game run down is coarse general vice, or folly as it appears in classes. A liar, a drunkard, a coxcomb, is _stript and whipt_.... To a well-natured mind, there is a charm of moral sensibility running through them. Wither seems everywhere bursting with a love of goodness, and a hatred of all low and base actions. At this day it is hard to discover what parts in the poem _Abuses Stript_ could have occasioned the imprisonment of the author. Was vice in high places more suspicious than now? Reference has already been made to the allusion in this work of Wither to the custom of _Hock-tide_. He ridicules the notion of such an observance and that of _ales_ subserving the devotion of youth, and indignantly asks,-- What will they do, I say, that think to please Their mighty God with such fond things as these? Sure, very ill. In this same work occurs an allusion to the then common practice of inserting _toast_ into ale with nutmeg and sugar:-- Will he will drinke, yet but a draught at most, That must be spiced with a _nut-browne tost_. The origin of the word _toast_ is much disputed, as is elsewhere observed, and no better account of it is forthcoming than that the word was taken from the toast which was put into the tankard, and which still floats in the loving cup. Hence the person named was the toast or savour of the wine, that which gives the draught piquancy. Many other of the drinking customs of the day are criticised, but not all with censure. The ode to Christmas, for instance, contrasts strongly with his later puritanical sentiments. Neither sectarian gloom nor civil struggles had yet enveloped the author when he wrote,-- Drown sorrow in a cup of wine, And let us all be merry. Hark how the roofs with laughter sound! Anon they’ll think the house goes round, For they the cellars’ depth have found, And there they will be merry, which introduces a stanza upon _wassailing_. A change must have come over his dream before he wrote his second ode on the same subject, which alone would entitle him to the encomiums of Hazlitt or any other critic.[122] Far more unqualified denunciation of seventeenth century excess is to be found in a volume by Thomas Young (1617), entitled _England’s Bane, or the Description of Drunkennesse_. He says,--