Some sack, boy. Good sherry-sack, sir? I meant Canary, sir; what, hast no brains?[131] The following is the explanation of the confusion in terms:-- Your best sacks are of Xeres in Spain; your smaller, of Gallicia and Portugall; your strong sacks are of the islands of the Canaries and of Malligo, and your Muskadine and Malmseys are of many parts, of Italy, Greece, and some special islands;[132] and renders intelligible the following:-- Two kinsmen near allied to sherry sack, Sweet Malligo and delicate Canary.[133] It is extolled in Beaumont and Fletcher:-- Give me a cup of sack An ocean of sweet sack. Canary was in great esteem. John Howell praises it as ‘accounted the richest, the most firm, the best bodied, and lastingest wine: while French wine pickles meat in the stomach, this is the wine that digests, and doth not only breed good bloud, but it nutrifieth also, being a glutinous substantial liquor. Of this wine, if of any other, may be verified that merry induction, that good wine makes good blood, good blood causeth good humours, good humours causeth good thoughts, good thoughts bring forth good works, good works carry a man to heaven; ergo good wine carrieth a man to heaven. If this be true, surely more English go to heaven this way than any other, for I think there is more Canary brought to England than to all the world besides.’[134] But probably no kind of drink came amiss. The Russ drinks quass; Dutch, Lubeck beer, And that is strong and mighty; The Briton, he metheglin quaffs, The Irish _aqua vitæ_; The French affects the Orleans grape, The Spaniard tastes his sherry; The English none of these can ‘scape, But he with all makes merry.[135] (2) The prevailing habit of _toasting_ may be set down as a second cause, and a powerful factor it must have been in national corruption, if the case is not overstated by William Prynne,[136] who wrote his startling book to prove ‘the Drinking and Pledging of Healthes to be Sinfull and utterly Unlawful unto Christians.’ In his Epistle Dedicatorie to King Charles I. he urges that his Majesty’s _health_ is an occasion, apologie, pretence, and justification of excesse. Alas! how many thousand persons have been drawne on to drunkennesse, drinking their wit out of their heads, their health out of their bodies, and God out of their soules, whiles they have beene too busy and officious in carrying healthes unto your sacred Majestie.