What more foul common sin among us than drunkenness? Who can be ignorant that if the importation of wine were forbid, it would both clean rid the possibility of committing that odious vice, and men might afterwards live happily and healthfully without the use of intoxicating liquors! Richard Crashaw, of whom it was writ,-- Poet and saint! to thee alone are given The two most sacred names of earth and heaven, reckons amongst his many efforts of genius, _Temperance, or the Cheap Physician_, where, after ridiculing the doctors’ mystic compositions, he asks,-- And what at last shall gain by these? Only a costlier disease. That which makes us have no need Of physic, that’s physic indeed. It may be remembered that this poet was the author of the epigram whose last line runs,-- Lympha pudica Deum vidit, et erubuit. The modest water saw its God, and blushed. This epigram was composed by Crashaw when Dryden was an infant, so should not be attributed to the latter. Some noble lines of the poet James Nicholson are well worthy of record:-- Our homes are invaded with dark desolation, There’s danger wherever the wine-cup doth flow; Then pledge your fair hands to resist the temptation, Nor stain your red lips with those waters of woe. Lift up your bright glances, put on all your beauty-- Your holy affections--your God-given dower; Such weapons are mighty--awake to your duty, The trophies you gather will add to your power. And, once more,-- I’ll pledge thee not in wassail bowl, With rosy madness filled; But let us quaff the nobler wine, By Nature’s hand distilled. Where to the skies the mountains rise In grandeur to the view, Where sparkling rills leap down the hills, Our Scotia’s mountain dew. Thomas Weaver, 1649, writes,-- The harms and mischiefs which th’abuse Of wine doth every day produce, Make good the doctrine of the Turks, That in each grape a devil lurks. Divines like Hugh Peters declaimed from the pulpit against intemperance. Archbishop Harsnet, founder of Chigwell School, left the regulation respecting the head master, that he be ‘no tippler, no haunter of ale-houses, no puffer of tobacco.’ In addition to abundance of precept, some legislative action is noticeable. In 1627 (3 Charles I.) a fine of twenty shillings, or whipping, is imposed for keeping an ale-house without licence. * * * * *