The jolly members of a toping club, Like pipestaves, are but hooped into a tub, And in a close confederacy link For nothing else but only to hold drink. Of everybody (to whom he was politically opposed)--appealing to the Muse:-- Thou that with ale, or viler liquors, Didst inspire Withers, Prynne, and Vickers, And force them, though it was in spite Of Nature, and their stars, to write.[157] Other light wines are sung of in John Oldham’s _Works_ (1684):-- Let wealthy merchants when they dine, Run o’er their witty names of wine: Their chests of Florence and their Mont Alchine, Their Mants, Champaigns, Chablees, Frontiniacks tell; Their aums of Hock, of Backrag, and Mosell. No wonder that the doctors complained that their efforts would be fruitless to patch up constitutions so utterly weather-beaten by heat and wet, as we find from Sir Charles Sedley’s _The Doctor and his Patients_, where it is told of the family Æsculapius:-- One day he called ‘em all together, And, one by one, he asked ‘em whether It were not better by good diet To keep the blood and humours quiet, With toast and ale to cool their brains Than nightly fire ‘em with Champains. And whilst these wines were injurious to their bodies they failed to give any real or permanent relief to their minds, as even the licentious tragedian of the period, Etheridge, admitted:-- At the plays we are constantly making our court, And when they are ended we follow the sport To the Mall and the Park, Where we love till ‘tis dark; Then Sparkling Champagne Puts an end to their reign; It quickly recovers Poor languishing lovers; Makes us frolic and gay, and drowns all our sorrow; But alas! _we relapse again on the morrow_.[158] We obtain an incidental estimate of the market price of French wine from the _Tatler_, No. 147, where we read:-- Upon my coming home last night, I found a very handsome present of French wine left for me, as a taste--of 216 hogsheads which are to be put to sale at 20_l._ a hogshead, at Garraway’s coffee-house, in Exchange Alley. These wines were sold _by the candle_--_i.e._ the property was put up by the auctioneer, an inch of candle was lighted, and the last bidder when the light went out was the purchaser. English vineyards were still here and there attempted. Thus Evelyn (_Diary_, 1655) ‘went to see Col. Blount’s subterranean warren, and drank of the wine of his vineyard, which was good for little.’ The consumption of French _Brandy_ was very great, and discontent was excited from the notion that the country was suffering from the lack of encouragement to home distillation; permission was accordingly granted to a company to _distil brandy_ from wine and malt. Besides wine and brandy, ale was drunk in various forms.