_September 23, 1667._--With Sir H. Cholmly to Westminster; who by the way told me how merry the King and Duke of York and Court were the other day, when they were abroad a-hunting. They came to Sir G. Cartaret’s house at Cranbourne, and there were entertained and all made drunk; and, being all drunk, Armerer did come to the king, and swore to him ‘By God, sir,’ says he, ‘you are not so kind to the Duke of York of late as you used to be.’ ‘Not I?’ says the king. ‘Why so?’ ‘Why,’ says he, ‘if you are, let us drink his health.’ ‘Why let us,’ says the king. Then he fell on his knees and drank it; and having done, the king began to drink it. ‘Nay, sir,’ says Armerer, ‘by God, you must do it on your knees!’ So he did, and then all the company: and having done it, all fell a-crying for joy, being all maudlin and kissing one another, the king the Duke of York, and the Duke of York the king; and in such a maudlin pickle as never people were: and so passed the day. Again he writes (1661):-- At Court things are in very ill condition, there being so much emulacion, poverty, and the vices of drinking, swearing, and loose amours, that I know not what will be the end of it but confusion. Two of the notables about Court have already been alluded to. Rochester--that is, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester--in the language of Dr. Johnson, ‘blazed out his youth and his health in lavish voluptuousness,’ dying at the age of thirty-three. Some lines of his favour the notion that the origin of the term _toasting_, as given in the _Tatler_, may be the correct one. They are:-- Make it so large that, fill’d with sack Up to the swelling brim, Vast _toasts_ on the delicious lake, Like ships at sea, may swim. A confirmation of the same may be derived from a verse of Warton:-- My sober evening let the tankard bless, With _toast_ embrown’d, and fragrant nutmeg fraught, While the rich draught, with oft-repeated whiffs, Tobacco mild improves. Of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, the criticism of Dryden must suffice--lines well known:-- Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, Was everything by starts and nothing long. But in the course of one revolving moon, Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon. Then all for women, paintings, rhyming, drinking, Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking. Another drinking notoriety was Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset (_n._ 1637, _ob._ 1684).