The latter is probably the true solution. He had married a woman of great beauty, Miss Anne Minchin, who died soon after that event, and grief probably preyed upon his fitful spirits, and led him into intemperance. He died before he was forty. Well for him had he imitated the character drawn in his exquisite poem _The Hermit_:-- The great vain man who fared on costly food, Whose life was too luxurious to be good; Who made his ivory stands with goblets shine, And forced his guests to morning draughts of wine; Has, with the cup, the graceless custom lost, And still he welcomes, but with less of cost. The most advanced exponent of the conviviality of the time was William Congreve, at one time commissioner of wine licences. His comedies are steeped in vice. Congreve’s comic feast (says Thackeray) flares with lights, and round the table, emptying their flaming bowls of drink, and exchanging the wildest jests and ribaldry, sit men and women, waited on by rascally valets and attendants--perhaps the very worst company in the world. To him (says the same author) the world seemed to have no moral at all. His ghastly doctrine seemed to be that we should eat, drink, and be merry when we can, and go to the deuce (if there be one) when the time comes! The experience of the self-made Franklin is very suggestive as to the drinking habits of working men in London 160 years ago. For from the habits of printers one may infer the habits of other craftsmen. When the famous Dr. Franklin was a printer’s boy in England--he came to England in 1724 or 1725--he found all his companions in the printing office drank five pints of porter daily at their work, and one of them even six. He was himself a water-drinker, but could not get any of them to see his argument ‘that bread contained more materials of strength than beer, and that it was only corn in the beer that produced the strength in the liquid.’ Now, as it is quite clear that, if these printing ‘prentices drank five pints of porter at their work, they would have extra drink out of work hours, we have in this anecdote an appalling picture of the drinking in England 160 years ago. What working man now _averages_ five pints per diem?[209] A useful little work was published in 1725, entitled _The Publick-House-keeper’s Monitor_. The author prefaces, that the reigning vices of the age make it a duty to consider and use any practicable methods to put a stop to ‘that deluge of Impiety which overflows almost this whole nation.’ He complains that there are _too many_ of these houses which enjoy ‘a legal allowance,’ that _many_ ought to be suppressed, but that it is persistently urged