A.D. 1776.--Finding him still persevering in his abstinence from wine, I ventured to speak to him of it.--_Johnson._ Sir, I have no objection to a man’s drinking wine, if he can do it in moderation. I found myself apt to go into excess in it, and therefore, after having been for some time without it on account of illness, I thought it better not to return to it. Every man is to judge for himself, according to the effects which he experiences. One of the fathers tells us he found fasting made him so peevish that he did not practise it. Dr. B. W. Richardson’s ideas about the harm done to constitutions by excessive palpitation of the heart (especially under the action of alcohol) seem to have had shadows cast before. Boswell’s hero rather pooh-poohed the idea, in a conversation after dinner at Thrale’s, April 10, 1776:-- Johnson mentioned Dr. Barry’s System of Physic. ‘He was a man,’ said he, ‘who had acquired a high reputation in Dublin, came over to England, and brought his reputation with him. HIS NOTION WAS, THAT PULSATION OCCASIONS DEATH BY ATTRITION, AND THAT THEREFORE THE WAY TO PRESERVE LIFE IS TO RETARD PULSATION. But we know that pulsation is strongest in infants, and that we increase in growth while it operates in its regular course; so it cannot well be the cause of destruction.’ This Barry became a Baronet--_Sir Edward Barry, Bart._ ‘He published, in 1775, a curious work on the Wines of the Ancients.’ It should not be forgotten that when Dr. Johnson did drink, he drank heavily. On April 7, 1778, he said he had drunk three bottles of port at a time without being the worse for it. ‘University College has witnessed this.’ He could practise abstinence, but not temperance. Boswell’s own ideas upon drinking are worth recording:-- I observed [says he of himself, April 12, 1776] that wine did some people harm, by inflaming, confusing, and irritating their minds; but that the experience of mankind had declared in favour of moderate drinking. Sir Joshua Reynolds on the same occasion expressed similar ideas. He argued that ‘a moderate glass enlivened the mind, by giving a proper circulation to the blood.’ Probably Reynolds had studied the _Familiar Letters_ of the Historiographer-Royal, Howell, who, as before noticed, thought that ‘good wine makes good blood.’ Johnson lived to see, as he believed, a change for the better, in the direction of temperance. _Anno Domini 1773._--We talked of change of manners. Dr. Johnson observed that our drinking less than our ancestors was owing to the change from ale to wine. ‘I remember,’ said he, ‘when all the _decent_ people in Lichfield got drunk every night, and were not the worse thought of. Ale was cheap, so you pressed strongly. When a man must bring a bottle of wine, he is not in such haste.’ [Johnson was sixty-four at the time.]