Round the raised nations pours the cup of joy: The claret smooth, red as the lip we press In sparkling fancy while we drain the bowl; The mellow-tasted Burgundy; and quick As is the wit it gives the gay champagne. Wordsworth says of the _Seasons_:--‘Much of it is written from himself.’ Probably this is true. In 1798 was published a collection of the dramatic works of John O’Keefe. In the following lines from his _Poor Soldier_ occurs a phrase which has become household:-- Dear Tom, this brown jug that now foams with mild ale, From which I now drink to sweet Nan of the Vale, Was once Toby Filpot’s, a thirsty old soul As e’er _cracked a bottle_ or fathomed a bowl. The allusion is simply to drunken frolics, during which glass was broken. Mr. Oldbuck says in the _Antiquary_:--‘We never were glass-breakers in this house.’ In 1805 Robert Bloomfield published his rural poem, the _Farmer’s Boy_. It is a very humorous and suggestive account of the manners of clod-hopping England as engaged about the Harvest-home supper in Suffolk and Norfolk, here entitled the _Horkey_. This has been already discussed. Suffice it to add that Bloomfield’s charming little provincial ballad, entitled, _The Horkey_, has been recently published by Macmillan, and is abundantly illustrated. But of all the marvellous issues from the press at the beginning of the present century, nothing could be more monstrous than the publication of a work entitled ‘_Ebrietatis Encomium; or, the Praise of Drunkenness_, wherein is authentically and most evidently proved the Necessity of Frequently Getting Drunk; and the Practise is most ancient, primitive, and Catholick.’ The author, not unnaturally, thinks that some apology is needed in his preface. He declares that he did not undertake the work on account of any zeal he had for wine, but only to divert himself(!), and not to lose a great many curious remarks he had made upon this most Catholic liquid. Verily, ‘_nulli vitio unquam defuit advocatus_.’ He seems to have hunted up _bon-mots_, or rather _mal-mots_ from every toping author that was to hand, _e.g._ he cites Seneca (_De Tranquillitate_):--‘As drunkenness causes some distempers, so it is a sovereign remedy for our sorrows.’ Propertius--‘Alas! so then wine lives longer than man, let us then sit down and drink bumpers; life and wine are the same thing.’ Horace--‘That nectar which the blessed vines produce, the height of all our joy and wishes here.’ La Motte:-- A l’envi laissons nous saisir, Aux transports d’une douce ivresse: Qu’importe si c’est un plaisir, Que ce soit folie ou sagesse. These are specimens of the sources from which the author, ‘Boniface Oinophilus’ drew.[228] But we travel to far other soil. The poet Cowper [_b._ 1781, _d._ 1800], the intellectual ancestor of Wordsworth, has several pictures of his times in his writings. With a lofty and noble morality does he describe the truly gay:--