. . . Coffee, Twist, Old Pharaoh and old Hoc, Juniper Brandy and Wine de Langue-Dock. As there have been many strong and mighty ales since the days when— King Hardicanute, ’midst Danes and Saxons stout, Carous’d on nut-brown ale and dined on growt, {159} so there have been an abundance of small poor drinks, which have been from time to time known by various terms of contempt, the titles “whip-belly-vengeance” and “rotgut” being, perhaps, on the whole, the most expressive. Shakspere sums up the humdrum of retired matronly life in the well-known line, “To suckle fools and chronicle small beer.” Beer which had been kept so long that it had turned sour was at one time known as “broken beer,” much as we speak now of broken victuals. Ben Jonson, in his _Masque of Gypsies_, makes mention of an infant “very carefully carried at his mother’s back, rock’d in a cradle of Welsh cheese like a maggot, and there fed with _broken beer_, and blown wine of the best daily.” In olden times small beer discharged that friendly office assigned by later and more fastidious days to soda-water, namely, the cooling of the parched throat after a too earnest devotion to the rites of _Bacchus_. Welcome to my lips, great king of frolic, Stern foe to headache, devils blue, and cholic— No dandy soda-water bring to me, No Lady’s lemonade, no soft bohea; Thy sterner aid I claim, and ask thy might To quell the riots of that punch last night; wrote one of the Brasenose College poets. Christopher Sly, awakening from his debauch, cries aloud for “a pot of small ale . . . and once again a pot of the smallest ale,” and Prince Hal “remembers the poor creature small beer.” A nameless author, writing in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1746, describes this function of small beer, and in poetic vein tells how after a “wine,” awaking from a feverish sleep, he sees before him a venerable man,