One more instance of a huge drinker may be given: One Jedediah Buxton was curious enough in his drinking habits to calculate the number of pints of ale or strong beer that he had drunk free of cost to himself since he was twelve years of age, and the names of the gentlemen at whose houses he had consumed them. The list began with the Duke of Kingston, 2,130 pints; Duke of Norfolk, 266 pints; Duke of Leeds, 232, and so on through a long list, of which it need only be said the total amounted to 5,116 pints or _winds_, as he termed them, because, he said, he never took more than one wind, or breath, to a pint and two to a quart. Surely this man deserves to rank among the curiosities of the subject. Happily times have changed and drunkenness, we may hope, will soon cease to be counted a national vice. Bearing in mind the excesses to which drinking was carried in the last century, it cannot be denied that much progress has been made in the direction of moderation; and that the habits of the whole people—slow and difficult as such habits are to change—have undergone a very marked improvement. Ere the next century has had time to grow from youth to old age, it may be impossible to find in any rank of the population a man who could say of an evening’s amusement like the old Scotch Shepherd, “It was a grand treat, for before the end o’t there was na ane of us able to bite his ain thoomb!” [Illustration] {294} [Illustration] CHAPTER XI. ’Tis Ale, immortal Ale I sing! Bid all the Muses throng! Bid them awake each slumbering string, Till the loud chords responsive ring To swell the lofty song! _Brasenose College Shrovetide Poem._ These venerable ancient song inditers Soar’d many a pitch above our modern writers; Our numbers may be more refin’d than those, But what we’ve gained in verse we’ve lost in prose; Their words no shuffling double meaning knew, Their speech was homely, but their hearts were true. _Rowe._ _OLD BALLADS, SONGS AND VERSES RELATING TO ALE AND BEER._ Long ago, in the merry days when the chilling influence of Puritanism had not yet put an end to the majority of our sports and pastimes, and when anyone who had ventured to speak of a May-pole as a “Stinckyng Idoll” would most likely have been ducked in the nearest pond as a proper reward for his calumny, the lower orders of England were far more musical than at present; and there existed a great demand for ballads to be sung at village merry-makings, ale-house gatherings, and during the long winter evenings which would have been dull indeed without the cheering influence of song. {295}