Eating and drinking the only work of the monks — Nunc est bibendum — An apology for Herodotus — A jovial pope — Good quarters in Provence — Intemperance of holy men — A tippling bishop — Alexander the Great — “Lovely Thais sits beside thee” — A big flare-up — Awful end of Alec — Cambyses always shot straight — Darius the strong-of-head — Philip drunk and Philip sober — Dionysius gets blind — Tiberius loved the bowl — So did Flavius Vobiscus, the diplomatist — Bluff King Hal — The Merry Monarch and the Lord Mayor — Dear old Pepys — A Mansion House wine-list — Minimum allowance of sack — A slump in brandy — A church-tavern — Dean Aldrich — The Romans at supper — “The tippling philosophers.” Not even popes, saints, or bishops were exempt from accusations of loving the juice of the grape, or of the apple, too well. We read in the adages of Erasmus that it was a proverb amongst the Germans that the lives of the monks consisted in nothing but eating and drinking. One H. Stephens says on this subject, in his apology for Herodotus:— “But to return to these proverbs, theological wine, and the abbot’s, or prelate’s, table. I say {12} that without these one could never rightly understand the beautiful passage of Horace:— Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero Pulsanda tellus; nunc Saliaribus Ornare pulvinar Deorum Tempus erat dapibus sodales, nor this other:— Absumet haeres Caecuba dignior Servata centum clavibus: et mero Tinget pavimentum superbo Pontificum potiore coenis.” Modern popes have always had a reputation for abstemiousness; but this same Mr. Stephens—who must have been somewhat of a slander-monger—in his same apology for Herodotus (what about the apology for Stephens?) mentions a popular little song of the day, which commenced:— Le Pape qui est à Rome Boit du vin comme un autre homme, Et du l’Hypocras aussi. And I can recall a cheery, albeit most likely libellous, song, which some of us used to sing at school, beginning:— The Pope he leads a joyous life. It appears to be a fact that many former popes drank hard; and if Petrarch is to be believed, the long stay made by the court of Rome at Avignon was on account of the excellence of the French wines; and that it was merely for that {13} reason that they stayed so long in Provence, and removed with so much reluctance. Now for the saints. Although the fact of his drinking deep has been denied, St. Augustine appears to have confessed to “a day out” occasionally, in some such words as these: “Thy servant has been sometimes crop-sick through excess of wine. Have mercy on me, that it may be ever far from me.”