Darius, the first King of Persia, commanded that this epitaph, which is here translated, should be placed on his tomb: “I could drink much wine and bear it well.” Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, took too much wine on {15} occasion; to corroborate which fact we have the exclamation of the good lady whose prayer for justice he had refused to hear—this is a quotation beloved of members of Parliament—“I appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober.” Dionysius the younger, tyrant of Sicily, frequently had vine-leaves in his hair for a week at a time; he drank himself almost blind, and his courtiers, in order to flatter him, pretended to be blind too, and neither ate nor drank anything unless it were handed to them by Dionysius himself. Tiberius was called Biberius, because of his excessive attachment to the bowl; and, in derision, they changed his surname of Nero to Mero. Bonosus, according to his own historian, Flavius Vobiscus, was a terrible soaker, and used to make the ambassadors, who came from foreign parts, even more drunk than himself, in order that he might discover their secret instructions. I cannot glean from the ancient records that any monarch who reigned over Great Britain was an habitual drunkard, an absolute and confirmed sot. But many of them were given to conviviality, notably Richard of the Lion Heart, Bluff King Hal—who had gout badly, and suffered also from obesity and other things—and the Merry Monarch. A story is told of the Second Charles, that when dining with the Lord Mayor, Sir Robert Viner, on one occasion—it was probably a 9th of November dinner at the Mansion House—the King noticed that most of the guests were uncomfortably uproarious, and, with his suite, rose to leave the banqueting chamber. Whereupon the Lord Mayor hastily {16} pursued him, caught hold of his robe, and exclaimed: “Sire, you shall take t’other bottle.” The King stopped, and with a graceful smile repeated a line of the old song, “He that is drunk is great as a king,” and with this compliment to his host, he returned, and took “t’other bottle.”