Let us spend a few moments in a consideration of this great matter of eating and drinking. And we will begin with drinking first. It is curious how easily misled we might be by the corruptions that have taken place in our nomenclature. The following surnames are in the London Directory (1870): Brandy, Sherry, Gin, Port, Beer, Porter, Stout, Claret, Portwine, Tee, and Coffee. Not one of these is what it seems to be. Not one of these has anything to do with the beverage each severally represents. “Portwine” is a mere modernisation of “Potewyne,” which in the fourteenth century denoted the Poict tevine settler in England. “Claret” was the pet name of “Clare.” “Stout” is of the nickname class, “Porter” occupative, and “Port” is found originally as “Charles le Port,” or “Oliver le Port,” showing that it was a sobriquet having reference to the portly bearing of the progenitor. Tennyson speaks of “A modern gentleman Of stateliest port.” It is the same with “Aleman.” This has no connection with the public-house, but like “Almaine” and “D’Almaine” represents the old German trader. The word was once in most familiar use. Coverdale’s exposition of the twenty-fifth Psalm has on the title page, “Translated out of hye Almayne (High Dutch) in to Englyshe, by Myles Coverdale, 1537.” No one will require me to prove that James Tee and Peter Coffee do not represent our modern and favoured national breakfast beverages. At least the first, if he did, must have sprung from some “heathen Chinee,” who has immigrated to our shores. Such an elucidation, however, would neither satisfy myself, my reader, nor James Tee himself, I imagine. But we have quite sufficient relics of the drinking propensities of the English people in bygone days without seeking for them in their corrupted forms. “Inman” and “Taverner” both represent the old keeper of houses of entertainment. _Tavern_ is going out of fashion: _Public-house_ is a modern term. Porson, the great Greek scholar, was unhappily given to drink; but drunk or sober he had ever a Greek or Latin quotation at the tip of his tongue. Reeling in the streets of Cambridge, he one day tumbled down a flight of steps into a cellar-tavern. As they picked him up, he was heard to mutter, “Facilis est descensus t-averni.” Our Church of England temperance lecturers could not take a better text than this clever pun; for, unlike most puns, it contains a most admonitory truth. An old tavern-sign in Cheshire, in the last century, bore the following inscription: “Good _bear_ sold here, our own _bruin_.”