The Eight Different Kinds of Drunkards.

On Friday last week I gave you a short extract from a very long article in London Society. An Illustrated Magazine of Light and Amusing Literature for the Hours of Relaxation, published in 1867. I cannot resist giving you a few more paragraphs from the same piece, and hope you find them amusing and interesting.

A treatise might be written upon our ancient drinking customs. What wine-bibbers and beer-bibbers were the Elizabethan swash-bucklers, and the Stuart cavaliers! No thin potations; no half-filled cups for them! In those days he was nobody that could not ' drink superoragulum;' 'carouse the hunter's hoope;' or ' quaff upse freeze crosse.' The satirist Nash gives a curious picture of society in the thirsty Tudor days. He delineates eight different kinds of drunkards, and each must have been sufficiently common to enable him so accurately to detect and describe their humours. ' The first,' he says,' is Ape-drunk, and he leaps and sings, and hollows and dances for the heavens; the second is Lyon-drunk, and he flings the pots about the house, breaks the glass windows with his dagger, and is apt to quarrel with any man that speaks to him; the third is Swine-drunk, heavy, lumpish, and sleepy, and cries for a little more drink, and a few more clothes; the fourth is Sheep-drunk, wise in his own conceit when he cannot bring forth a right word ; the fifth is Maudlin-drunk, when a fellow will weep for kindness in the midst of his drink, and kiss you, saying, " By God, captain, I love thee; go thy ways, thou dost not think so often of me as I do of thee: I would (if it pleased God) I could not love thee as I do;" and then he puts his finger in his eye and cries. The sixth is Martin-drunk, when a man is drunk, and drinks himself sober ere he stir; the seventh is Goat-drunk, when in his drunkenness he had no mind but on lechery. The eighth is Fox-drunk, when he is crafty drunk, as many of the Dutchmen be, which will never bargain but when they are drank. All these species, and more, I have seen practised in one company at one sitting; when I have been permitted to remain sober amongst them only to note their several humours.'

To drink super-ragulum, that if, on the rail, is thus explained by Nash: 'After a man has turned up the bottom of his cup, a drop was allowed to settle on the thumb-nail. If more than a drop trickled down, the drinker was compelled to drink again by way of penance.'

As the recipe for the day, may I give you a lovely champagne punch?

Champagne Punch, (Per bottle.)

1 quart bottle of wine,

4 lb. of sugar.

1 orange sliced.

The juice of a lemon.

3 slices of pine apple.

1 wine-glass of raspberry or strawberry syrup. Ornament with fruits in season, and serve in champagne goblets. This can be made in any quantity by observing the proportions of the ingredients as given above. Four bottles of wine make a gallon, and a gallon is generally sufficient for fifteen persons in a mixed party.

How to Mix Drinks, or, The Bon-vivant's Companion (1862) by Jerry Thomas.