greater disgrace than the shame of being vanquished in a drinking bout. He so sedulously cultivated the art of potation, that few dared to enter the lists against him. As he was one day sitting in a tavern, another mighty toper came into the room, and, calling for one of the large water buckets of the country (of which the least contained two gallons), ordered it to be filled to the brim with Dantzic black beer. Then politely alluding to the many laurels which Eobanus had gathered in this noble field, he cast a precious ring into the pail, and challenged the poet to drain it. "Eobanus," says his biographer, "with little boggling and less preface, for he was a man of few words, seized the vessel, and having speedily emptied it, turned it upside down, so that the ring fell on the table." The room rang with applause; but none was so noisy in approbation as the challenger, who declared the feat to be incredible. What," cried the poet, turning to him sternly, "do you think that I drink for hire? Here, take your paltry ring, and, as you promised, empty the bucket!" The boaster made the attempt, but failed; so leaving him in the taproom dead-drunk, Eobanus walked away, looking 66 as if he had neither lost nor won."

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1 Melch. Adami Vitae German. Philosoph. p. 53. edit. Franc. 1725.

Of a like jovial disposition was Daniel Heinsius. Menage has preserved a couplet with which he endeavoured to strengthen his failing limbs as he one night staggered home from a debauch:

"Sta pes, sta bone pes, sta pes, ne labere mi pes,

Sta pes, aut lapides hi mihi lectus erunt."

The worthy poet, who was also a professor, sometimes indulged so freely over night, that he was unable to meet his class next morning; and his students, on one occasion, affixed this placard on the door of the lecture room: "Daniel Heinsius non leget hodie propter hesternam crapulam.”1

The "next morning" has been much overlooked by Bacchanalian poets. I remember none but Byron who has touched on it:

"Get very drunk; and when

You wake with headache, you shall see what then."

Charles Lamb, indeed, has left a few prose sentences on the matter, redolent with all his quaint and happy humour :-" With feverish eyes on the succeeding dawn I opened upon the faint light, enough to distinguish, in a strange chamber, not immediately to be recognised, garters, hose, waistcoat, neckerchief, arranged in dreadful order and

1 Menagiana, t. i. p. 26; t. iv. p. 288.

F

proportion, which I knew was not mine own. "Tis the common symptom, on awaking, I judge my last night's condition from. A tolerable scattering on the floor I hail as being too probably my own; and if the candlestick be not removed, I assoil myself. But this finical arrangement, this finding every thing in the morning in exact diametrical rectitude, torments me. Remote whispers suggest that I coached it home in triumph. Far be that from working pride in me, for I was unconscious of the locomotion. That a young Mentor accompanied a reprobate old Telemachus! That, Trojan-like, he bore his charge upon his shoulders, while the wretched incubus, in glimmering sense, hiccuped drunken snatches of flying on the bat's wings after sunset! An aged servitor is also hinted at, to make disgrace more complete; one to whom my ignominy may offer farther occasions of revolt (to which before he was too fondly inclining) from the true faith; for, at sight of my helplessness, what more was needed to drive him to the advocacy of independency?" 1

XXVIII.

PROOF OF LEARNING.

In the old romance of the Seven Sages of Rome, it

1 Letters of Charles Lamb, vol. ii. p. 298.

is related that these masters ascertained if their pupil was sufficiently learned by placing four leaves of ivy under each post of his bed.

Unaware of what had been done, he betook himself to rest; but in the morning when he awoke—

6

"The child looked here and there,
Up and down, and every where.
His masters asked what him was?'
'Parfai!' he said, 'a ferly case!
Either I am of wine drunk,
Either the firmament is sunk,
Either waxen is the ground

The thickness of four leaves round:
So much, to night, higher I lay,
Certes, than I lay yesterday.""

The sages were now fully satisfied :

"The masters then well understood
He knew enough of all good!"1

XXIX.

PARISH REGISTERS.

THROUGH Scarcity of paper, or the waywardness of the keepers, many strange notices have found their

1 Weber's Metrical Romances, vol. iii. pp. 10, 11.

way into parochial registers, those barren abstracts of the annals of mortality,

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where to be born and die

Of rich and poor makes all the history."

An old record of funerals at Aberdeen gives a recipe for averting the pains to which weak brains are exposed by a debauch overnight, or as it is phrased, "Agains the heid aiking by to muckill drinking.” Another legal record at the same place is enlivened by two fashionable songs of the year 1507.2 A private note-book is elsewhere preserved, where Scripture texts, memoranda of Puritan sermons, and the last words of dying Covenanters, are huddled up with such profane tunes as "If the Kirk would let me be,” "The Rantin' Laddie," and "Green grow the rashes."3 More useful but scarcely less impertinent entries occur in English registers. At Richmond, in Yorkshire, it is written, "Buried, Mr Matthew Hutchinson, Vicar of Gilling,-worth £50 a-year ;" and, "Buried, Mrs Ursula Allen,-worth £600." This superfluity is perhaps more to be commended than the slovenly style of the clerk of Lincoln's Inn Chapel: "1722. This day were married by Mr Holloway, I think, a couple whose names I could never learn, for he allowed them to carry away the licence."4 1 Analecta Scotica, vol. i. p. 286.

2 Dauney's Ancient Scotish Melodies, p. 47. 3 Ibid. pp. 140, 141, 142.

Grimaldi's Origines Genealogicae, pp. 286, 287.