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carps and mullets, snipes and quails; and drink nothing but Fontiniac, white muscadines, leathick wine, and vin de Pary. Thy olios and hogoes, creepers and peepers, Italian sippets, and French broths, do shew what a bondman to the paunch thou art-even the idolater of the banqueting-house. Thy belly is thy God. Thus doth the glutton waste out his pilgrimage: this is the epicure's day.

"If thou beest for lust, what an itinerant art thou! Canst thou mark thy foot-prints, whither thy legs and thy eyes carry thee? Thou shouldst be looking upon her that was once the desire of thine eyes, and embracing her that was given into thy bosom, and paying wedlock rights to her that was the wife of thy covenant; but thou hast plucked out that eye that thou didst fix upon the face of thy first love; thou hast pulled back the hand which thou didst give in marriage, and cancelled the bond that thou didst seal with solemnity upon thy nuptial day; and thou art no longer for a chaste wife, but for strange flesh-even like a fed horse neighing after a new paramour: thou hast forsaken thine own threshold, and art laying wait at thy neighbour's door; thou hast left the bed undefiled, and art for a couch of dalliance; thy wife's breath is distasteful, her face is displeasing, and her company odious; and thou art now for amiable paragons, for nymphs of beauty; these

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are those whom thou didst court and compliment, hunt for, and haunt their society; to which thou dost stretch out thy chaunting tongue and grasping arms; to which thou dost engage thy swarthy heart and blacker soul. When thy wife can scarce have fragments, these shall have banquets; when thy wife can scarce have fair language, these shall have Dorian music; when thy wife can scarce have seemly raiment, these shall have veils and rails, cut-works and networks, blue silk and purple, jaspers and sapphires; when the wife must drudge at home, these shall have dance abroad; when the wife must walk on foot, these shall be coached. The bride is cast off, and the bedfellow embraced: the spouse rejected, and the courtezan entertained. Howsoever the wife is tendered and respected, dieted and robed-sure I am these are fed and clad; men will run into debt-books, lay in jails, and oftentimes hang on gibbets, for these. And thus doth the voluptuous man measure out his time; trickle out his hours: this is the sensual man's day."

Mr. Reeve (who seems to have considered himself censor-general of his time), accuses the citizens of London of most abominable eating propensities, asking them whether their minds were not wholly intent upon banquets; and whether there can be a nation more guilty of fulness of bread or more riotous eaters of flesh? "We

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know where these helluoes dwell; we could call by name these slaves of the palate, which have mind neither of church nor state, but of their spread tables and delicious fare; which face all judgments with nourishing their hearts in pleasure, as in a day of slaughter; and will jeopard the loss of privileges and ordinances, rather than they will forbear from their belly cheer, to eat ashes like bread. It is not their daily bread and food convenient that will satisfy them, but they must have dainty bread and food sumptuous; they are such insatiable gormandisers, as if (with Matthew bishop of Cracovia) they would bury all their treasure in their guts."

Mr. R. declared, that if a true account could be obtained of the expences of the kingdom in inordinate eating, for one year, he believed it would exceed the income of the Spanish Indies. "What should I say? Their palates are their altars; their services are their sacrifices; their belly is their god; they are the black idolaters of the smoky, reeking, steaming kitchen; not Ninevites, I will warrant you, which consume themselves with fasting but Epicures, which would gnaw as long as their teeth can chew, and would die with meat in their mouths."

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"To take a more serious review of our drinking the Ninevites would not drink water; but we will drink, and the spring or conduit shall

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be none of our cellar; no, we must drink of the sweet; and it is well, if any thing be dulcy and meracious enough for us; it must not only take away thirst, but satisfy the taste; not only refrigerate, but inebriate. We are compassed about with the sea, and one would think there were an ocean within land; we are rid of our ravenous wolves, but when shall we of our riotous wombs? We seem to be steeped in liquors, or to be the dizzy island. We drink as if (like Philip) we were nothing but sponges to draw up moisture; or we had tunnels in our mouths, as it was said of Dyonisius the Athenian; or (with Camatherus Logotheta) we drink like oxen. It is pity there are no nets to catch these fishes, nor no harping-irons provided to dart into the bellies of these whales. Noah planted a vine, and the world was never since sober: we are the grapesuckers of the earth.

"The Moor is abstemious, the Spaniard sober; but we are the wit-foundered nation. There are many, like Claudius, which seldom go sober over their thresholds; they rise up from their meetings like wild beasts let loose from their dens; they triumph with Heraclides, not tohave a cup-peer; they would seem (as Theocritus Chius said of Diocles) to drink up the sea; they have never drunk enough till their cups fall out of their hands, as it happened to Alexander when he contended with Proteus who should have

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the last draught. To be strong to drink wine, is become a kind of chivalry; men waging battle at their full bowls, as in a pitched field; they which have drunk down most, are like them that have knocked down most. Timon gloried over Lacydes for this like a very conqueror; and Licinius (as a capital drunkard) would be styled no less than Achilles. Thus excess is excellency, riot reputation; yea, their glory is in their shame. How is our land, by these intemperate creatures, made an hog-sty! the brimming bowl, like Circe's cup, turning men into swine. Yea, how is this glorious nation made a Bedlam, or a nest of furies! For, in their distempered humours, what distracted and frantic parts do they act! Like the youth of Agrigentum, they cast tables and stools out at the windows; and, like Michael Balbus, they are ready to cut off ears and noses; and to slay children in their parents' arms, as Lucius served Micca the daughter of Phidelinus.

"Oh! that this mad crew should not be kept close; that these wild beasts should be suffered to range the streets; that we have houses of correction for lazy persons, and no bridewells for these spendthrifts; chains for runagates, and no fetters for these Hectors; that these common bowsers and daily drunkards, which make it an art and habit to quaff and carouse, though in their fuming fits they care not to scandal the

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