Grocott & Ward, comps. Grocott’s Familiar Quotations, 6th ed. 189-?.
Drinking
Not to-night—I have very poor and unhappy brains for drinking: I could well wish courtesy would invent some other custom of entertainment.
I have drunk but one cup to-night, and—behold what innovation it makes here: I am unfortunate in the infirmity, and dare not task my weakness with any more.
Shakespeare.—Othello, Act II. Scene 3. (Cassio to Iago.)
Every inordinate cup is unbless’d, and the ingredient is a devil.
Shakespeare.—Othello, Act II. Scene 3. (Cassio.)
If we do not drink to his cost, we shall die in his debt.
Smart’s Horace.—Book II. Sat. VIII.
I drank: I liked it not: ’twas rage, ’twas noise,
An airy scene of transitory joys.
In vain I trusted that the flowing bowl
Would banish sorrow and enlarge the soul.
Prior.—Solomon, a Poem, Book II. Line 106.
And in the flowers that wreath the sparkling bowl,
Fell adders hiss, and poisonous serpents roll.
Prior.—Solomon, a Poem, Book II. Line 140.
[See a pleasant piece of exaggeration, wherein the drunken person imagines himself on board a vessel, and in danger of shipwreck.—Heywood.—The English Traveller. Lamb’s Dramatic Poets, Page 104.]