Methuen treaty first introduced it, Prior, Shenstone,
and Pope, all derided the new deep wine,
"the sluggish port." Armstrong, who joined
in this cry, breaks forth in ecstasy about the
wine of France and Germany:

The gay, serene, good-natured Burgundy,
Or the fresh fragrant vintage of the Rhine!

And Thomson, a fat man, of epicurean tendencies,
passes port to lavish praises on the wine
from Gascony and the hills of Lyons:

The claret smooth, red as the lips we press
In sparkling fancy while we drain the bowl;
The mellow-tasted Burgundy, and quick
As is the wit it gives, the gay champagne.

In spite of the old prejudice that claret is
too cold for our northern stomach, it was drunk
universally in Scotland long after it had ceased
to be the fashionable beverage of England.
There are traditions in Scotland that claret used
to be taken round the towns in a cart, the
driver selling quarts of it from the hogsheads
to those who sent their servant lassies with
their " tappit hens" and silver tankards.

The wine Burns had fetched for him in " a
silver tassie" was claret, and it was claret his
heroes of the whistle drank by the pailful. When
the duties were altered, in order to force port
wine on the Scotch, and drive out the produce
of the French vineyards, Home, the author of
Douglas, wrote that vigorous epigram:

Firm and erect the Caledonian stood,
Old was his mutton, and his claret good.
"Let him drink port," the English statesman cried:
He drank the poison, and his spirit died.

We are indebted for the introduction of port to
Charles the Second's Portuguese wife. Charles's
reign gave us also tea. Fatal gift! The great race
of dramatists instantly ceased, and our costume
became uglier. The grand oval Elizabethan
face went out, and the double chin came in.
We all know from Hogarth, the heavy sensual
face of the early Georgian time: a lamentable
falling off from the former age in intellectual
expression and spiritual character. Red port
was at the bottom of it, and we wonder that it
did not lead to a French revolution in this
country, for it established gout, and gout makes
people crabbed and fretful, and fretful people
don't like paying taxes, and are the planners of
all revolutions. There was never a plot yet
but a dyspeptic or a gouty man was at the
bottom of it.

Let us get rid of this odious superstition
of red and white——of what farmers call
red port and white sherry——the supposed
necessities of all conviviality. Why torment
friends with elderberry juice and brandy,
because it was the custom years ago to drink
port when it was good and cheap? How much
better a glass of pure honest hock with a perfume
and inner warmth about it, a glass of rosy
claret innocent and refreshing, or a bumper
of full-toned manly Burgundy pressed from
grapes warmed by the fire of southern sunshine!
Clarets may be mixed, but then they are
purities mixed: not chemical drugs and brandy
fused together in the witch's cauldron of the
fraudulent chemist. There was some motive
in drinking port when port was a generous
tonic in age, freed from all the sins and
follies of turbulent youth, but now——pah!
Let heroes arise among us bold enough to
say to their friends after dinner, " I don't
keep port now, since it has become so bad and
so dear; but here's some hock I can recommend,
and here's some fair claret."

It must always be remembered that these
mutations in diet, such as the change from claret
to port, are not the result of deliberate
thought or wise premeditation. They are the
result of commercial accident, a war, or a
treaty. The change takes place, but no one
thinks what the result of the change will be, or
whether the new food is wholesome or dangerous.
No one cares, when it begins to be
fashionable, whether, like port, it will produce
gout, and leave gout as a heirloom, or whether,
like tea, it will increase nervous complaints, and
bequeath weakened nerves. Fashion in this,
as in other things, is eminently irrational.

One thing is certain; that the great Elizabethan
men, the poets, soldiers, admirals,
statesmen, and voyagers, did their work, not on
port, but on sherry——pure sherry, probably.
With blood warmed and enriched by sherry,
they broke up the Armada and defied the Pope
and the Spaniard. The stalwart men of
earlier and rougher ages were nourished on
neither port nor sherry. They drank Gascon
wine——claret that is——and quaffed Burgundy.
Strengthened by that wholesome liquor, they
bore their load of armour, and jousted, tilted,
fought, and slashed, from one end of Europe
to the other. So as port is not indispensable
to a brave man, perhaps in time we may learn
to leave this expensive physic, and once more
take to the real juice of the grape, before the
chemist gets at it.

We scarcely know when sherry and canary
first came into repute in England. Perhaps
when Henry married Katherine of Arragon, to
the horror of all ecclesiastics, she being the
widow of his brother Arthur. Certainly not
later; though the Spanish predilections of James,
and Prince Charles's visit to Madrid in search
of a wife, may have given fresh hints to the
English wine drinker.

It was Canary (a sort of rich, dry Madeira)
that the brave company at the Mermaid drank
when old Ben Jonson, and Beaumont, and
Herrick " outwatched the Bear;" it was the
same amber-coloured cordial that shone in the
glasses at the Devil, beside Temple Bar, when
the Apollo Room grew electric with the wit of
great poets, dramatists, and sages. Shakespeare
has left us a glowing eulogy of sack (sec.)——
pronounced sherris by the English, in the vain
attempt to catch the Arabic guttural X in
Xeres. Falstaff, in his sermon on sherry, with
the twofold operation, dwells especially on its
fire: so, perhaps, even then it was slightly
brandied for our coarse market.