378 THE MORAL STATUS OF ALCOHOL. 



before whose eyes these lucubrations may come, can point to 

 any author of even mediocre poetry, who adopted and held 

 to total-abstinence principles. 



If you tell me that poets are wildings of the earth 

 erratic, lawless ; the very salamanders of brain -fires ; pieces 

 of mortal clockwork rattling on out of time and measure, 

 even as clocks do that have lost their pendulums, still the 

 tenure of hold upon my victim fact is such, that poets shall 

 be set aside. It suffices that I regard the creative, imagina- 

 tive, or originative faculty in its most comprehensive sense 

 under any one of its multifarious aspects. Did you ever 

 know of a new theory of science spring out of a dietary of 

 toast-and-water ? Did you ever in your experience meet with 

 a painter who succeeded in conciliating his genius so as to 

 get a really high flight of fancy out of diet on the similitude 

 of a banked-up fire 1 And so on, for whole dreary pages, 

 might I extend this questioning throughout the entire range 

 of originative brainwork, were iteration needful. The answer, 

 truthful to the best of my knowledge, would be, Never : 

 Never ! emphatically. 



Referring to the manuscript, still lying before me, and 

 written by the same violent individual who would abolish the 

 Royal Humane Society, because they fish out of the water 

 certain silly young men who go skating on thin ice, I find 

 that he as might have been expected takes a more extreme 

 position than that adopted by me. According to him, the 

 condition of total alcoholic abstinence is not even so favour- 

 able, as that by me assumed, to the executive or noncreative 

 acts of human life. If this anonymous writer's propositions 

 be established, then would it seem to follow that some of the 

 best workmen in the mechanical arts are individuals addicted 

 to strong drinks; men who make black Mondays, and are 

 moreover intemperate as to liquor on certain other occasions. 



' We hardly need go into the regions of high intellectual 

 exercise,' writes he, 'for examples in proof of the position, that 



