J90 HISTORY OF FRUITS. 



would be to write a voluminous work, and could only be 

 interesting to those who are in the wine trade. Pliny 

 says, there were eighty kinds of the best wines in his 

 days. The Grecians were renowned for their wines. 

 Homer has celebrated several, particularly the kind called 

 Maronean wine, which was made from grapes growing 

 upon the coast of Africa ; and also the Pramnian wine, 

 which, according to Pliny's account, was made from one 

 vineyard only in the neighbourhood of Smyrna, near to 

 the temple of Cybele. 



These wines were so rare and expensive in Rome, in 

 the younger days of Lucullus, that only one draught was 

 allowed at a repast, however sumptuous the feast was in 

 other respects. " Lucullus/' says Varro, " never saw at his 

 father's board Greek wines served up but once at a meal; 

 but when he returned from Asia, he gave to the people a 

 largess of more than one hundred thousand gallons of this 

 wine ; and Hortensius, at his death, left above ten thou- 

 sand barrels full of Greek wines to his heir." 



We have selected the following lines of a poet, who 

 wrote in the fourteenth century, to shew of what wines 

 the English had knowledge : 



" Ye shall have rumney and malespine, 

 Both ypocrasse and vernage wyne, 

 Mountrese and wyne of Greke, 

 Both algrade and despice eke ; 

 Antioche and bastarde, 

 Pyment also, and garnarde, 

 Wyne of Greke and muscadell, 

 Both clare, pyment, and Rochell." 



Some of these liquors, as ypocrasse, pymeut, and clare, 

 were compounded of wine, honey, and spices. 



At the installation feast of George Neville, archbishop 

 of York, and chancellor of England, amongst other liquors, 



