An Artificial Age ; Port^ the Patron^ and the Pillory, 57 



be included between the years 1 740 and 1 780. I propose with 

 your permission to draw for you a few sketches of the social 

 life of that period, though I am not sure whether you will 

 regard so desultory a treatment of the subject in the light of a 

 lecture. 



Some time ago there was a great sale of wine at a country 

 house near Edinburgh. A small innkeeper was noticed buying 

 all the odd lots, and the agent, wondering what he meant to do 

 with them, took the opportunity to call with him a few days 

 after. He found him engaged in mixing into one great vat the 

 various odd lots — Imperial Tokay, Chateau Lafitte, Madeira, 

 and Canary. " What do you mean to call that ? " inquired the 

 agent. " Well, sir," said the inkeeper, " I think I'll call it 

 sherry, but I'm no sure." Ladies and gentlemen, these 

 desultory sketches of mine — these odd lots of the last century — 

 you may call a lecture —but I'm no sure. In referring to some 

 of the leading influences of the period as Port, the Patron and 

 the Pillory, I think I have not sacrificed accuracy for the sake 

 of alliteration. Port, the Patron and the Pillory played a large 

 part in the social, and I fear it must at once be confessed, the 

 artistic, and even — and this is worst of all — the literary life of 

 the eighteenth century. In what proportion the first two 

 elements accelerated the influence of the third I do not venture 

 to say. Port was a power in those days. Where it all came 

 from is as great a mystery as where all the champagne comes 

 from nowadays. I am strongly inclined to believe that most 

 of the old wine drinkers might have had the melancholy satis- 

 faction of feeling that they were encouraging a home manu- 

 facture. I will not do our modern exponents of the science — 

 or is it an art ? — of producing a really high-class, fully matured 

 wine out of a handful of chemicals, the injustice of asserting that 

 their superiors in this direction existed in the eighteenth 

 century ; but I venture to think that chemicals played a less 

 important part than the common or garden gooseberry in the 

 manufacture of the wines that were generally drunk a hundred 

 and fifty years ago. If it had been otherwise, the English race 



