Ale, and Tobacco 45 



91. None are made without me. "Banquet" in Elizabethan and Jacobean 

 usage meant a course of sweets. 



97. / was wrapt in hers, oth Christian day. An amusing illustration of the 

 use of sweets at christenings is afforded by Middleton, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, 

 III, ii {Works, ed. Bullen, IV, 152 ff.), where the gossips are regaled on comfits 

 at Sir W. Whorehound's expense: 



"Allwit: These women have no consciences at sweet meats 

 Where'ere they come, see and thejf've not culled out 

 AH the long plums too, they've left nothing here 

 But short wiggle-tailed comfits, not worth mouthing: 

 No mar'l I heard a citizen complain once 

 That his wife's beUy once broke his back." 



Cf . also Dekker's Bachelors' Banquet, cap. iii (quoted by Bullen, loc. cit.) : " Con- 

 sider then what cost and trouble it will be to have all things fine against the christen- 

 ing day. What store of' sugar, biscuits, comfits, and caraways, marmalade and 

 marchpane, with all kinds of sweet suckets and superfluous banqueting stuff, 

 with a hundred other odd and needless trifles, which at that time must fill the pock- 

 ets of dainty dames." 



118. I am their life, thdr Genius, the Poeticall fire. Cf. Randolph, ylmfe'^^z«: 

 "But Sack is the life, soul, and spirits of a man, the fire which Prometheus stole, 

 not from Jove's Kitchen, but from his Wine-celler, to increase the native heat and 

 radical moisture, without which we are but drowsie dust, or dead clay ... 

 but in Poetry, it is the sole predominant quality, the sap and juice of a verse, 

 yea the spring of the Muses is the fountain of Sack; for to think Helicon a Barrel 

 of Beer, is as great a sin as to caU Pegasus a Brewer's Horse." 



121. you are come up of late, Cf. Randolph, Aristippus "1st Scholar: Why, 

 truly, his price has been raised of late, and his very name makes him dearer. 

 2nd Scholar: A diUgent lecturer deserves eight pence a pint tuition." 



Wine had advanced steadily in price since the middle ages, as may be seen 

 in the successive edicts regulating its sale. Rogers {A History of Agriculture and 

 Prices V, 476) gives the average prices for the three principal classes of wine- 

 claret, sack, and muscadel-for the twenty years 1623-1642 at 2s 3d, 3s 7d, and 4s. 

 The year 1621-2 saw a jump of 4d per gallon in the price of claret and sack. In 

 1623-4 both kinds had gone down again to 2s 4d and 3s 8d respectively. Then in 

 1624-S, they again rose to 2s 8d and 4s. It is probably this last advance which is 

 specifically referred to in the text. In the years 1627-9 a marked rise took place 

 in the prices of sack and muscadel (including malmsey, canary, and other sweet 

 wines.) This would coincide with the allusions in Aristippus (Aristippus was a 

 cant term for canary wine). Too much reliance must not be put upon the details 

 of Roger's tables. The general rise in the price of wine through these years is, of 

 course, estabhshed. 



128. From France, from Spaine, from Greece. This is a pretty accurate enum- 

 eration of the chief sources of wine importation into England in the order of their 



