10 Wine, Beere, 



liquors not uncommon. Thus in the ballad "Sack for my Money, "^' 

 of the time of James I, the rivalry of wine and beer is implied through- 

 out. 



"We'l sing and laugh, and stoutly quafi. 

 And quite renounce the Alehouse; 

 For Ale and Beer are both now dear, 

 The price is rais'd in either." 



The excellency of wine over ale and beer is also maintained by Henry 

 Lawes in a later lyric,^" and by Thomas Randolph in ArisHppus. 

 Nor were the humbler liquors quite without their champions. John 

 Taylor, the Water Poet, thus deplores the present neglect of their 

 homelier virtues: 



"Bacchus is ador'd and deified 

 And we HispaniaUzed and Frenchifide, 

 Whil'st Noble Native Ale and Beere's hard fate 

 Are like old Almanacks, quite out of date."^' 



And Joseph Beaumont makes ale speak in its own defense in his poem 

 entitled "An Answer of Ale to the Challenge of Sack.'""^ Water also 

 enters into the controversy in Taylor's Drinke and Welcome, where it 

 is exalted above ale, wine, and beer, though each of these liquors is 

 elaborately praised each for its special excellence. Beer, because of 

 its supposedly exotic character, sufiers by contrast with ale at the 

 hands of Randolph (if the piece be his) in a ballad entitled "The 

 High and Mighty Commendation of a Pot of Good Ale. "^ 



"Beer is a stranger, a Dutch upstart, come, 

 Whose credit with us sometimes is but small; 

 But in records of the Empire of Rome, 

 The old Cathohc drink is a pot of good ale." 



With the exception of ArisHppus, which has a special relation to our 

 dialogue and is to be considered later, none of these pieces is, strictly 

 speaking, in debate form. They afford the material, however, and 



" Collier, Roxhirghe Ballads, 177; Roxburgke Ballads, ed. Ebsworth, VI, 319. 



^ Sandys, Festive Songs (Percy Society),-x!ii. Cf. also xliv. 



^^ Quoted by Bickerdyke, Curiosities of Ale and Beer, p. 7. 



"Bickerdyke, p. 8. 



^ Works, ed. Hazlitt, II, 662. 



