500 
On Wine. 
I am an advocate for drinking wine, for the sake of good cont* 
pany, for the pleasure of drinking it, from motives of convivial- 
ity, and not merely as St. Paul recommends it, for the stomachs’ 
sake. But I should not be an epicure, if I were not to insist on 
habitual moderation : this is the mark and the criterion of the gen- 
tlemanly use of every indulgence ; notning betrays vulgarity so 
much as excess. People who are not accustomed to good living, 
gormandize when they meet with it : those who are accustomed to 
it, have no temptation to exceed the bounds of moderate enjoy- 
ment. But I fear that my notions of moderation do not coincide 
with common practice. I am fully persuaded that wine as an 
habitual beverage much short of any thing like intoxication, lays 
almost the only foundation for the gout and stone , of the decline of 
life : these are one and the same disorder, so far as remote and 
proximate causes are concerned in producing them. I know of 
nothing that can excuse excess in drinking, but a typhus fever for 
which physicians prescribe it, or the intolerable pressure of recent 
misfortune, for which Horace, and after him Burns prescribes it on 
the authority of Solomon ; Dissifiat Evius , curas edaces. 
u Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine 
to those that be of heavy heart. Let him drink and forget his 
poverty, and remember his misery no more. Prov. xxxi. 6. 7V* 
Gie him strong drink until he wink, 
Whae’s sinking in despair ; 
And liquor guid to fire his bluid 
Whae’s prest wi’ grief an care. 
There let him bouse and deep carouse 
Wi’ bumpers flowing o’er, 
Till he forgets his loves or debts, 
And minds his griefs no more. 
I was led into this train of reflection, by a passage in the Edin- 
burgh Review for November, 1811, of which an account is given 
of some experiments of Mr. Brande on the quantity of alcohol 
contained in wine : I shall give the substance of those trials, 
with the obvious remarks of the reviewers, and add to them the* 
experiments which I have seen you make on the same substances. 
The pleasures of the table consist so much in the circulation of 
the bottle, and the subject is of such great importance to health as 
well as to pleasure, that I can not think, this dissertation will be 
void of interest. 
