Page:The Canterbury tales of Geoffrey Chaucer.djvu/132

 thy drunken nose seemeth as though thou aye saidest, "Samsoun, Samsoun," and yet Samson, God wot, drank never wine. Thou fallest as it were a stuck hog. Thy tongue is lost and all thy heed of honour, for drunkenness is the very sepulchre of man's discretion and wit. He in whom drink hath domination in very truth can keep no counsel. Now keep you from the white and the red, especially from the white wine of Lepe, that is for sale in Cheapside or Fish Street. This wine of Spain creepeth subtly into other wines growing near, of which such fumosity ariseth that when a man hath drunken three draughts and weeneth he be at home in Cheapside, he is in Spain, not at Rochelle or at Bordeaux, but right at the town of Lepe, and then he will say, "Samsoun, Samsoun."

But, lordings, I beseech you hearken one word, that all of the sovereign acts of victory in the Old Testament I dare say were done through God himself, that is all-powerful, in abstinence and prayer. Look in the Bible and there ye may learn it. Lo! Attila, the great conqueror, died shamefully in his sleep, bleeding aye at his nose in drunkenness. A captain should live soberly. And more than this, consider with diligence what was commanded to Lamuel—not Samuel, I say, but Lamuel; read the Bible and find it expressly set down concerning wine-giving to them that have the administering of justice. No more of this, for it is sufficient.

And now that I have spoken of gluttony, I will forbid you hazardry. Hazard is the very mother of lies and deceit and cursed forswearings, blasphemy of Christ, manslaughter and also waste of wealth and of time; and furthermore it is a reproach and dishonourable to be held a common gambler. And ever the higher he is of estate the more abandoned do men deem him.