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 132 walk of life, but also its willful and ostentatious defense. From the parson to the ploughman, from the peer to the poacher, all classes drank deeply, and with the comfortable consciousness that they were playing manly parts. It was "one of the first lessons taught to youth, and fathers encouraged their sons—vainly sometimes, as in the case of Horace Walpole—to empty as many bottles as their steady hands could hold. "A young fellow had better be thrice drunk in one day," says honest Sir Hildebrand to Frank Osbaldistone, "than sneak sober to bed like a Presbyterian." And there is true paternal pride in the contrast the squire draws between this strange, abstemious relative from town and his own stalwart, country-bred boys, "who would have been all as great milksops as yourself, Nevey," he heartily declares, "if I had not nursed them, as one may say, on the toast and tankard."

Nevertheless, it was not in the eighteenth century, with its deep potations, and its nightly collapses of squire and squireen under their mahogany tables, that the gay English drinking-songs were written. The