godmother, I cannot as yet enter in the humour of being merry, nor drink so
currently as I would. You have catched a cold, gammer? Yea, forsooth,
sir. By the belly of Sanct Buff, let us talk of our drink: I never drink
but at my hours, like the Pope's mule. And I never drink but in my
breviary, like a fair father guardian. Which was first, thirst or
drinking? Thirst, for who in the time of innocence would have drunk
without being athirst? Nay, sir, it was drinking; for privatio
praesupponit habitum. I am learned, you see: Foecundi calices quem non
fecere disertum? We poor innocents drink but too much without thirst. Not
I truly, who am a sinner, for I never drink without thirst, either present
or future. To prevent it, as you know, I drink for the thirst to come. I
drink eternally. This is to me an eternity of drinking, and drinking of
eternity. Let us sing, let us drink, and tune up our roundelays. Where is
my funnel? What, it seems I do not drink but by an attorney? Do you wet
yourselves to dry, or do you dry to wet you? Pish, I understand not the
rhetoric (theoric, I should say), but I help myself somewhat by the
practice. Baste! enough! I sup, I wet, I humect, I moisten my gullet, I
drink, and all for fear of dying. Drink always and you shall never die.
If I drink not, I am a-ground, dry, gravelled and spent. I am stark dead
without drink, and my soul ready to fly into some marsh amongst frogs; the
soul never dwells in a dry place, drouth kills it. O you butlers, creators
of new forms, make me of no drinker a drinker, a perennity and
everlastingness of sprinkling and bedewing me through these my parched and
sinewy bowels. He drinks in vain that feels not the pleasure of it. This
entereth into my veins,--the pissing tools and urinal vessels shall have
nothing of it. I would willingly wash the tripes of the calf which I
apparelled this morning. I have pretty well now ballasted my stomach and
stuffed my paunch. If the papers of my bonds and bills could drink as well
as I do, my creditors would not want for wine when they come to see me, or
when they are to make any formal exhibition of their rights to what of me