Friendly indeed! Why, viewed in this genial light, she is good-fellowship itself, and hardly to be distinguished from the smiling nymph whom Horace saw in the greenwood, learning attentively the strains dictated to her by the vine-crowned god of wine.
The best of the English drinking-songs were written by the dramatists of the seventeenth century, men who trolled out their vigorous sentiments, linked sweetly together in flowing verse, without the smallest thought or fear of shocking anybody. Frankly indecorous, they invite the whole wide world to drink with them, to empty the brimming tankard passed from hand to hand, and to reel home through the frosty streets, where the watchman grins at their unsteady steps, and quiet sleepers, awakened from dull dreams, echo with drowsy sympathy the last swelling cadence of their uproarious song. Where there is no public sentiment to defy, even Bacchanalian rioters and Bacchanalian verses cease to be defiant. What admirable good temper and sincerity in Fletcher's generous importunity!
"Drink to-day, and drown all sorrow,
