SUM.  It is wine’s custom to be full of words.  I pray thee, Bacchus, give us vicissitudinem loquendi.

BAC.  A fiddlestick! ne’er tell me I am full of words. Faecundi calices, quem non fecere disertum; aut bibe[87] aut abi; either take your drink, or you are an infidel.

SUM.  I would about thy vintage question thee.  How thrive thy vines? hadst thou good store of grapes?

BAC. Vinum quasi venenum; Wine is poison to a sick body.  A sick body is no sound body; ergo, wine is a pure thing, and is poison to all corruption.  Try-lill! the hunters whoop to you.  I’ll stand to it:  Alexander was a brave man, and yet an arrant drunkard.

WIN.  Fie, drunken sot! forgett’st thou where thou art?  My lord asks thee what vintage thou hast made?

BAC.  Our vintage was a vintage, for it did not work upon the advantage:  it came in the vauntguard of Summer.  And winds and storms met it by the way, And made it cry, alas, and well-a-day!

SUM.  That was not well; but all miscarried not?

BAC.  Faith, shall I tell no lie?  Because you are my countryman, and so forth; and a good fellow is a good fellow, though he have never a penny in his purse.[88] We had but even pot-luck—­little to moisten our lips and no more.  That same Sol is a pagan and a proselyte:  he shined so bright all summer, that he burnt more grapes than his beams were worth, were every beam as big as a weaver’s beam. A fabis abstinendum; faith, he should have abstained, for what is flesh and blood without his liquor?

AUT.  Thou want’st no liquor, nor no flesh and blood. 
I pray thee, may I ask without offence,
How many tuns of wine hast in thy paunch? 
Methinks that [that is] built like a round church,
Should yet have some of Julius Caesar’s wine: 
I warrant ’twas not broached this hundred year.

BAC.  Hear’st thou, dough-belly! because thou talk’st and talk’st, and dar’st not drink to me a black jack, wilt thou give me leave to broach this little kilderkin of my corpse against thy back?  I know thou art but a micher,[89] and dar’st not stand me. A vous, Monsieur Winter, a frolic up-se-frieze:[90] cross, ho.’ super naculum.[91]
                                      [Knocks the jack upon his thumb.

WIN.  Gramercy, Bacchus, as much as though I did.  For this time thou must pardon me perforce.

BAC.  What, give me the disgrace? go to, I say, I am no Pope to pardon any man.  Ran, ran, tara:  cold beer makes good blood.  St George for England![92] Somewhat is better than nothing.  Let me see, hast thou done me justice? why so:  thou art a king, though there were no more kings in the cards but the knave.  Summer, wilt thou have a demi-culverin, that shall cry Husty-tusty, and make thy cup fly fine meal in the element?

SUM.  No, keep thy drink, I pray thee, to thyself.

BAC.  This Pupilonian in the fool’s coat shall have a cast of martins and a whiff.  To the health of Captain Rinocerotry!  Look to it; let him have weight and measure.