3_rd Gent_.  What may be the name of this wine?

John.  It hath as many names as qualities.  It is denominated indifferently, wit, conceit, invention, inspiration, but its most royal and comprehensive name is fancy.

3_rd Gent_.  And where keeps he this sovereign liquor?

John.  Its cellars are in the brain, whence your true poet deriveth intoxication at will; while his animal spirits, catching a pride from the quality and neighborhood of their noble relative, the brain, refuse to be sustained by wines and fermentations of earth.

3_rd Gent_.  But is your poet-born always tipsy with this liquor?

John.  He hath his stoopings and reposes; but his proper element is the sky, and in the suburbs of the empyrean.

3_rd Gent_.  Is your wine-intellectual so exquisite? henceforth, I, a man of plain conceit, will, in all humility, content my mind with canaries.

4_th Gent_.  I am for a song or a catch.  When will the catches come on, the sweet wicked catches?

John.  They cannot be introduced with propriety before midnight.  Every man must commit his twenty bumpers first.  We are not yet well roused.  Frank Lovel, the glass stands with you.

Lovel.  Gentlemen, the Duke. (Fills.)

All.  The Duke. (They drink.)

Gray.  Can any tell, why his Grace, being a Papist—­

John.  Pshaw! we will have no questions of state now.  Is not this his Majesty’s birthday?

Gray.  What follows?

John.  That every man should sing, and be joyful, and ask no questions.

2_nd Gent_.  Damn politics, they spoil drinking.

3_rd Gent_.  For certain, ’tis a blessed monarchy.

2_nd Gent_.  The cursed fanatic days we have seen!  The times have been when swearing was out of fashion.

3_rd Gent_.  And drinking.

1_st Gent_.  And wenching.

Gray.  The cursed yeas and forsooths, which we have heard uttered, when a man could not rap out an innocent oath, but straight the air was thought to be infected.

Lovel.  ’Twas a pleasant trick of the saint, which that trim puritan Swear-not-at-all Smooth-speech used, when his spouse chid him with an oath for committing with his servant-maid, to cause his house to be fumigated with burnt brandy, and ends of scripture, to disperse the devil’s breath, as he termed it.

All.  Ha! ha! ha!

Gray.  But ’twas pleasanter, when the other saint Resist-the-devil-and-he-will-flee-from-thee Pureman was overtaken in the act, to plead an illusio visus, and maintain his sanctity upon a supposed power in the adversary to counterfeit the shapes of things.

All.  Ha! ha! ha!

John.  Another round, and then let every man devise what trick he can in his fancy, for the better manifesting our loyalty this day.