palace, accompanied by the secretaries and other honest people, “for the very purpose,” as Herberstein quaintly describes it, “of making the ambassadors full”. As it was considered an honour to pledge one’s guests, they omitted no sort of persuasion to drink, and when all was in vain, one got up and proposed the health of the grand-duke, which, of course, admitted of no refusal; and after an interval of continued pressing to drink, the health of the emperor of Germany was proposed; afterwards the health of all those present, foreigners as well as residents, in which cases also there was no excuse. “Such drinking,” says Herberstein, “is done with great grace; the person who proposes the toast, stands in the middle of the room and pronounces the sentiment,—such as fortune, or victory, or health, or what not, with the wish, that not so much blood may remain in his enemies as he means to leave in his goblet. Having said this with uncovered head, and finished the draught, he turns the goblet upside down over his head.[1] Both on this and on my former visit, not wishing to drink so much, I had no alternative but to assume the appearance of being drunk, or to say that I was too sleepy to drink any more.”[2]
- ↑ This reminds one of the German nagel probe, or “nail test”, in which the goblet was shewn to be empty by there not remaining sufficient in it, when turned upside down, to wet the thumb-nail.
- ↑ With respect to the drinking habits of the Russians, the editor has thought it would not be unacceptable to the reader to add, by way of appendix to this introduction, the curious and rare metrical epistles of George Turberville, described by Ant. à Wood (in his Athenæ Oxonienses, i, 627), as “much admired for his excellencies in
