heart and wagged his doggish tail, gentle and innocent as a milk-fed puppy, when he saw the god of wine.
The close of the seventeenth century witnessed a revolution in English poetry, and the great "coming event" of Queen Anne's Augustan age threw its shadow far before it,—a shadow of reticence and impersonality. People drank more and more, but they said less and less about it. Even in the reign of Charles II., though convivial songs were written by the score, they had lost the ring of earlier days; and we need only read a few of the much-admired verses of Tom D'Urfey to be convinced that periods of dissolute living do not necessarily give birth to sincere and reckless song. In the following century, sincerity and recklessness were equally out of date. Now and then a cheerful outburst, like the drinking-song from Congreve's "Way of the World," illumines our arid path, and shows the source whence Thackeray drew his inspiration for those delightful verses in "Rebecca and Rowena" concerning the relative pleasures of Pope and Sultan. Later on, Sheridan gave us his glee in "The Duenna,"
