'Tis Champagne, who murmurs low, "Don't you know That when once you set me flowing, This fair rebel to Love's dart In her heart Soon will find soft passion glowing?
This, if you will list to me, You shall see; Cease to swear by flames and fire, Cast aside each angry thought, As you ought, And at once cut through my wire,
For I am the King Champagne, And I reign Over e'en the sternest lasses, When midst maddening song and shout I gush out, Flooding goblets, bumpers, glasses.
As thus spoke the generous wine, Its benign Influence her heart 'gan soften. Who seeks such a cause to gain, To Champagne His success finds owing often.'[253]
The strong and foaming wine of the Champagne forbidden his troops by Henry V.--The English carrying off wine when evacuating Reims on the approach of Jeanne Darc--A legend of the siege of Epernay--Henry VIII. and his vineyard at Ay--Louis XIV.'s present of Champagne to Charles II.--The courtiers of the Merry Monarch retain the taste for French wine acquired in exile--St. Evremond makes the Champagne flute the glass of fashion--Still Champagne quaffed by the beaux of the Mall and the rakes of the Mulberry Gardens--It inspires the poets and dramatists of the Restoration--Is drank by James II. and William III.--The advent of sparkling Champagne in England--Farquhar's _Love and a Bottle_--Mockmode the Country Squire and the witty liquor--Champagne the source of wit--Port-wine and war combine against it, but it helps Marlborough's downfall--Coffin's poetical invitation to the English on the return of peace--A fraternity of chemical operators who draw Champagne from an apple--The influence of Champagne in the Augustan age of English literature--Extolled by Gay and Prior--Shenstone's verses at an inn--Renders Vanbrugh's comedies lighter than his edifices--Swift preaches temperance in Champagne to Bolingbroke--Champagne the most fashionable wine of the eighteenth century--Bertin du Rocheret sends it in cask and bottle to the King's wine-merchant--Champagne at Vauxhall in Horace Walpole's day--Old Q. gets Champagne from M. de Puissieux--Lady Mary's Champagne and chicken--Champagne plays its part at masquerades and bacchanalian suppers--Becomes the beverage of the ultra-fashionables above and below stairs--Figures in the comedies of Foote, Garrick, Coleman, and Holcroft--Champagne and real pain--Sir Edward Barry's learned remarks on Champagne--Pitt and Dundas drunk on Jenkinson's Champagne--Fox and the Champagne from Brooks's--Champagne smuggled from Jersey--Grown in England--Experiences of a traveller in the Champagne trade in England at the close of the century--Sillery the favourite wine--Nelson and the 'fair Emma' under the influence of Champagne--The Prince Regent's partiality for Champagne punch--Brummell's Champagne blacking--The Duke of Clarence overcome by Champagne--Curran and Canning on the wine--Henderson's praise of Sillery--Tom Moore's summer fête inspired by Pink Champagne--Scott's Muse dips her wing in Champagne--Byron's sparkling metaphors--A joint-stock poem in praise of Pink Champagne--The wheels of social life in England oiled by Champagne--It flows at public banquets and inaugurations--Plays its part in the City, on the Turf, and in the theatrical world--Imparts a charm to the dinners of Belgravia and the suppers of Bohemia--Champagne the ladies' wine _par excellence_--Its influence as a matrimonial agent--'O the wildfire wine of France!'