Among concoctions of the vinous order we have =Hippocras=, so called because it is said to have been first made according to the recipe of Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine; =Badminton=, originally prepared at Badminton, the seat of the Duke of Beaufort; and =Negus=, named after Colonel Francis Negus, who invented it. Formerly, our countrymen set great store by =Sack=, which was simply the designation of a dry wine, derived from the French word _sec_, dry. Wine is said to be a =Dry Wine= when it is neither sweet nor sparkling. It cannot be sweet because, the fermentation being complete, the sugar contained in it is fully decomposed; moreover, it is dry because the carbonic acid has escaped. For the like reason, a certain evidence that port wine has completed the process of fermentation is the collection of tartar in the interior of the bottle, forming a crust; hence the term =Crusted Port=. A very bad wine of whatever kind usually bears the name of =Three Men Wine=, owing to the idea that it requires one man to hold the drinker, and another to pour it down his throat, while the third is the unfortunate individual himself. The derivation of the term =Wine= is the Anglo-Saxon _vin_ from the Latin _vinum_, allied to _vinea_, a vine.
Gildas, the earliest chronicler of British history (born 511, died 570), was surnamed =The Wise= on account of his learning, which must have excited the wonder of the semi-barbarian inhabitants of these islands in the sixth century. Later, the Saxon historian Beda, incorrectly called Bede (born 673, died 735), was surnamed =The Venerable= because he was also an ecclesiastic. Approaching more modern times, we meet with John White, a Nonconformist lawyer, who, in consequence of being the author of a work entitled “The First Century of Scandalous, Malignant Priests, made and admitted into Benefices by the Prelates, &c.,” merited the popular description of =Century White=. Still nearer our own day, Matthew Gregory Lewis (born 1775, died 1818) became the recipient of the name of =Monk Lewis=, after the publication of his famous novel, “The Monk”; just as John Thomas Smith, the antiquary (born 1766, died 1833), was indebted to his chatty, albeit valuable work, “A Book for a Rainy Day,” for his sobriquet of =Rainy-Day Smith=.