17 JANUARY 1925, Page 14

DR. JOHNSON ON WINE

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]

Snt,—Your correspondents on the subject of wine at dinner may be entertained if I refresh their memories with the following extracts :- " We talked of drinking wine.

Johnson ' I require wine only when I am alone . . to get rid of myself, to send myself away. Wine gives great pleasure ; and every pleasure is of itself a good. It is a good unless counterbalanced by an evil. A man may have a strong reason not to drink wine, and that may be greater than the pleasure. Wine makes a man better pleased with himself. I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others. Sometimes it does. But the danger is that while a man grows better pleased with himself he may be growing less pleasing to others. Wine gives a man nothing. It neither gives him knowledge nor wit ; it only animates a man, and enables him to bring out what a dread of the company has repressed. It only puts in motion what has been locked up in frost. But this may be good or it may be bad.' Spottistroode ' So, Sir, wine is a key which opens a box, but this box ma Jr be either' ull or empty ? ' Johnson : Nay, Sir, conversation is the key ; wine is a pick-lock, which forces open the box, and 'injures it. A man should cultivate his mind so as to have that confidence and readiness without wine, " which wine gives.' " Truly " The thing that hath been is that which shall- be,". ctc.—I am, Sir,- &c.,

" ECCLESIASTES IN INDIS."