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OUTS AND THEIB, CUSTOMS,
27
handles and the covers are of silver/* &c. Worthy
Master Perlin seems hardly to have got on with his
spelling of the English tongue while he was studying
our habits
;
his account, however, of olden customs is
reliable and curious. The custom of pledging and
drinking healths is generally stated to have originated
with the Anglo-Saxons j but, with such decided evidence
before us of similar customs among the Greeks and
Romans, we must at any rate refer it to an earlier
periodj and indeed we may rationally surmise that, in
some form or other, the custom has existed from time
immemorial. In later times the term
i€
toasting
n
was
employed to designate customs of a similar import,
though the precise date of the application of this term
is uncertain; and although we cannot accept the expla-
nation given in the 24th number of the ' Tatler/ yet,
for its quaintness, we will quote it:—•
"
It is said that while a celebrated beauty was in-
dulging in her bath, one of the crowd of admirers who
surrounded her took a glass of the water in which the
fair one was dabbling, and drank her health to the
company, when a gay fellow offered to jump in, saying,
s
Though he liked not the liquor, lie would have the
toast**"
This tale proves that toasts were put into
beverages in those days, or the wag would not have
applied the simile to the fair bather j and in the reign
of Charles II., Earl Eochester writes,
i{
Make it so large tliat,fiE'cl with sack
Up to the swelling Ibiim,
Vast
tomis
on tlie delicious lake
?
Uke ships at sea, may swim."