Simonides the poet, my Sossius Senecio, seeing one of the company sit silent and discourse nobody, said: Sir, if you are fool, it is wisely done; if a wise man, very foolishly.

It is good to conceal a man's folly (but as Heraclitus says) it is very hard to do it over a glass of wine,-- Which doth the gravest men to mirth advance, And let them loose to sing, to laugh, and dance, And speak what had been better unsaid.
("Odyssey," xiv.

464.) In which lines the poet in my mind shows the difference between being a little heated and downright drunk; for to sing, laugh, and dance may agree very well with those that have gone no farther than the merry cup; but to prattle, and speak what had been better left unsaid, argues a man to be quite gone.

And therefore Plato thinks that wine is the must ingenious discoverer of men's humors; and Homer, when he says,-- At feasts they had not known each other's minds, (Ibid.xxi.

35.) evidently shows that he knew wine was powerful to open men's thoughts, and was full of new discoveries.