Topers to right of them.

Topers to left of them, Old sots in front of them, Parleyed and wondered; Yet into line they fell, Boldly they drank, and well Into the jaws of each, Into the mouth of all, Drinks went, Six Hundred.

I fear that tribe of mockers who topers' ways impeach, Will part with their religion the tavern's goal to reach.

The noisy markets know no such So ripe they tumble when you touch; Long, taperrarer wines they waste Than ever town-bred topers taste.

Where are the topers of yore?

Doubtless he sat longest and drank least of all the topers of Naishapur, and the bell for Saki rang not from his corner half often enough to please mine host.

Not the great LLOYD could save the land Except for mighty Sol; For he is Bread's twin-brotherand He gives us Alcohol; Not such as fills the toper's tum, But such as fills the shell Such as will be in days to come Heat, light, and pow'r as well.

She was drunk as a toper, and she says she's a-goin' to 'do' you!"

At Braintree and Booking, in Essex, when topers partake of a pot of ale, it is divided into three parts or draughts, the first of which is called neckum, the second sinkum, and the third swankum.

Unfortunately for me, I sat between two determined and well-seasoned topers, who took especial care that I should not only fill to each toast, but drain the cup to the very bottom; so that, novice as I was in this sort of hilarity, I found myself, in a very short time, lying down under a laburnum tree in the lawn, and composing myself very comfortablyno, not very comfortablyto sleep.

Anacreon of the Twelfth Century, Walter Mapes, "The Jovial Toper.

sc. 2) tells Prince Henry that a company of men were about to sup with Falstaff, in Eastcheap, and calls them "Ephesians," he probably meant soldiers called féthas ("foot-soldiers"), and hence topers.

Who is the toper?

Jack Jones was a toper: they say that some how He'd a foot always ready to kick up a row; And, when half-seas over, a quarrel he pick'd, To keep up the row he had previously kick'd.

Grapes clustering hung o'er his grenadier cap, His blood became juice, and his marrow was sap: Till nothing was left of the muscles and bones That form'd the identical toper, Jack Jones. Transform'd to a vine, he is still seen on guard, At his former emporium in Great Scotland-yard; And still, though a vine, like his fellow-recruits, He is train'd, after listing, his ten-drills, and shoots.

All oral tradition, all contemporary literature, all satiric art, tell the same horrid tale; and the number of bottles which a single toper would consume at a sitting not only, in Burke's phrase, "outraged economy," but "staggered credibility."

For when literature had to be judged, who could be so grim a critic as this usually lenient toper?

A gig and a couple of post-chaises, attended by the customary group of stablemen, topers, and gossips already stood before the house, but these were quickly deserted in favour of the more important equipage.

Sir George dropped from his saddle, and stooping, sought for proof of the toper's story.

It treats a woman not as a toper does a whiskey bottle, applying it to his lips as long as it can intoxicate him with pleasure and then throwing it away, but cherishes her for supersensual attributes that survive the ravages of time.

Or if an Irish toper declared that a bottle of Chambertin, over which French epicures smacked their lips, was insipid and not half as fine as the fusel-oil on which he daily got drunk, would not everybody agree that the Irishman was no judge of liquors, and that the reason why he preferred his cheap whiskey to the Burgundy was that his nerves of taste were too coarse to detect the subtle and exquisite bouquet of the French wine?

I cannot but conceive very good hopes of that Rake Jack Toper of the Temple, for an honest Scrupulousness in this Point.

With knees on the shake, and arms shrinking, He scrambles about on the slippery floor, Like a toper at large, or a mad semaphore, Half wishing he hadn't gone rinking.

MARTIN, ST., bishop of Tours, was in early life a soldier, and meeting with a naked beggar one cold day in winter divided his military cloak in two, and gave him the half of it; was conspicuous both as a monk and bishop for his compassion on the poor; seated at a banquet on one occasion between the king and queen, hobnobbed with a poor beggar looking on, and extended his goblet of wine to him; he is the patron saint of topers; d. 397.

None of us may presume to cope with him in the matter of the flask and the flagon, though we number among us some jolly topers.