Symposiacs, by Plutarch  Book III  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 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. It i