“If on my theme I rightly think,
There are five reasons why men drink,—
Good wine, a friend, because I'm dry,
Or lest I should be by and by,
Or any other reason why.”

—  Jean Sirmond

Causæ Bibendi, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). These lines are a poetic translation of a Latin epigram (erroneously ascribed to Henry Aldrich in the Biographia Britannica, second edition, vol. i. p. 131), which Menage and De la Monnoye attribute to Père Sirmond:
Si bene commemini, causæ sunt quinque bibendi:
Hospitis adventus; præsens sitis atque futura;
Et vini bonitas, et quælibet altera causa.
Menagiana, vol. i. p. 172.

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Jean Sirmond 1
French poet 1589–1649

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