To say Truth, nothing is more erroneous than the Common Observation, that Men who are ill-natured and quarrelsome when they are drunk, are very worthy Persons when they are sober: for Drink, in reality, doth not reverse Nature, or create Passions in Men, which did not exist in them before. It takes away the Guard of Reason, and consequently forces us to produce those Symptoms, which many, when sober, have Art enough to conceal. It heightens and inflames our Passions (generally indeed that Passion which is uppermost in our Mind) so that the angry Temper, the amourous, the generous, the good-humoured, the avaricious, and all other Dispositions of Men, are in their Cups heightened and exposed.
Henry Fielding: The History of Tom Jones, V ix
