Drunk as a Lord
The earliest "drunk as" simile that a search of Early English Books Online turns up is from Phillip Stubbs, The Anatomie of Abuses Contayning a Discouerie, or Briefe Summarie of Such Notable Vices and Imperfections, as Now Raigne in Many Christian Countreyes of the Worlde: but (Especiallie) in a Verie Famous Ilande called Ailgna (1583):
In so much, as you shall haue many poormen make hard shift for money to spend therat, for it, béeing put into this Corban, they are perswaded it is meritorious & a good seruice to God. In this kinde of practise, they cōtinue six wéeks, a quarter of a yéer, yea half a yéer togither, swilling and gulling, night and day, till they be as drunke as Apes, and as blockish as beasts.
EEBO finds two matches from 1596 for a "drunk as" simile that is probably more relevant to the emergence of "drunk as a lord." From Henoch Clapham, A Briefe of the Bible Drawne First into English Poësy, and Then Illustrated by Apte Annotations (1596):
And it may be, that our Antichrist was not a Perfect Body, till he had eate vp the former Beast: as one Serpent eating another, doth thereby growe to a Monster. Pray for spirituall eyes, for this Beast hath brewed a spiritual wine, wherewithall all Nations haue bene made drunk, as drunk as Beggars, Wil-worshippers. He that will not with Iohn, Rev. 17. go into the Wildernes, and that in the Spirit, hee shall not knowe what the Mysterie meaneth: neither is he worthie.
And from Walter Raleigh, The Discouerie of the Large, Rich, and Bewtiful Empire of Guiana with a Relation of the Great and Golden Citie of Manoa (which the Spanyards call El Dorado) and the Prouinces of Emeria, Arromaia, Amapaia, and Other Countries, with Their Riuers, Adioyning: Performed in the Yeare 1595 (1596):
Vpon this riuer of Winecapora wee rested a while, and from thence marched into the Countrey to a towne called after the name of the riuer, whereof the chiefe was one Timitwara, who also offered to con∣duct mee to the toppe of the saide mountaine called Wacarima: But when wee came in first to the house of the saide Timitwara, beeing vppon one of their feast daies, wee founde them all as drunke as beggers, and the pottes walking from one to another without rest: wee that were wearie, and hotte with marching, were glad of the plentie, though a small quantitie satisfied vs, their drinke beeing very strong and headie, and so rested our selues a while; after we had fedde, we drewe our selues backe to our boates, vppon the riuer, and there came to vs all the Lordes of the Countrie, with all such kinde of victuall as the place yeelded, and with their delicate wine of Pinas, and with abundance of hens, and other prouisions, and of those stones which wee call Spleenestones.
Similarly, from Thomas Dekker, in O per se O. Or A New Cryer of Lanthorne and Candle-Light Being an Addition, or Lengthening, of the Bell-Mans Second Night-Walke (1612):
And to colour their villanie the better, euery one of these Abrams hath a seuerall gesture in playing his part: some make an horrid noyse, hollowly sounding: some whoope, some hollow, some shew onely a kinde of wilde distracted vgly looke, vttering a simple kinde of Mawnding, with these addition of words (Well and Wisely.) Some daunce, (but kéepe no measure) others leape vp and downe, and fetch Gambals, all their actions shew them to be as drunke as Beggers: for not to belye them, what are they but drunken Beggers? All that they begge being eyther Loure or Bouse, (money or drinke.)
And from Nathaniel Grenfield, "The Great Day, or, A Sermon, Setting Forth the Desperate Estate and Condition of the Wicked at the Day of Iudgement (1615), which explicitly characterizes the simile as a proverb and at the same time provides the first hint as to why it might eventually give way to "drunk as a lord":
Drunkennesse may be the third head of this monstrous Hel-hound, and Cerberus of sinne: how generall is this shamelesse, swinish, idle, base, beastly sinne growne! It was once but one mans sinne, and of infirmity too, as not knowing the vertue of the grape,* 1.73 nor the qualitie of that liquor: and long since it hath beene scorned, as the beg∣gers fault. Hence came the Prouerbe, As drunke as the Begger. But now adayes it is reputed not only the Seruingmans complement, but the Gentlemans grace. Seneca spake wel of these times, Habebitur aliquando abrietati ho∣nor, & plurimum caepisse vini, virtus erit, The time shall come, that honour shall be attributed to drunkennesse, and to drinke much wine, shall bee accounted vertue and valour.
William Loe, "The Merchant Reall. Preached by William Loe Doctour of Diuinitie Chaplaine to the Kings Sacred Maiestie, and Pastour of the Englishe Church of Merchants Adventurers Residing at Hamboroughe in Saxonie" (1620) makes a similar point to Grenfield's:
If I should reason the case with the prodigall that spends all in excesse of royott both in drunkennesse, & leawdnes what could he ansvvere? Heretofore the proverbe was he is as drunke as a begger, but nowe the gallants, & gentery take it vp. Heretofore boyes would cry out at them in the streets as at some monster, but nowe it is cause of boasting. Heretofore they vsed to bowe their knees in prayer, but nowe to drinke healths till they are out of health. In leaudnes also he hath spent his all, vpon his whore, or harlott. All his body full of rottennes, All his wealth exhausted, & he himselfe brought to a crust of bread. All the powers of his soule corrupted, his strenght weakned, his eiesight dimmed, his voice harsh, & pox, & penury his coate of armes. In a word he becomes a witch to all his witt, a theefe to all his wealth, & a deuill to his whole man.
John Clarke, Paroemiologia Anglo-Latina in usum scholarum concinnata. Or Proverbs English, and Latine, Methodically Disposed According to the Common-Place Heads, in Erasmus His Adages (1639) lists "As drunk as a beggar" twice, without further comment, but no other "drunk as" similes.
Instances foreshadowing the transition from beggars to lords continue into the 1650s, as in John Rogers, A Godly & Fruitful Exposition upon All the First Epistle of Peter by That Pious and Eminent Preacher of the word of God, John Rogers (1650):
If this [drunkenness] be so horrible a sin, what shall we say to the Land wherein it is grown to such an horrible height, and to abound in such a fearful sort? It was wont to be the sin of other Countreys, now we have got it, and may we not boast of our gettings, think ye? It was wont to be rare, but is now common in all places; wont to be done in a corner, and the parties ashamed thereof, now it staggers abroad in the open streets, none being ashamed of the same; wont to be the sin of base ones, according to the Proverb, He is as drunk as a beggar, but now its the sin of Gentlemen, and herein our Yeomens sons exceed, to the wasting of their Revenues:
The formulation "drunk as any lord" becomes explicit in Edmund Gayton, Pleasant Notes upon Don Quixot (1654):
Mr Quixada said his neighbour.] It had been affliction unutterable, to have owned that name, and return'd to himselfe againe. The trance of the Cobler (drunk into the beliefe) that he was a Lord, was not to be shaken off without the losse of life, once recoblar'd, he was never his owne man againe. To returne to the Letherne Apron, wax Fingers, and whistling to a black-bird, from such a Lordly dreame, it put him (when Coblars speak Latine, they have some ends) to his • Pol me occidistis Amici. / Non servastis (ai•) cui sic extorta voluptas, / Et demptus per vi• mentis gratissimus error.
Which thus is translated,
(Friends) of the Cobler you have made an end, / Dreaming, a Lord; I waking am a Fiend; / Oh make me drunke againe, and on my word, / I will continue drunke—as any Lord.
In a similar vein, in John Beadle, The Journal or Diary of a Thankful Christian Presented in Some Meditations upon Numb. 33:2 (1656):
Seneca foretold so much of some times, that men should be so drowned with this sin of drunkennesse, that plurimum meri sumpsisse virtus esset, it should be esteemed a virtue to strive with the Brewers horse who should carry more liquor; and with some it hath been of that esteem, that not as drunk as a Begger, but as drunk as a Prince, hath been a kind of proverbial commendation of some.
And in Thomas Hall, A Practical and Polemical Commentary, or, Exposition upon the Third and Fourth Chapters of the Latter Epistle of Saint Paul to Timothy (1658):
When great men are given to sin, that hastens wrath. They draw many away by their lewd Example; like great Cedars, when they fall, many branches fall with them. Hence the Lord forbids excess of wine to Rulers, lest they should forget the Law, and so per∣vert judgement. Prov. 31.45. The houses of many Gentlemen that should have been Bethels, houses of God, are become Beth-avens, houses of vanity and iniquity. The old Proverb was, As drunk as a beggar. I wish we might not say, as Drunk as a Gentleman, an Esquire, and Lord, &c.
And finally, in John Evelyn, A Character of England as It Was Lately Presented in a Letter to a Noble Man of France (1659):
But this [the arrogance and rudeness of French lords] must needs be the result of an ill, and haughty institution, and for that most of these great persons are in their minority, and the age wherein they should be furnished with the noblest impressions, taught onely to converse with their servants, some Sycophants, and under the regiment of a Pedant, which imprints that scornfulness and folly, and fits them with no better forms when they should produce themselves, and give testimony to others as well of their superiority in vertue, as in birth and dignity. But this is my Lord a particular, which I have heard you often complain of, and which we do frequently take notice of at their coming abroad into our Country; where for want of address, and fit persons to introduce them, they seldome return more refined than they came; else they could not but have observed, that there is nothing which makes the distinction of Nobles in France, but the Title, and that his Majesty himself do's them the honours, which here they usurpe upon their equalls: But, my Lord, they are sufficiently punished for it in England: where, to me they appear so degenerate, for want of this humility and free conversation, by which, and their other vices, they grow now so much despised, that the Gentlemen need seek no revenge; for though (as I told you) the Gentlemen are most of them very intemperate, yet the Proverb goes, As drunk as a Lord. But, my Lord, as there is no rule so generall, but it do's admit of exceptions, so should I give my own experience, as well as your Lordships the contradiction, to make the censure universal; there being even amongst these, some sew, and in particlar my L. N. and N. &c. whom I esteeme to be very noble, and accomplished persons, as who have learned (by the good fortune of a better education) how to value the conversations of worthy men, and who indeed, do sufficiently verifie all those attributes which are due to their qualities, and therefore whom this Paragraph doth no waies concern.
John Ray, A Collection of English Proverbs (1678) captures this evolution in a comment appended to his entry for "drunk as a beggar": 1
As drunk as a beggar
This Proverb begins now to be disused, and in stead of it people are ready to say, As drunk as a Lord : so much hath that vice (the more is the pity) prevail'd among the Nobility and Gentry of late years.
Likewise, Nathan Bailey, Dictionarium Britannicum (1736) offers this comment on the phrase "as drunk as beggars":
as DRUNK as beggars
By this proverb one would be apt to judge this vice was formerly peculiar only to the meaner sort of people. But experience as well as a saying, now more us'd, (As drunk as a lord) teaches us that it has got footing among the Nobility.
Indeed, the expression "drunk as a beggar" seems to have been so largely forgotten by 1800 that the author of "The Manners of the Great Not Essential to the Manners of the Nation," in The Scots Magazine (November 1799) seizes upon "drunk as a lord" as an instance of popular opinion holding the aristocracy to a higher standard than they apply to everyone else:
Still, however the situation of the great is so eminent, that it is impossible for us to take our eyes off, and continually viewing men of high distinction, we are apt to imagine there must be something highly distinguished even in their follies ; that a debt contracted by a lord has something more faulty than one contracted by a tradesman ; that an amour between two right honourables is something more licentious than one between a plain master and miss, and that a shopkeeper cannot possibly arrive at the wickedness of being "as drunk as a lord."
"The Feast of Wit: Or, Sportsman's Hall," in Sporting Magazine (July 1793)—offers a joke based on the various "drunk as a" similes then extant:
As drunk as an owl, as drunk as a sow, as drunk as a beggar, as drunk as the devil, as drunk as a lord. These are the principal comparisons of drunkenness, and the explanation is as follows:—a man is as drunk as an owl, when he cannot see ; he is as drunk as a sow when he tumbles in the dirt ; he is as drunk as a beggar, when he is very impudent ; he is as drunk as the devil, when he is inclined to mischief ; and as drunk as a lord, when he is every thing that is bad.
Ebenezer Brewer, Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (Wordsworth reprint 2001) has this note on "drunk as a lord":
Drunk as a lord. Before the great temperance movement set in, in the latter half of the 19th century, those who could afford to drink thought it quite comme il faut to drink two, three, or even more bottles of port wine for dinner, and few dinners ended without placing the guests under the table in a hopeless state of intoxication ; hence the expression.
Sober as a Judge
Robert Hendrickson, The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins (1997) has an interesting (though roundabout) theory of the origin of this phrase:
sober as a judge. In the play Don Quixote in England (1734) one of Henry Fielding's characters [who is quite drunk and is behaving outrageously] says: "I am as sober as a judge." Perhaps it was simply Fielding's observation that judges are almost always sober on the bench, but the phrase may have its source in the saying AN APPEAL FROM PHILIP DRUNK TO PHILIP SOBER. Sober is the exact opposite of the Latin word for "in his cups," deriving from so, "apart from," and bria, "cup."
Hendrickson's entry for that phrase is as follows:
appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober. A woman petitioned King Philip of Macedon [the father of Alexander the Great] for justice for her husband and was refused. "I shall appeal against this judgment!" she exclaimed, and Philip—while still in his cups—roared: "Appeal—and to whom will you appeal?" "To Philip sober," the woman replied, and according to Valerius Maximus, who tells the tale, she won her case.
The connection between the "sober as a judge" saying and the "appeal to Philip sober" saying is clever and appealing (in a Philip sober way), but it would be more plausible if (1) the earliest instance of "sober as a judge" weren't from 1682 (as the OP reports; the earliest Google Books matches are from 1701 and 1702), and (2) the earliest reference to the "Philip sober" story in a Google Books search weren't from 77 years later, in a letter by David Hume to the editor of The Critical Review, dated April 1759:
I appeal from your sentence, as an old woman did from a sentence pronounced by Philip of Macedon:—I appeal from Philip, ill-counselled and in a hurry, to Philip, well-advised, and judging with deliberation.
A second instance occurs in a Parliamentary debate of February 7, 1799:
He [Mr. Windham] had no doubt but that, when the present fury should have evaporated, he should see the people of Ireland as eager for the measure [Union with the United Kingdom] as they now were against it. ... He wished, therefore, to appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober ; he wished to appeal from the Irish, mad with independence, that is to say, independent of reason, independent of argument, to the Irish in a fit mood to examine the proposition that was offered them.
But the timing seems wrong for the "Philip sober" story to have strongly influenced "sober as a judge" in English idiomatic usage.
The earliest unmistakable simile built on "as sober as" that a search of Early English books online finds is this one from a sonnet titled "Upon a Cheating Companion" in Nicholas Breton, Choice, Chance, and Change: or, Conceites in Their Colours (1606):
He that was borne out of a Bastard race, / Betwixt a beggar and a Gentleman, / A filthy Carkasse and an ougly face, / And plaies the foole before Maid Marian:
Can seeme as sober as a Millers Mare, / And can not blush at any villany: / In euery Market shifteth for a share, / And sits himselfe for euery company:
But the next is such simile appears in a 1657 translation of the original Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes:
This was that which pass'd between Don Quixote and his Squire, while the Curate and Mrs. Dorothy had been engag'd in Discourse of another Nature. Well, Madam, quo the Curate, I find a Man may venture upon your Head at any time; had ye study'd twenty Years for this Story, you could never ha' brought a Fable to bear with more Fancy, or more Conciseness: And then for the terms of Knight-Errantry, you had 'em as exactly as a Sea∣man saies his Compass. Oh, Sir! reply'd Mrs. Dorothy, I am but young in Years, 'tis true, but an old Reader of Romances: I have por'd upon 'em anights i' my Bed, till I have drop'd a' Sleep, and left the Candle to fire the House, had not my Maid come in by chance; but a Duce take your Maps, for I could never understand 'em i' my life, which made me commit that Mistake about Ossuna. That was nothing, Madam, quo the Curate, as I order'd the matter: You see how I reconcil'd the business with a Jerk. But Madam, what think ye? Do you not wonder at this Fobdoodle of a Knight-Errant, that swallows so easily these Gudgeons of Tales and idle Stories, meerly because they have a Smack of these Extravagancies, which he had read in his Amadis de Gaul's, and Round-table Champions? And yet discourse him upon any other Subject, and he's a man will talk ye as rationally as a Philosopher, as
sober as a Judge, and as learnedly as an University Scholar. So that you would take him for a Man of Sence and Judgment, till ye come once to prick him i'the Vein of Knight-Errantry; but then he flies out, description and falls a raving, as if he had a whole Midsummer-Moon in his Brains.
The next-earliest instance of this simile that an EEBO search returns is the one cited in ermanen's question above, from Thomas D'Urfey, The Unequal Match, or the Fatal Wager (1682):
Cloten. 'Ud so, 'tis my Lord Pisanio, and I'le lay a Wager sent Messenger to me from the Princess Eugenia. Well, my Mother's a plaguy cunning Woman: I, see she will make her marry me in spite of her. How now my Lord Pisanio, what News with you, umph? My Lord Iachimo, prithee be wise now, and look soberly a little.
Iachimo. Never fear me man, I am sober as a Judge.
This instance, which comes 25 years after the Cervantes translation, is significant in being the first home-grown instance of the simile in English, indicating either that the English translation of a Spanish simile had taken root in English by 1682 or that a native English simile applied by an English translator to Cervantes's text was still going strong.
Then from a 1699 translation of Terence, The Eunuch:
Chremes. [to himself.] Hey-dazy!—I ha' been finely bubbled i'faith.— This Wine has been too hard for me.—The time I was toping,— I thought my self as sober as a Judge,—But when I came to try my Legs,—S bud my Feet nor my head knew which was to go uppermost.—
This use of the simile may well be the translator's interpolation. A modern verse translation (from the 1970s) by Douglass Parker renders these lines as follows:
Chremes. Behold the victim of a wicked trick. Undermined by wine— / I'm blind. 'S odd. At table I seemed to be able to stay / Impossibly sober. But when I got up to go, my feet / Defected. My brain refrained from performing its usual function.
In any case, it appears much more likely that we owe "sober as a judge" to Cervantes's Don Quixote as translated into English in 1657 than to Henry Fielding's relocation of the character Don Quixote to England in 1734. Coincidentally, another book that focuses on Don Quixote—Edmund Gayton's Pleasant Notes upon Don Quixot (1654), cited earler in this answer, contains the earliest instance of "drunk as a Lord" that my EEBO searches turned up.
1Robert Dent, Proverbial Language in English Drama Exclusive of Shakespeare, 1495–1616, volume 2 (1984) gives a first occurrence date of 1616 for "drunk as a beggar," but also mentions earlier possible occurrences from 1612 and 1609. Fynes Moryson, A Description of Ireland (between 1603 and 1616) uses the expression "as drunk as beggars": "And not only the common sort, but even the lords and their wives, the more they want this drink [Spanish wine or Irish usquebaugn] at home the more they swallow it when they come to it, till they be as drunk as beggars." Earlier still is this instance from Walter Raleigh, The Discovery of Guiana (1596): "But when we came in first to the House of the said Timitwara, being upon one of their Feast-Days, we found them all as drunk as Beggars, and the Pots walking from one to another, without rest : ..." A servant's remark in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra (1607) about the inebriation of Lepidus—"Lepidus is high Conlord/They haue made him drinke Almes drinke."—prompts this comment in Hilda Hulme, "The Spoken Language and the Dramatic Text," in A Reader in the Language of Shakespearean Drama (1987): "There would, I suggest, be no difficulty of interpretation could we suppose that, with the words 'drink alms-drink' the servant is merely changing the known idiom 'drunk as a beggar', getting his laugh by delaying recognition of a current phrase."
