Poem in 1863 consisting of ‘Claret and Tokay’—originally published in Hood’s Magazine (June 1844) and in DRL—and ‘Here’s to Nelson’s Memory’, which in DRL was part, with the two ‘Home-Thoughts’ poems, of the piece there called ‘Home-Thoughts, from Abroad’. Both ‘Claret and Tokay’ and ‘Here’s to Nelson’s Memory’ probably date from 1844 (see L 2.223, 246). ‘Claret and Tokay’ associates the red wine with the dark, silent and deathly depths of the pond into which ‘our claret-flask’ (1) sinks, and contrasts it with the Hungarian dessert wine Tokay, personified as a defiant, armed, ‘strutting’, impudent ‘pigmy castle-warder,/Dwarfish to see, but stout and able’ (29, 14–15). The poet plays with national stereotypes—the claret bottle sinks like ‘some gay French lady/… caught up from life’s light and motion’ (10–11) and drowned, while the Hungarian is passionate, brave and quixotic. His size probably reflects the small bottles used for Tokay (L 2.224). ‘Here’s to Nelson’s Memory’ also concerns ‘nationality in drinks’: the patriotic toast to Horatio, Lord Nelson (1758–1805), ‘drunk … deep in British beer’ (4) off Cape Trafalgar. Nelson was an established national hero, consecrated by his death in the hour of victory, familiar especially from Robert Southey’s popular Life (1813). Nelson’s Column (1839–1843) had recently been built in Trafalgar Square and enthusiasm for him was such that for the poet or speaker as for many, ‘Give me of Nelson only a touch,/And I guard it, little or much’ (8). The coat shown at Greenwich (probably referring to one recently donated—see Loucks [1976] and L 2.248) has both the status of a relic and a more general availability to the public, indicated by the triviality of the anecdote and the enthusiastic, absurd rhyming of ‘digging’, ‘zig-zag-zigging’ and ‘mizen-rigging’ (13–15).