Henry Aldrich

Henry Aldrich (1648–1710) was an English scholar, logician and amateur architect and composer. He became Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, in 1689 and is remembered for his Artis logicae compendium and for a set of Latin and English verses on the five reasons for drinking.

The poem here is the one printed under his name in Frederick Locker's Lyra Elegantiarum (London: E. Moxon, 1867), an anthology of vers de société and vers d'occasion by deceased authors; the texts follow that first edition.