Proverbs 23:32

At the last it biteth, &c.— "Remember that the pleasure will be attended at last with intolerable pains when it works like so much poison in thy veins, and casts thee into troubles as keen, and diseases as difficult to cure, as the biting of a serpent, or the stinging of a basilisk;" (for so the last word should be rendered.) See Bishop Patrick. Mr. Prior has thus finely expressed the ill effects of drunkenness in his poem intitled Solomon:

Unhappy man! whom sorrow thus and rage To diff'rent ills alternately engage; Who drinks, alas! but to forget; nor sees That melancholy, sloth, severe disease, Mem'ry confus'd, and interrupted thought, Death's harbingers, lie latent in the draught: And in the flow'rs that wreath the sparkling bowl, Full adders hiss, and pois'nous serpents roll.