E. Cobham Brewer 1810–1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898.
Bottled Moonshine.
Social and benevolent schemes, such as Utopia, Coleridge’s Pantisocracy, the dreams of Owen, Fourier, St. Simon, the New Republic, and so on.
1
“Godwin! Hazlitt! Coleridge! Where now are their ‘novel philosophies and systems’? Bottled moonshine, which does not improve by keeping.”—Birrell: Obiter Dicta, p. 109 (1885).
