Considering the deep sympathy the nation has always evinced for the ill-fated yet illustrious knight, it is almost incredible that no monument has ever been erected to his memory. Raleigh was truly great in all those things which mankind loves to honour and perpetuate. In him patriotism, valour, and magnanimity stand out conspicuously in an age of heroes. Though endowed with a glowing, wildly-romantic imagination, he has left in his various writings evidence of extensive reading, keen insight, and sound judgment. The improvements he effected in naval architecture alone entitle him to the lasting gratitude of his country. The concluding lines of his History of the World written when the death sentence had been passed upon him and all his hopes of life had fled, are considered to be the finest and grandest example of prose in the English language. That Raleigh would not surrender his natural nobility of character to flatter the most abject monarch[10] that ever sat on the throne is to his everlasting honour, and marks him as a typical Englishman.

Through the medium of the notorious Star Chamber, the King, in 1614, directed his efforts ostensibly to restrain the consumption of tobacco; in effect, to put an end to the infant colony of Virginia. For this purpose a bill was drawn up, addressed to ‘Our Right Trustie and right well beloved Cousin and Counsellor, Thomas, Earle of Dorset, our High Treasurer of Englande, Greeting.’ Then follows a rather perplexing, verbose preamble, the drift of which seems to be the hatching up of excuses for heaping upon tobacco a monstrous load of taxation for the avowed purpose of relieving ‘many mean persons’ of the heavy expense the habit of smoking entailed.

He tells his ‘loving subjects’ that smoking is an ‘evil vanitie, whereby the health of a great number of people is impayered, and their bodies weakened and made unfit for labour, and the estates of many mean persons so decayed and consumed, as they are thereby driven to unthriftie shiftes onley to maintain their gluttonous exercise thereof.’ After further admonition and warning of evils in store for the obdurate, the Act proceeds: ‘We do therefore will and command you, our Treasurer of Englande, and herebye also warrant and authorise you to give orders to all Customers, Comptrollers, Searchers, Surveyors and other officers of our Portes, that from and after the six-and-twentieth Day of October next comynge, they shall demand and take to our use, etc., etc., the sum of Sixe shillings and 8d. upon every pound weight thereof, over and above the custome of 2d. upon the pound weight usually paid heretofore.’ The penalties for evading payment were, forfeiture of cargo, ‘and such further Penalties and coporal punishments as the qualitie of suche so high a Contempt against Our Royal and Expresse Commandmente in this manner published shall deserve.’

The imposition, equivalent to about thirty shillings of our present money, had a startling effect on the tobacco trade of the country; but when merchants found out that it was meant to apply only to the tobacco imported from Virginia, they naturally had recourse to other markets, as Spain and Portugal, whence it was brought in at the old rate of twopence on the pound that had satisfied Elizabeth. Agriculturists, too, saw in the change an opportunity for extending the home cultivation and manufacture of tobacco, and readily availed themselves of it, particularly in Yorkshire, where all the operations connected therewith were well understood. On the King learning what they were doing, he hastened to promulgate a further edict forbidding husbandmen ‘to misuse and misemploy the soyle of this fruitful kingdom,’ beginning with the words, ‘Whereas we, out of the dislike we have to tobacco.’ Thus expressed, his case against the weed is placed in a more intelligible light than that which he had in the first instance thought it expedient to disclose. However absurd his reasoning, his policy succeeded only too well. Besides dealing a crushing blow to the young colony, his action had other far-reaching effects. It created a daring race of smugglers, who did a thriving contraband trade in tobacco with pirates on the Spanish main; and home dealers saw in the greatly enhanced price of the weed a temptation to ‘sophisticate’ too powerful to be resisted. Scattered through the literature of that period may be found some curious allusions to the practice, as in Ben Jonson’s Alchemist, where Abel Drugger, speaking in praise of his tobacconist, says:

In Bartholomew Faire he presents us with a picture of one, Ursula, a vendor of roast pig, bidding her servant ‘Look to’t, sirrah, you had best! three pence a pipe full I will ha’ made of all my whole half pound of tobacco, and a quarter of a pound of coltsfoot, mixed with it too, to eke it out.’ That sophisticating practices were growing apace may be gleaned from Dr. Barclay, of Edinburgh, who in his Nepenthes (1614) speaks of ‘tobacco merchants apparelling European plants with Indian coats and enstalling them in shops as righteous and legitimate tobacco.’ (How very conservative we English are!) ‘Some others, indeed, have tobacco from Florida that they sophisticate and farde in sundrie sorts with black spice, galanga, aqua-vitæ, Spanish wine, anise seedes, oyle of spicke, and such like.’ Less expensive materials than these were more commonly used (and perhaps still are), as the leaves of rhubarb, dock, burdock, plantain, oak and elm, also chickory and cabbage leaves steeped in tar-oil.

If the manufacturers of these and less innocent ‘mixtures’ really find themselves unable to withstand the pressure from without for a cheap smoke, let them confine their sophisticating ingenuity to simple vegetable products, such, for instance, as satisfied Dame Ursula. Coltsfoot or the leaves of the lettuce, being slightly narcotic, would form a harmless make-belief for the good folk who persuade themselves that they could not sleep a wink were they deprived of their evening comfort. Ages ago both Greeks and Romans, according to Dioscorides and Pliny, found comfort in smoking through a reed or pipe the dried leaves of coltsfoot, which relieved them of old coughs and difficult breathing. We can picture the legionary in Britain’s bleak atmosphere, while pacing the Roman Wall, trying to console himself in his lonely vigil with the vapour from his ‘elphin pipe,’ fragments of which have been found among the ruins of those early memorials to the Scots’ persistent determination to travel southwards. And as to the lettuce, it has been famous since the time of Galen (Claudius Galenus), who asserts that he found relief from sleeplessness by taking it at night. Regardless of these things, the Nicotian epicure of to-day enjoys the inestimable advantage of luxuriating in the delicate aroma of the Cuban leaf, while fancying himself wafted on his upward way to Nirvana. The charming simplicity that leads to this ideal conception of existence is most refreshing; the being so lost to the outer world can hardly be blamed if he says rude things when compelled to touch Mother Earth.

But King James had not yet done with tobacco. A monarch of his remarkable idiosyncrasy, as displayed in his creation of a new and lucrative business for the sale of distinguished titles and high offices of State, where he himself possessed the sole monopoly, would naturally see his way to a further stroke of ‘good business’ in the tobacco market. Accordingly, we are not surprised to learn that, viewing with a jealous eye the flourishing state of the new industry, the idea occurred to him that the State coffers might be replenished by taking a still deeper interest in the weed. Hence the issue of a royal proclamation to his loving subjects that they were forbidden to deal in tobacco unless they purchased Royal Letters Patent granting them a license to do so. These could only be procured, on payment of a yearly sum, from the persons who farmed from the King the right to enforce and collect the tax. In the Stafford Letters, compiled by Gerrard, relating to the collection of the new tax, it is stated that ‘some towns have yielded twenty marks, £10, £5, £6, fine and rent; none goes under. I hear that Plymouth hath yielded £100 and as much yearly rent.… The tobacco licences go on apace; they yield a good fine, and a constant yearly rent.…’ In some instances a life-lease to deal in tobacco was granted on payment of a lump sum. As to the King’s method of dealing with State affairs of the kind, let Sir Anthony Weldon speak from personal knowledge. He says of the King that ‘he was so crafty and cunning in petty things, as the circumventing any great man. He had a trick of cousen (cozen) himself with bargains under hand, by taking £1,000 or £10,000 as a bribe, when (at the same time) his Counsel was treating with his Customers to raise them to so much more yearly; this went into his Privy purse; wherein he thought he had over-reached the Lords, but consented himself; but would as easily break the bargain upon the next offer, saying he was mistaken and deceived, and therefore no reason he should keep the bargain. This was often the case with the Farmers of the Customs.’

There is a document in the State Archives which throws a curious side-light on the King’s ideas of statecraft. The settlers in Guiana had become tobacco-planters, and required a trade-charter with this country. A charter was granted them, in which a clause was inserted to the effect that one-tenth of the tobacco grown there should go to the King. Thus, in a roundabout way, the King became a tobacco merchant.

The concern which the King had professed for the ‘many mean persons’ of decayed fortune in debt for tobacco had not resulted in helping them out of their difficulties, but rather the contrary. From Aubrey we learn that its cost had risen to the value of silver. He says, ‘I have heard some of our old yeomen neighbours say that when they went to Malmesbury or Chippenham market they culled out their biggest shillings to lay in the scales against the tobacco. Now (1680) the Customes of it are the greatest his majestie hath.’ In various documents of the period, tobacco is mentioned amongst the most expensive luxuries. Even in Elizabeth’s reign its price ranged from 10s. to 18s. a pound, according to the quality.

Meanwhile, jovial spirits were amusing themselves with a lively paper warfare over the virtues and vices of the rare Indian plant that, according to the King, had bewitched them. Early in the fray (1602), appeared anonymously a booklet entitled, Work for Chimney Sweepers, or a Warning to Tobacconists, calling the smoker’s attention to the necessity for securing the services of one of those useful members of the community. At that time it was the fashion among gallants of the weed to draw the smoke into the lungs and to eject it ‘through the organs of the nose, with a relish that inviteth,’ says the gay, laughing, Doctor Barton Holiday, who took such a wicked delight in tormenting King James at Woodstock in his play of the Marriage of the Arts. This was speedily answered by A Defence of Tobacco, printed by Richard Field for Thomas Man, wherein the author shows that the ‘warning’ should have roosted at home, where, in its absence, zeal had outrun discretion, and had thereby damaged the cause it would fain have served.

Verbose titles, full of alliteration, fire and fun, were much appreciated by the militant writers of this period. Witness the following heading to a poem against tobacco by Joshua Sylvester, Gent., the favourite poet of King James: ‘Tobacco battered, and the pipes shattered (about their eares that idely idolize so base and barbarous a weed; or leastwise over-love so loathsome a vanitie), by a volley of Holy shot, thundered from Mount Helicon.’ After this brave warning we are prepared to hear that

Samuel Rowlands in his Knave of Clubbs (1611) writes in a lighter strain, and asks:—

While Englishmen smoked, and laughed at their King’s wondrous ways, or growled at his tenacious grip upon their pockets, Eastern potentates were treating their subjects, as only despots can, for daring to indulge in the Frankish novelty. In Persia, where but recently jealous strife raged for sole possession of the tobacco industry, Abbas I., of dread memory, cut off the lips of those who smoked, and the noses of any who ventured to snuff. On one occasion he threw an unfortunate man, whom he discovered selling tobacco, into a fire along with his goods. Yet, by-and-by, this demon of cruelty himself was enthralled by Nicotiana’s charms, and became one of her most fervent devotees. The Turks, under Amurath IV., were similarly punished for infringing his edict against smoking. Sir Edwin Sandys, of Pontefract, in his travels in 1610, bears testimony to similar acts of cruelty by Mahomet IV. During his stay in Constantinople he witnessed the punishment of a Turk who had been caught solacing the burden of life with the vapour of his new-found joy. Short-lived was the sturdy beggar’s happiness; he was dragged before the tribunal, and condemned to the torture of having a hole pierced through the cartilage of his nose, and a pipe inserted therein. Then, in order to render the punishment more impressive to the multitude, he was seated on the back of an ass with his face to the tail, and driven through the streets of the city, while criers proclaimed his offence and its merited punishment, according to the law of the Sultan. Not less cruel were the punishments inflicted upon Russian smokers, who, under the Tsar Michael Fedorowitz, were publicly knouted for using tobacco in any form; in some instances their nostrils were split open. If guilty of a second offence, death alone could wipe out the crime. The ambassadors of the Duke of Holstein, who visited Moscow in 1634, relate that they were eye-witnesses of a public exhibition of this kind, where eight men and one woman were punished with the knout for selling tobacco. By way of palliating this Russian atrocity, they were informed that houses in Moscow had been set on fire by smokers falling asleep and dropping their lighted pipes.

Oppression, however, like persecution in another sphere, brought succour to the smoker; for, despite every form of opposition and punishment, men quietly went on comforting themselves with the weed, until at last their bitterest foes became their best friends, and gratefully acknowledged the benign sway of St Nicotine.

There is a peculiar interest, not without instruction, in observing the change that came over governments with regard to the consumption of tobacco. One after another they began to recognise a new and most useful virtue in the outcast weed, one which had too long remained hidden. Straightway they took the exotic under their paternal protection, and handsomely were they rewarded for their acknowledgment of her value to mankind. By-and-by, many an anxious custodian of an empty treasury came to look upon St Nicotine as a divinity

and as they gathered in their golden harvest of taxation, blessed the name of their benefactress.

In illustration of this change may be mentioned the action which Peter the Great took with the view of establishing tobacco culture and manufacture in his dominions. In the tenth volume of M. de Martin’s magnificent work on the treaties and conventions concluded by Russia with other nations from 1710 to 1801, there is a paragraph which states that Peter the Great, having determined that tobacco should be cultivated and manufactured in Russia, sought in England the necessary workmen, machinery, implements, etc., for transmission to Moscow. Englishmen knew little at that time of the remote Tsardom of Muscovy, but on learning the wants and wealth of the monarchy, enterprising merchants were not slow to undertake the performance of all that was required of them. Accordingly, a party of skilled workmen, with engineers, was soon on its way to Moscow with all necessary material for setting up and working a tobacco factory. When, later, the English Government was apprised of what had been done, ‘Her Majesty, Queen Anne, in Council, was pleased to manifest her profound dissatisfaction, especially in that they proceeded to the realm of Moscow to the cultivation of the native products of her Majesty’s dominions, and in that they have brought to Moscow for this purpose the requisite English workmen and material, which is contrary to the interests and usages of the kingdom of Great Britain.’ Orders were immediately sent to our envoy at Moscow to not only return the workmen to their homes, but to privately and secretly destroy all the materials, machines and instruments of production.

It is not a little amusing to learn how energetically the envoy carried out the order of destruction. He relates at considerable length in his home despatch how he and his secretary (a private secretary undoubtedly) spent a night in breaking up all the machinery and laying waste the material; how he afterwards explained to the Tsar that the object of his zealous operations in smashing up the plant was to save his Majesty’s subjects from a burdensome monopoly and thus, really, to encourage and enhance the tobacco trade in Russia. Remembering that the Tsar was Peter the Great, we are not surprised to learn that our excellent envoy was listened to with impatience.

CHAPTER IX.
SOCIAL GOSSIP ABOUT THE WEED.

Ancient and delightful George Wither, while suffering for conscience’ sake imprisonment in the Marshalsea, found a never-failing comfort in his beloved Indian weed. Its soothing vapours moved him to meditation; the earthen pipe, the burning weed, the vanishing fumes, and the ashes left behind, were to him emblems of the transitory nature of man’s earthly career. Musing thus, he poured forth his thoughts in a poem which has taken a firmer hold on the popular taste than any other of the countless songs composed on the subject of tobacco. It has undergone numerous alterations, but in every instance for the worse. In a mutilated form, and with a second part added, it is found among the ‘Gospel Sonnets’ of the Rev. Ralph Erskine, of the Scottish Church. It is the ‘Smoking Spiritualized’ which is still in print among the ballad-vendors of the east end of London. It reappeared with variations in Mr. J. H. Dixon’s ‘Songs and Ballads of the Peasantry of England’; and again in the Rev. James Plumptre’s ‘Tobacco is an Indian weed.’ So popular had the song become that Dr. Hague, in 1805, set the words to music, and Mr. Samuel Wesley, at a later date, adapted them to a tune said to be still in vogue. Yet, out of the multitude of admirers who so readily adopted and adapted Wither’s song, no one seems to have cared to acknowledge the source of his inspiration. But for the diligent research of Mr. Payne Collier, the student might have remained forever in ignorance of its true parentage. Turning to Mr. Chappell’s ‘Popular Music of the Olden Time’ we come upon the following passage relating to this song:—‘The earliest copy’ says Mr. Chappell, ‘I have seen is in a manuscript volume of poetry transcribed during James’s reign and which was kindly lent to me by Mr. Payne Collier. It there bears the initials of G[eorge] W[ither] a very likely person to have written such a song. A courtier poet would not have sung the praises of smoking—so obnoxious to the King as to induce him to write a Counterblaste to Tobacco—but Wither despised the servility which would have tended to his advancement at Court.’ The original song, the first verse of which is at the head of this chapter, runs as follows:—

As a soother of sorrow in wedded life, the story told by Camden of good Richard Fletcher, Bishop of London, shews how over-indulgence in the weed may carry its votary farther than he wots of. For his sins, people would say, the Bishop had to endure the plague of a scolding wife. The burden became greater than he could bear; he sighed for the peace that failed him, and in his distress he fell to smoking so immoderately that at last his weary spirit took flight on the wings of the weed to the realms of rest he longed for. There is a pathos in the story that awakens a kindred feeling; one can see the peace-loving prelate quietly slipping away from the domestic storm, and, finding sanctuary in his attic, yielding himself a willing martyr to the solace of St Nicotine. Indeed, if the truth must be told, the clergy, ever since her advent in these islands, have been noted votaries at her shrine. Instances crowd upon us.

A curious example is found in the pages of the astrologer Lilly’s Memoires published in 1715, thirty-four years after his death. We are told of one, William Bredon, vicar of Thornton, in Buckinghamshire, who was so far given over to the taking of tobacco in a pipe that when his supply was run out he would cut off the ends of the bell-ropes and smoke the bits. But this unworthy lover of his pipe was profoundly learned in Eastern lore, particularly that which related to judicial astrology. It may well be, that, along with his learning, he derived from the same source his knowledge of hashish. The practice of inhaling the fumes of burning hemp, was, as we have already seen, common in the near East, before tobacco had reached the Moslem.

It is next to impossible to dip into the pages of the early playwrights and pamphleteers without coming upon mirthful allusions to the new indulgence. Ben Jonson, Thomas Dekker, Samuel Rowlands, and a host of other writers in those jubilant days, found in the weed and the habits of smokers a never-failing source for good-natured raillery.

In Every Man out of his Humour we learn that the rage for tobacco had spread to the provinces. One, Sogliardo, is described as essentially a clown, yet so enamoured of the name of gentleman that he will have it though he buys it. He comes to town every term to learn the manners of polite society, and readily falls a victim to men of the Bobadil type, who sees in the novelty a new field of enterprise. Jonson describes their methods, and speaks of a bill posted in St. Paul’s churchyard notifying fledglings from the country that instruction in the art of taking tobacco can be arranged for. It affords us a glimpse of the smart men-about-town three centuries ago who lay in wait for inexperienced youth. It runs as follows:—

After King James had sent forth his famous Counterblaste in 1604, declaring to the world that tobacco was the ‘lively image and pattern of hell,’ it was not unusual to hear the weed associated with the arch enemy. And rare Ben would seem to have been nothing loth to trim his sails to the new breeze. In his masque entitled The Gipsies Metamorphosed he is so considerate as to wish that his Majesty’s nose may be protected from the smell of

The play accorded so well with the King’s humour that he commanded a repetition of the performance. At that time tobacco-smoking was commonly indulged in at theatres. In Bartholomew Fair a pleasure seeker, named Coke, enters a puppet show and asks of the master, ‘Ha’ you none of your pretty impudent boys, now, to bring stools, fill tobacco, fetch ale, and beg money, as they have at other houses?’

We pass on to the pages of Thomas Dekker—Dekker the gay, the light-hearted, and always good-humoured, who says of himself that, ‘the imagination runs to and fro, the fantasie flies round about, the vital spirits walk up and down, yea, the very pulses shew activities, and with their hammers are still beating, so that in my very dreams it is whispered in my ears that I must be up and doing something.’ Among his many delightful sketches of social life in London, the Gulls Hornbook may well rank first. He makes sport of the young gallants of the city who affect the fashionable habit of ‘taking tobacco,’ and instructs them how to handle, in the most approved style, the implements with which they are to be provided. In the same bantering tone he apostrophises tobacco thus: ‘Make me thine adopted heir, that, inheriting the virtues of thy whiffs, I may distribute them among all nations, and make the fantastic Englishman above all the rest more cunning in the distinction of thy roll-Trinidado, leaf and pudding, than the whitest toothed blackamore in all Asia.’

In one of those unaccountable freaks of temper which at times seem to take possession of genius Jonson, in the The Poetaster made an unprovoked attack upon Dekker, who, in no way daunted, flew to arms, and in his Satiromastix or the Untrussing of the Humerous Poet, proved himself to be no unworthy match for his more ponderous assailant. In this masterpiece of Dekker’s we come upon the earliest allusion to women smokers. Asinius Babo meeting with friends proffers his pipe saying, ‘’tis at your service, gallants, and the tobacco too; ’tis right good pudding I can tell you: a lady or two took a pipeful or two at my hands and praised it ’fore the heavens.’ We learn from Aubrey that in his day (1680) it was considered very improper for ‘feamale persons’ to take tobacco. But women’s curiosity respecting the new allurement to indolence with which men were so greatly enamoured very naturally led them to taste the forbidden leaf. Bearing on this point is a piquant story told by Miss Pardoe in her admirable History of the Court of Louis XIV. The Grand Monarque had a great aversion to tobacco, and no one ventured to smoke in his presence. But his daughters had noticed how comfortable and cosy the men of the Swiss Guard looked while smoking their pipes, and longed for a more intimate acquaintance with the novelty. They grew weary of the restraints of the court circle and sought freedom in their own apartments. On one occasion, when the Dauphin had at a late hour quitted the card-table, he heard noises of revelry while passing their quarter of the Palace. Entering to ascertain the cause, he was astonished to find the princesses engaged in smoking. Their pipes had been borrowed from the officers, who doubtless were instructing them how to make clouds, rings and squirts. Miss Pardoe speaks strongly; she says that when the princesses became weary of the ‘gravity and etiquette of the court circle they were accustomed to celebrate a species of orgie in their own apartments, after supper.’ But after all were they not Eve’s daughters—what else could be expected?

In England the paper warfare over the merit or demerit of the ‘Indian’s weed,’ signalized by King James, lasted well through two centuries. Beginning with some slight skirmishing, as in Work for Chimney Sweepers we come to a doughty champion of the royal cause in the person of ‘Josuah Sylvester, Gent:’ he who with quixotic valour sent forth a ‘Volley of Holy Shot Thundered from Mount Helicon.’ In dedicatory lines addressed to George, Duke of Buckingham, he invokes the aid of the royal favourite to enable him to overthrow the

Scanning the horizon he discovers Satan, enraged, working in short circuit two smoky engines—‘guns and tobocco pipes vented from the infernal pit.’ In this turgid style he pours out his puerile conceits much in the manner of his royal patron, whose good opinion he won so fully that James made him his Court poet.

The levy of a duty on tobacco so excessive as that which King James imposed namely, six shillings and tenpence—equivalent to about thirty shillings of our present money—upon every pound weight imported or grown in the country, coupled with great extravagance in its use brought ruin to many families, just as does over-indulgence in strong drink to those who are not satisfied with the moderation which reason dictates. In the case of tobacco the ruin was in money, whereas with alcohol in excess ruin comes to body and mind as well as purse. Our excellent guide along the by-paths of literature, John Aubrey, from whom we have gleaned many things respecting the use of tobacco, says, ‘In my early days (temp. Charles the First) tobacco was sold for its weight in silver.’ And in the family account-books of well-to-do people that have come to light we get occasional glimpses of its cost. A book of household expenses kept by Sir Henry Oglander, of Nunwell, in the Isle of Wight (1626), contains an entry of five shillings paid for eight ounces of tobacco. The price varies on different dates, according to the quality of the weed. Virginian seems to have been the favourite growth, though Spanish is the more frequently mentioned. A worthy old gentleman named Peter Campbell, living in Derbyshire, was so incensed against the smoking habit that in his Will, making over his household goods to his eldest son, Roger, he inserted a special clause to the effect that if at any time either his brothers or his sisters ‘fynd him smoking of tobacco he shall forfeit all or their full valew.’ Roger, who loved his pipe, would be lucky indeed if he escaped the watchful eyes of his five brothers and three sisters.

Sir Edwin Sandys, Member of Parliament for Pontefract, (1620) grew alarmed at the prodigious quantity of tobacco consumed in this country, and inquiring into the matter found that Spain was sending to England tobacco to the value of £100,000 a year for which in payment ‘we sent our cloths and other merchandise.… Nay, that sum will not pay for all the tobacco we have from thence; they have more from us every year: £20,000. So that there goes out of this kingdom as good as £120,000 for tobacco every year!’ He would have opened wide his eyes with amazement if some genius had whispered in his ear that under Edward VII. the duty alone on the quantity consumed in these islands would amount to over £13,000,000 a year. The increased and constantly increasing consumption of tobacco, prodigious as it was in the eyes of our forefathers, was not peculiar to England. Dr. Everard in his treatise on the Wonderful Virtues of Tobacco taken in a Pipe[11] says that its use had spread with amazing rapidity all over the known world, and that its cultivation and manufacture gave employment to millions of people who, were the consumption stopped, would probably perish for want of food. He likens the rise and progress of the industry to Elias’s cloud, ‘which was no bigger than a man’s hand.… It hath suddenly covered the face of the Earth: the low countries, Germany, Poland, Arabia, Persia, Turkey; almost all countries drive a trade in it, and there is no commodity that hath advanced so many small fortunes to gain great estates in the world.’ The translator adds, ‘Scholars take it much, and many grave and great men take tobacco to make them more serviceable in their callings.… Soldiers and seamen cannot but want it during their arduous duties in cold and tempestuous weather. Farmers, ploughmen, porters, labourers, plead for it, saying, they find great refreshment by it.’

English smokers cared little for the fulminations against the indulgence issued from high places. Even a taxation which in these days would provoke a riot merely drew from them a mild growl. An example of this more excellent way is found in Dr. Barclay’s Nepenthes, or the Vertues of Tobacco. In the tranquil spirit of a devotee of St Nicotine he addresses to ‘My Lord Bishop Murray’ the following lines:

The author’s exalted idea about the great value of the weed was a reflex of the Indian’s belief in its all-healing properties, a notion which through the Spaniards and Portuguese had become the common property of Europe. This is the animating thought running through the work. He has set his heart upon curing suffering humanity of every malady, and he complacently likens himself to Hercules going out into the world to wage war on disease and corruption. ‘I have armed myself with a box for his bag,’ says the learned doctor, ‘and a pipe for his club; a box to conserve my tobacco, and a pipe to use it.’ He foresees a time coming when the medicinal virtues of the herb will be so well understood that the services of physicians may be dispensed with, particularly in cases of defluxion and catarrh. Warming to his work and holding up the native home of the plant to be a ‘Country which God hath honoured and blessed with this holy herbe,’ he flourishes his club defiantly in the face of ‘the unlearned leiches’ who dare to say evil things about Nicotiana; ‘God willing,’ he means to ‘overcome many maladies.’ In practical work, however, though equally earnest, he is a long way behind his contemporary, Dr. Gardiner, whose Trial of Tobacco has already been noticed.

By the middle of the seventeenth century, tobacco-smoking had become a confirmed habit even in remote rural districts, and was duly recognised and provided for by every housewife. Monsieur Jorevin de Rochefort in his travels in England (1672) tells a homely story of his sitting down to supper with a friend in Worcester, where, on the meal being finished, they set on the table half a dozen pipes and a packet of tobacco for smoking. On inquiry he was told that it was a common practice to smoke after supper, indulged in by both men and women, who said that without tobacco one cannot live in England, for the smoke dissipates the evil humours of the brain. He goes on to relate his further experience on the next day, saying:

‘Whilst we were walking about the town he asked me if it was the custom in France, as in England, for children on setting out for school to carry in their satchel along with their books a pipe of tobacco, which their mother had taken care to fill early in the morning, in the belief that it would serve them instead of breakfast.’ Surely our French friend was grossly imposed upon. No English mother would for a moment entertain such a notion. We are next told that at the accustomed hour every one laid aside his book to light his pipe; and that the master smoked with them and taught the youngsters how to hold their pipes and draw in the tobacco-smoke; thus using them to the habit from youth, believing it absolutely necessary for health’s sake. The story told him by his Worcester friend put him in mind of a Spaniard whom he had met at the seaport of Calabria. The man, not being able to procure tobacco, cut off a piece of the cable with which he filled his pipe and drew down the smoke thereof as if it were the precious weed. He speaks, also, of an Irishman who falling ill was not allowed his usual pipe of tobacco. He submitted for some time, but he became so low and so melancholy that he could take nothing but a little tobacco, which was at last permitted him, with the result that in a short time he recovered perfect health. ‘I have known,’ says Rochefort, ‘several persons who, not content with smoking in the day, went to bed with their pipes in their mouths. Others who have risen in the night to take tobacco with as much pleasure as they would have received in drinking Alicant or Greek wine.’ Profligate smokers such as these deserve no encouragement or sympathy; they rank in the class of the besotted.

Rarely do we meet with more sympathetic words in favour of the weed than in Mission’s Memories of Travels over England, which he published in 1697. Tobacco-smoking, he says, was commonly practised both by men and women, particularly in country places. His observations led him to remark that smoking makes the generality of Englishmen taciturn, thoughtful, and, alas, melancholy; he adds that the use of tobacco ‘not only breeds profound theologists, but also begets moral philosophers.’ And in a sonnet, which bears some resemblance to the verses of George Wither, he shows us that he had himself imbibed something of the melancholy and philosophic spirit he speaks of. The lines run as follows:

A more robust, nay, hilarious, spirit pervades the utterances of Dr. Henry Aldrich, Dean of Christchurch, Oxford, who in devotion to the weed surpassed even Dr. Parr of cloud-compelling fame. The genial don had found in the pipe a solace for his somewhat fretful temperament; it disposed him to look upon life with the benevolent composure of a mind at peace with the world. Indeed, the love he bore his pipe, says his biographer, Sir John Hawkins, was so excessive as to be an entertaining topic of discourse in the University. The belief that the Dean and his pipe were inseparable, led to wagers being laid on the chance of finding him without it. With the keen wits for fun and mischief, characteristic of schoolboys, students would now and then warily peer into his sanctum at early morn or dewy eve, in the hope of settling the disputed point. On one occasion the doctor, learning the object of their visit at an early hour in the morning, readily fell in with their humour, and declared to the foremost boy, that, ‘Your friend has lost. I am not smoking, only filling my pipe.’ The Dean’s geniality comes out well in his humorous ‘Catch on Tobacco,’ which appeared in his second book of The Pleasant Musical Companion, published in 1687. He tells us that it is ‘to be sung by four men at the time of smoking their pipes.’ The first verse is as follows:—