where gallants were accommodated with stools to sit during the play at an increased charge, is alluded to by Cokes in Ben Jonson's admirable play, Bartholomew Fair. He has gone into a booth to see a puppet-play, and asks of the master, "Ha' you none of your pretty impudent boys, now; to bring stooles, fill Tobacco, fetch ale, and beg money as they have at other houses?" The inconvenience occasionally felt by the female part of the audience is demonstrated by the Grocer's wife in Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle, who taking her seat on the stage, exclaims, "Fie! this stinking tobacco kils men; would there were none in England: now I pray, gentlemen, what good does this stinking tobacco?-doe you nothing?—I warrant you make chimnies of your faces!"* Collier, in his Annals of the Stage, notes † that one of the boy-actors in the induction to Cynthia's Revels, imitating a gallant supposed to be sitting on the stage, speaks of having his "three sorts of tobacco in his pocket, and his light by him." Dekker in 1609 tells his gallant to "get his match lighted;" and in the Scornful Lady (1616) Captains of gally-foists are ridiculed, who only "wear swords to reach fire at a play," for the purpose of lighting their pipes. Hutton, in his

* This idea seems to have been taken from a tirade against tobacco smoking, entitled Worke for Chimney Sweepers, which Gardiner, in his Triall of Tobacco, says the author, was "commanded or compelled to write" (probably by James the First, who afterwards took pen in hand himself); it was answered in 1602 by A Defence of Tobacco, in which the author shows that his opponent has injured his own cause, by his desire to prove toò much—a not uncommon case!

† Vol. iii. p. 416.

Follies Anatomie (1611), speaks of the custom of taking tobacco at theatres (instancing the GlobeShakespeare's theatre) :

the crowded stage

Must needs be graced with you and your page,
Sweare for a place with each controlling foole,
And send your hackney servant for a stoole."

Tobacco was even sold at the play-house, and in Bartholomew Fair, Ben Jonson talks of those "who accomodate gentlemen with tobacco at our theatres."* Ben Jonson thus further alludes to the general prevalence of smoking :—

Are got into the yellow starch, and chimney sweepers
To their tobacco, and strong waters, Hum,

Meath and Obarni."

The Devil is an Ass, Act i. Sc. i.

The same author makes his Volpone, when disguised as a Mountebank, declare if his nostrums had been well known—

"No Indian drug had e'er been famed—
Tobacco, sassafras, not named.

The affected phrases used by tobacco-smokers, and the pretences they made to carry the choicest tobacco about them, much as the modern "swells " do expensive cigars, is very excellently ridiculed, in the old Comedy known as Greene's Tu Quoque, 1614. The scene is a fashionable London ordinary, where some "" fast men of the day meet, and one asks of another,

64

*See also the Actor's Remonstrance. 1645.

who is smoking—“ Please you to impart your smoke?" To which he replies, "very willingly, Sir." The other, after a whiff or two, exclaims, "In good faith, a pipe of excellent vapour!" which the donor confirms by declaring it "the best the house yields." To which the other rejoins in some surprise, “Had you it in the house? I thought it had been your own: 'tis not so good now as I took it for!" The custom of passing the pipe from one to another is noted in Barnaby Rich's Irish Hubbub (1622), “ One pipe of tobacco will suffice three or four men at once," and he adds, that the custom was indulged in by men of all grades.

Lodge, in his Wit's Miserie, and the World's Madnesse (1596), speaks of a foolish fellow, "Who will hug you in his armes, kisse you on the cheeke, and rapping out an horrible oath, crie "Gods soule, Tom, I love you. You know my poore heart, come to my chamber for a pipe of tobacco; there lives not a man in this world that I more honour.'"

Samuel Rowlands, a prolific writer of ephemera in the reign of Elizabeth and James; and whose works, now exceedingly rare, are chiefly valuable for the pictures they afford of popular manners; has the following poem on tobacco, which contains four lines still popularly quoted as a vindication of smoking, without knowledge of their antiquity. It occurs in his Knave of Clubbs, 1611. We have marked them with inverted commas :

"Who durst dispraise tobacco whilst the smoke is in my nose,

Or say, but fah! my pipe doth smell? I would I knew but those

Durst offer such indignity to that which I prefer,

For all the brood of blackamoors will swear I do not err.

In taking this same worthy whiff with valiant cavalier,
But that will make his nostrils smoke, at cupps of wine or beer.
When as my purse can not afford my stomach flesh or fish,
I sup with smoke, and feed as well and fat as one can wish.
Come into any company, though not a cross you have,*
Yet offer them tobacco, and their liquor you shall have.
They say old hospitalitie kept chimnies smoking still;
Now what your chimnies want of that, our smoking noses will.
'Much victuals serves for gluttony, to fatten men like swine,
'But he's a frugal man indeed that with a leaf can dine,
'And needs no napkins for his hands his finger's ends to wipe,
'But keeps his kitchen in a box, and roast meat in a pipe.'
This is the way to help down years, a meal a day's enough!
Take out tobacco for the rest by pipe, or else by snuff,
And you shall find it physical: a corpulent, fat man,

Within a year shall shrink so small that one his guts shall span.
It's full of physic rare effects, it worketh sundry ways,

The leaf green, dried, steept, burnt to dust, have each their several
praise.

It makes some sober that are drunk, some drunk of sober sense,
And all the moisture hurts the brain it fetches smoking thence.
All the four elements unite when you tobacco take,
For earth and water, air and fire, do a conjunction make.
The pipe is earth, the fire's therein, the air the breathing smoke;
Good liquor must be present too, for fear I chance to choke.
Here, gentlemen, a health to all, 'tis passing good and strong.
I would speak more, but for the pipe I cannot stay so long."

The four lines alluded to are appended to a well executed engraving (copied on the opposite page) of the time of Charles I.; which afterwards was made to do duty against smokers by being printed in a most pious broadside against spendthrifts published in 1641, and entitled The Sucklington Faction, or (Suckling's) Roaring boys; an evident blow levelled by the puritanic party at the cavalier-poet Sir John Suckling.

* Equivalent in meaning to penniless, from the cross then so constantly impressed on the reverse of the current coin.

The commencement of the seventeenth century was the golden age of tobacco. It was favoured by all, and

valued for imputed virtues more than it possessed. It received a large amount of literary notice, larger than ever after fell to its share. Poets were inspired with a desire to sing its praises, and exert their fancy in its honour. The Metamorphosis of Tobacco is one of these effusions, an ambitious addition to those narrated by Ovid. It is dedicated by its unknown author to Michael Drayton, one of England's worthiest poets, and was printed in 1602; on the title is a cut of the tobaccoplant growing in the cleft of "the bi-forked hill," with the motto round it Digna Parnasso et Apolline. The author takes a dignified view of his subject as he exclaims:

"Me let the sound of great Tobaccoes praise
A pitch above those love-sick poets raise.