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.

Let me adore with my thrice happie pen,
The sweete and sole delight of mortal men ;
The Cornucopia of all earthly pleasure,

Where Bankrupt nature hath consum'd her treasure.
A worthy plant springing from Flora's hand,
The blessed offspring of an uncouth land."

Our author then proceeds to tell us―

"On what occasion and by whom it stood,

That the blest world received so great a good."

He imagines a "sudden parliament" called of the Elements to hear Prometheus complain that his work is not perfected, and ask their help. The Earth proposes that

"A plant shall from my wrinkled forehead spring,
Which once inflam'd with the stolne heavenly fire,
Shall breath into this lifeless corse inspire."

The Elements now combine to form "the herb composed in despite of fate "-the tobacco-plant.

"And had not Tellus temper'd too much mud,
Too much terrene corruption in the bud,

The man that tasted it should never die,
But stand in record of eternitie."

Jupiter becomes enraged at this; and banishes the plant to a world unknown to Europe. Here it is long hidden until the Graces travel to the New World, and are much delighted when

"They in the palace of great Montezume,
Are entertained with this celestial fume,"

that they remain there eternally smoking; and our only chance of "studying the graces," according to our

author, is to do the same. He furnishes another legend of its origin by imagining a fair nymph of Virginia whom Jove visits in the garb of a shepherd, and Juno changes into the herb. Esculapius

"Descried this herbe to our new golden age,
And did devise a pipe, which should asswage
The wounds which sorrow in our hearts did fix;"

and he further declares, that had the Romans known it, instead of a Saturnalia,

"A new Tabacconalia had been made.

All goods, all pleasures in it it doth linke-
'Tis phisicke, clothing, music, meat and drink."

In Ben Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour (1599), one of the characters, Fastidious Brisk, an impersonation of the "swell" of his day, takes tobacco, attended by a boy to trim the pipe; and makes love to his mistress between the whiffs he puffs forth in smoking. In Heywood's Fair Maid of the Exchange (1607), one of the characters is advised to court a girl by "asking her if she'll take a pipe of tobacco." In Edward Sharpham's comedy, The Fleire (1615), one "Signior Petoune, a traveller and a great tobacconist,"* is one of the characters introduced as a type of the fashionable smoker of the day. He says, "I take it now and then, fasting, for the purification of my wit," and he tells the ladies, "If you use but a' mornings

*Smokers, it must be remembered, were then termed tobacconists, a name now exclusively applied to vendors of the herb.

F