skin, was a great hater of tobacco. Notwithstanding this, he sent
Carlyle--an inveterate smoker--a box of cigars in February 1865. In
his letter of acknowledgment Carlyle wrote--"Dear Ruskin, you have
sent me a magnificent Box of Cigars; for which what can I say in
answer? It makes me both sad and glad. _Ay de mi_

_'We are such stuff,
Gone with a puff--
Then think, and smoke Tobacco!'"_

In the later years of his life, spent at Brantwood, Ruskin's guests
found that smoking was not allowed even after dinner.

Another and greater Victorian, Gladstone, was also a non-smoker. He is
said, however, on one occasion, when King Edward as Prince of Wales
dined with him in Downing Street, to have toyed with a cigarette out
of courtesy to his illustrious guest.

It was in the latter years of his life that Tennyson told Sir William
Harcourt one day that his morning pipe after breakfast was the best in
the day--an opinion, by the way, to which many less distinguished
smokers would subscribe--when Sir William laughingly replied, "The
earliest pipe of half-awakened _bards_."

The companion burlesque line, "The earliest pipe of half-awakened
_birdseye_" appears, with one from Homer and one from Virgil, at the
head of Arthur Sidgwick's poem in Greek Iambics, "+TO BAKCHO+," in
"Echoes from the Oxford Magazine," 1890.

Sidgwick's praise of tobacco, classically draped in Greek verse,
occasionally of the macaronic order, is delightful. He hails the pipe
as the work of Pan, and the divine smoke as the best and most fragrant
of gifts--healer of sorrow, companion in joy, rest for the toilers,
drink for the thirsty, warmth for the cold, coolness in the heat, and
a cheap feast for those who waste away through hunger. How is it, he
says, that through so many ages men, who have need of thee, have not
seen thy nature? Often, he continues--the verses may be roughly
translated--often, when I am in Alpine solitudes, tied in a chain to a
few companions, clinging to the rope, while barbarians lead the way,
carrying in my hands an ice-axe (+krustalloplega chersin axinen
pheron+), and breathless crawling up the snow-covered plain--then,
when groaning I reach the summit (either pulled up or on foot), how
have I rested, on my back on the rocks, charming my soul with thy
divine clouds! He goes on in burlesque strain to speak of the joys of
tobacco when he lies in idleness by the streams in breathless summer,
comforted by a bath just taken