ations caused by smoking. An eighteenth-century writer,
Oldys, in his "Life of Sir Walter Raleigh," declares that tobacco
"soon became of such vogue in Queen Elizabeth's court, that some of
the great ladies, as well as noblemen therein, would not scruple to
take a pipe sometimes very sociably." But these stories rest on vague
tradition, and probably have no foundation in fact.

King James I in his famous "Counter-blaste to Tobacco," hinted that
the husband, by his indulgence in the habit, might "reduce thereby his
delicate, wholesome, and cleane complexioned wife to that extremitie,
that either shee must also corrupt her sweete breath therewith, or
else resolve to live in a perpetuall stinking torment." His Majesty's
style was forcible, if not elegant. There are also one or two
references in the early dramatists. In Ben Jonson's "Every Man in his
Humour," for instance, which was first acted in 1598, six years before
King James blew his royal "Counter-blaste," Cob, the water-bearer,
says that he would have any "man or woman that should but deal with a
tobacco-pipe," immediately whipped. Prynne, in his attack on the
stage, declared that women smoked pipes in theatres; but the truth of
this statement may well be doubted. The habit was probably far from
general among women, although Joshua Sylvester, a doughty opponent of
the weed, was pleased to declare that "Fooles of all Sexes haunt it,"
_i.e._ tobacco.

The ballads of the period abound in rough woodcuts in which tavern
scenes are often figured, wherein pewter pots and tobacco-pipes are
shown lying on the table or in the hands or at the mouths of the male
carousers. Men and women are figured together, but it would be very
hard to find a woman in one of these rough cuts with a pipe in her
hand or at her mouth. An example, in the "Shirburn Ballads" lies
before me. The cut, which is very rough, heads a bacchanalian ballad
characteristic of the Elizabethan period, called "A Knotte of Good
Fellows," and beginning:

_Come hither, mine host, come hither!
Come hither, mine host, come hither!
I pray thee, mine host,
Give us a pot and a tost,
And let us drinke all together._

The scene is a tavern interior. Around the table are four men and a
woman, while a boy approaches carrying two huge measures of ale. One
man is smoking furiously, while on the table lie three other
pipes--one for each man--and sundry pots and glasses. The woman is
plainly a conv