tan, of a grave behaviour, and
sober and honest conversation, no tippler or haunter of alehouses, no
puffer of tobacco." A worthy Derbyshire man named Campbell, in his
will dated 20 October 1616, left all his household goods to his son,
"on this condition that yf at any time hereafter, any of his brothers
or sisters shall fynd him takeing of tobacco, that then he or she so
fynding him, shall have the said goods"--a testamentary arrangement
which suggests to the fancy some amusing strategic evasions and
manoeuvres on the part of the conditional legatee and his watchful
relations.
A converse view of smoking may be seen in Izaak Walton's "Life" of Sir
Henry Wotton, who died in 1639. Walton says that Wotton obtained
relief to some extent from asthma by leaving off smoking which he had
practised "somewhat immoderately"--"_as many thoughtful men do_." The
italics are mine.
Tobacco, as has been said, was praised as well as abused
extravagantly. Much absurdity was written in glorification of the
medicinal and therapeutic properties of tobacco, but a more sensible
note was struck by some lauders of the weed. Marston wrote in 1607:
_Musicke, tobacco, sacke and sleepe,
The tide of sorrow backward keep._
An ingenious lover of his pipe declared ironically in the same year
that he had found three bad qualities in tobacco, for it made a man a
thief (which meant danger), a good fellow (which meant cost), and a
niggard ("the name of which is hateful"). "It makes him a theefe," he
continued "for he will steale it from his father; a good fellow, for
he will give the smoake to a beggar; a niggard, for he will not part
with his box to an Emperor!" A character in one of Chapman's plays,
1606, calls tobacco "the gentleman's saint and the soldier's idol." A
little-known bard of 1630--Barten Holiday--wrote a poem of eight
stanzas with chorus to each in praise of tobacco, in which he showed
with a touch of burlesque that the herb was a musician, a lawyer, a
physician, a traveller, a critic, an ignis fatuus, and a whiffler,
_i.e._ a braggart. The first verse may suffice as a specimen:
_Tobacco's a musician,
And in a pipe delighteth,
It descends in a close
Through the organ of the nose
With a relish that inviteth._
These are merely a few examples of both the praise and the abuse which
were lavished upon tobacco at this early stage in the history of
smoking. It would be easy to fill many pages with th
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