ry. The health of the poet it appears had
suffered seriously from the immoderate use of tobacco, which had been in
consequence interdicted by his physician. Compelled to surrender his
favourite enjoyment, he vents his feelings in a very spirited "Farewell
to Tobacco," which exhibits a singular mixture of opposite sentiments,
and of violent struggles between his propensity to the habit and his
acquiescence in the necessity which severs him from it, together with
feeble attempts to curse that, without which, life to the unhappy poet
seemed scarcely endurable.

"Stinking'st of the stinking kind,
Filth of the mouth and fog of the mind,
Africa that brags her foyson,
Breeds no such prodigious poison,
Henbane, nightshade, both together,
Hemlock, aconite----
----Nay, rather
Plant divine, of rarest virtue;
Blisters on the tongue would hurt you;
'Twas but in a sort I blamed thee,
None e'er prospered who defamed thee."

But tobacco has had enemies of exalted station, whose persecution has
been uniform, and whose hatred has been unmixed. Such was James the
First of England, who is not less remarkable for his sagacity in
discovering the gunpowder plot, and having supported the divine right of
kings, than for having written a "Counterblaste to Tobacco."[19] But let
the king speak for himself:--

"Tobacco," says he, "is the lively image and pattern of hell,
for it hath, by allusion, all the parts and vices of the world
whereby hell may be gained; to wit. 1. It is a smoke; so are
all the vanities of this world. 2. It delighteth them that take
it; so do all the pleasures of the world delight the men of the
world. 3. It maketh men drunken and light in the head; so do
all the vanities of the world, men are drunkards therewith. 4.
He that taketh tobacco can not leave it; it doth bewitch him;
even so the pleasures of the world make men loath to leave
them; they are for the most part enchanted with them. And,
farther, besides all this, it is like hell in the very
substance of it, for it is a stinking loathsome thing, and so
is hell."

The mythological fable which existed among the Indians as to the manner
in which this plant was first bestowed upon mankind, is extremely
whimsical, somewhat discreditable, and withal of such a nature as to
preclude the propriety of our introducing it in this place to the
acquaintance