crease. The
German china bowl with globular receiver of the essential
oil, the absorbent meerschaum, the red Turkish bell-shaped
clay, the elaborate hookah,--a really elegant ornament, and
perhaps the most healthful and rational form of
smoking,--pipes of all shapes, began to fill the shops of
London. Coleridge, when cured of opium, took to snuff. Byron
wrote dashingly about 'sublime Tobacco,' but I do not think
he carried the practice to excess. Shelley never smoked, nor
Wordsworth, nor Keats. Campbell loved a pipe. John Gibson
Lockhart was seldom without a cigar. Sir Walter Scott smoked
in his carriage, and regularly after dinner, loving both
pipes and cigars. Professor Wilson smoked steadily, as did
Charles Lamb. Carlyle, now somewhat past seventy, has been a
sturdy smoker for years. Goethe did not smoke, neither did
Shakespeare. I cannot recall a single allusion to Tobacco in
all his plays; even Sir Toby Belch does not add the pipe to
his burnt sack. But Shakespeare hated every form of
debauchery. The penitence of Cassio is more prominent than
was his fun. 'What! drunk? and talk fustian and speak
parrot, and discourse with one's shadow?' Shakespeare held
drunkenness in disgust. Even Falstaff is more an
intellectual man than a sot. What actor could play Falstaff
after riding forty miles and being well thrashed? Yet, when
Falstaff sustains the evening at the Boar's Head, he has
ridden to Gadshill and back, forty-four miles! No palsied
sot, he. Hamlet's disgust at his countrymen is well known.
'Grim death, how foul and loathsome is thine image!' is the
comment on the drunken Kit Sly. In short, when you look at
the smooth, happy, half-feminine face of Shakespeare, you
see one to whom all forms of debauchery were ungenial. A
courtier certainly, and a lover of money. The king had
written against Tobacco, and Will Shakespeare set his watch
to the time. Raleigh and Coliban Jonson might smoke at the
Mermaid--Will kept his head clear and his doublet sweet.

[Illustration: Tennyson, smoking.]

"Alfred Tennyson is a persistent smoker of some forty years.
Dickens, Jerrold and Thackeray all puffed. Lord Lytton loves
a long pipe at night and cigars by day. Lord Houghton smokes
moderately. The late J. M. Kemble, author of 'The Seasons in