2na S. NO 68., Arm. 18. '57.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 



311 



the new and striking habit of tobacco-taking Is to 

 be found in the plays of Shakspeare ; especially 

 as contemporary satires and epigrams (see Ma- 

 lone's History of the Stage, temp. 1598) inform us 

 that the practice had become in his time so far 

 general as to have invaded the proscenium itself. 

 One might have expected some allusion to this 

 " pleasante pastime " in the curriculum of dissi- 

 pation through which "fat-witted" Sir John led 

 merry Prince Hal ; or that a screw of Virginia 

 would have formed an item in the tavern-biU ab- 

 stracted by Toins from the pocket of that "whore- 

 son round man." But such is not the case : and 

 inasmuch as Shakspeare, who has touched upon 

 everything else, has omitted all mention of to- 

 bacco, I think we are justified in concluding that 

 his pipe was never out of his mouth ; just as, be- 

 cause Bacon, treating " de omne re scibili" never 

 alluded to Shakspeare, he'himself was the author 

 of the plays falsely attributed to that mythical 

 personage. , „ , , , 



Perhaps, indeed, the "pouncet-box held so 

 daintily by his fop (Henry IV., Act I. Sc. 4.) may 

 ♦ have contained some simple form of that " snuff- 

 mundungus" which has since acquired so compli- 

 cated and Protean a character : but more probably 

 it merely held one of those cephalic powders or 

 sternutatories which had been medicinally used 

 from the time of Hippocrates, and were employed 

 by certain nations and individuals as a matter of 

 habit or aflectation. 



What is the correct date of the introduction of 

 tobacco into England ? About 1586, say the ma- 

 jority : I, however, feel almost disposed to fix it 

 ^- some twenty years earlier, and to attribute the 

 honour of its first importation to Sir John Haw- 

 kins. To this view I am strongly conduced by 

 the direct assertion of John Taylor, the "Water- 

 Poet, in his Prosaical Postscript to the " Old, old, 

 very old Man," &c., 4to., London, 1635, and the 

 statements of Stow and others. I have never 

 been fortunate enough to meet with Hawkins's 

 IVue Declaration of the Troublesome Voyage of 

 Mr. John Hawkins to the Partes of Guynea and 

 the West Indies in 1567 and 1568, which, pub- 

 lished in 1569, might contain something decisive 

 on this point. Lobelius, who had often visited 

 this country, asserts that it was cultivated here as 

 early as 1570. ^ , 



Whichever of these dates may be correct, it is 

 certain that the new and strange habit acquired 

 a prevalence with a rapidity to which the history 

 of no other luxury or invention affords a parallel, 

 and which has continued to increase at the same 

 rate to the present day, in 'spite of edict, bull, 

 ukase, counterblast, proscription, sermon, tract, 

 anathema, and proclamation. In the time of Hall, 

 Bishop of Norwich, who wrote in 1597, it had be- 

 come what he considered a vice of the time : he 

 alludes to it in hig Satire oa the decline of ancient 



hospitality (book v. sat. 2.) ; and again (book iv. 

 sat. 4.) his gallant of the day, after luxuriating ou 

 various dainties, 



" Quaffs a whole tuunell of tobacco smoke." 

 In this year, too, was first acted Ben Jonson's 

 Every Man in his Humour, in which Captain Bo- 

 badil enjoin? upon Master Stephen the taking of 

 " Trinidado," and pronouncing green- wound, bal- 

 samum, and St. John's wort, " mere guUeries and 

 trash" to it, swore by Hercules that he would hold 

 and aflSrm it to be, before any prince in Europe, 

 " the most sovereign and precious weed that ever 

 the earth tendered to the use of man." 



In the following year Paul Hentzner, a German 

 tutor visiting England with his pupil, was struck 

 with the universality of" the habit : not only at 

 places for bull and bear baiting, but " everywhere 

 else," says he, "the English are constantly smoak- 

 ing tobacco." 



Dekker, cited by Mr. Riley, also alludes to the 

 custom in his GuWs Horn-Book, pp. 119, 120. 



Again, in Nov. 1601, Mr. Secretary Cecil al- 

 ludes in a speech to a then existing patent of mo- 

 nopoly enjoyed by tobacco-pipe makers (D'Ewes's 

 Journal of the Parliaments of Queen Elizabeth^ 

 p. 65.) ; and in the Criminal Trials, vol. i. p. 361. 

 (cited in Penny Magazine, No. 18.), the French 

 ambassador in his despatches represents the peers, 

 on the trial of the Earls of Essex and Southamp- 

 ton, smoking copiously, while they deliberated on 

 their verdict. 



Just about this time, too, a lively controversy was 

 going on as to the merits and demerits of tobacco : 

 one of the pamphlets which appeared is entitled 

 A Defence of Tobacco, with a friendly Answer to 

 the late printed Booke called " Worke for Chimney 

 Sweepers," 1602 ; and we also have the Metamor- 

 phosis of Tobacco, by John Beaumont, 4to., 1602, 

 — the metamorphosis being that of a young and 

 beautiful nymph into — as Spenser, another con- 

 temporary and friend of Raleigh, calls it — " diuine 

 tobacco." A notice of this scarce and curious 

 tract, with extracts, will be found in Collier's 

 Poets : Decameron, vol. i. p. 186. : a copy was re- 

 cently advertised by Mr. J. Russell Smith, wanting 

 title, at the low price of Is. Qd. 



I need not pursue the subject, as allusions to 

 this habit now become numerous in the works of 

 our dramatic and satirical writers ; and conclude 

 with the statement of Barnaby Rych, otherwise 

 " Drunken Barnaby," as showing how general, a 

 few years later, the use of the " sacred herb " had 

 become, to the effect that no less that seven thou- 

 sand houses were supported by " selling ^tobacco 

 in London, and neare about London." {The 

 Honestie of this Age, 4to., London, 1614, p. 26.) 



William Bates. 



Joshua Sylvester, a Puritanical writer in the 



