THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 91 



into favor, owing not more to the lowering of price than to 

 the quality of the leaf.* This was about 1620, which some 

 writers have called the golden age of tobacco. It had now 

 become a prime favorite and was used by nearly all classes. 

 Poets and dramatists sung its praises, while others wrote of 

 its wonderful medicinal qualities.f Fops and knaves alike 

 indulged in its use. 



"About the latter end of the sixteenth century, tobacco 

 was in great vogue in London, with wits and * gallants,' as 

 the dandies of that age were called. To wear a pair of vel- 

 vet breeches, with panes or slashes of silk, an enormous 

 starched ruff, a gilt handled sword, and a Spanish dagger ; 

 to play at cards or dice in the chambers of the groom-porter, 

 and smoke tobacco in the tilt-yard or at the play-house, were 

 then the grand characteristics of a man of fashion. Tobac- 

 conists' shops were then common ; and as the article, which 

 appears to have been sold at a high price, was indispensable 

 to the gay 'man about town,' he generally endeavored to 

 keep his credit good with his tobacco-merchant. Poets and 

 pamphleteers laughed at the custom, though generally they 

 seem to have no particular aversion to an occasional treat to 

 a sober pipe and a poute of sack. Your men of war, who 

 had served in the Low Countries, and who taught young 

 gallants the noble art of fencing, were particularly fond of 

 tobacco ; and your gentlemen adventurers, who had served 

 in a buccaneering expedition against the Spaniards, were no 

 less partial to it. Sailors from the captain to the ship-boy 

 all affected to smoke, as if the practice was necessary to 

 their character ; and to ' take tobacco ' and wear a silver 

 whistle, like a modern boatswain's mate, was the pride of a 

 man-of-war's man. 



" Ben Jonson, of all our early dramatic writers, most 

 frequently alludes to the practice of smoking. In his play 

 of 4 Every Man in his Humour,' first acted in 1598, Captain 

 Bobadil thus extols in his own peculiar vein the virtues of 

 tobacco ; while Cob, the water carrier, with about equal 

 truth, relates some startling instances of its pernicious effects. 



Neander, in his work on "Tobacologia" (London, 1622), mentions eighteen varieties of 

 tobacco, or at least localities from where it was shipped to London, among which are the 

 following: Varinas (considered the best), Brazil, Maracay, Orinoco, Margarita, Caracas, 

 Cumana, Amazon, Virginia, Phillipines. St. Lucia, Trinidad, and St. Domingo. 



t"The first author (says an English writer) who wrote of this Plant was Charles Stepha- 

 nus, in 1584 This was a mean, short, inaccurate Draught, till Dr. John Liebault wrote a 

 whole Discourse of it next year, and put it into his second Book of Husbandry, which was 

 every year reprinted with additions and alterations, for twenty years after. He had a large 

 Correspondence, a good Intelligence, and wrote the best of the age, and gathered the great* 

 eat stock of experience about this new Plant." 



