176 TOBACCO BOXES. 



introduction of coffee into England in the midst of the 

 Puritan epoch, when Englishmen wanted some kind of drink 

 which would "at once make them sober and merry," the 

 writer glorifies the coffee-house. 



John Taylor, " the Water Poet," made a kind of compro- 

 mise when he attributed the introduction of tobacco, not to 

 the devil, but to Pluto, "Pluto's Proclamation concerning 

 his Infernal Pleasure for the Propagation of Tobacco." It 

 appears in the folio collection of his works of the year 1628. 

 The confusion of tobacco with opium and such destructive 

 dru^s seems to have been common with the travelers of the 



O 



Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries. Camerarius, in his 

 " Historical Meditations," translated into English by John 

 Malle (folio, 1621), speaks of tobacco as to be seen growing in 

 many gardens throughout Europe. He quotes Jerome 

 Benzo as saying that in Hispaniola " there be among them 

 some that take so much of it, as their senses being all over- 

 come and made drunke with the same, they fell down flat to 

 the ground as if they were dead, and there lie without sense 

 or feeling most part of the day or of the night." 



The tobacco-box, during the reign of Elizabeth, was no 

 unimportant part of a dandy's outfit ; sometimes a pouch or 

 bag was used. Tobacco-boxes came into general use in 

 England soon after the introduction of tobacco, and were 

 much sought after by all who " drank " tobacco. Marston, 

 the Duke of New Castle, and other dramatists, alluded to the 

 tobacco-box as a part of the smoker's outfit ; thus in the play 

 of "The Man in the Moone" (1609), one character, in 

 answer to an inquiry who one of the company is, answers : 

 " I know not certainly, but I think he cometh to play you a 

 fit of mirth, for I behelde pipes in his pocket ; now he 

 draweth forth his tinder-box and his touchwood, and falleth 

 to his tacklings ; sure his throate is on fire, the smoke flyeth 

 BO fast from his mouth ; blesse his beard with a bason of 

 water, lest he burn it; some terrible thing he taketh, it 

 maketh him pant and look pale, and hath an odious taste, he 

 epitteth so after it 



