206 NOTED SMOKERS. 



world. When they do agree, their unanimity is irresistible. 

 Prohibition may give zest to enjoyment, and provocation to 

 curiosity, but can never overcome the instincts of nature or 

 cravings of nervous irritability, and he who rises in rebellion 

 against her absolute decree will respect the limits and study 

 the laws of a recognized and regulated enjoyment. 



"Let, then, the moralist point out what social duties may 

 be imperilled ; let the physician apprise us of the disorders 

 to be guarded against ; and let the lover of elegance see that 

 no neglect or slight awaits her. Of abstract arguments we 

 have seen the futility, of moral and medical crusades even 

 the most patient are weary, and we gladly turn to something 

 real in the suffrages of a by-gone great man of acknowledged 

 fame Ben Jonson. Ben Jonson loved the 'durne weed,' 

 and describes its every accident with the gusto of a con- 

 noisseur. Hobbes smoked, after his early dinner, pipes 

 innumerable. Milton never went to bed without a pipe and 

 a glass of water, which I cannot help associating with his : 



* Adam waked, 



So custom'd, for his sleep was aery light, of pure digestion bred 

 And temperate vapors bland !' 



" Sir Isaac Newton was smoking in his garden at Wools- 

 thorpe when the apple fell. Addison had a pipe in his 

 mouth at all hours, at ' Buttons.' Fielding both smoked and 

 chewed. About 1740 it became unfashionable, and was ban- 

 ished from St. James' to the country squires and parsons. 

 Squire Western, in Tom Jones, arriving in town, sends off 

 Parson Supple to Basingstoke, where he had left his Tobacco- 

 box ! The snuff-box was substituted. Lord Mark Kerr, a 

 brave officer who affected the petit maitre (d la Pelham, in 

 Lord Lytton's second novel), invented the invisible hinges, 

 and it was this ' going out of fashion ' that Jonson alluded to 

 in 1774. 



" We next find Tobacco rearing its head under the auspices 

 of Paley and Parr. Paley had one of the most orderly 

 minds ever given to man. A vein of shrewd and humorous 

 sarcasm, together with an under-current of quiet selfishness, 

 made him a very pleasant companion. { I cannot afford to 

 keep a conscience any more than a carriage,' was worthy of 

 Erasmus, perhaps of Robelais. * Our delight was,' said an 

 old Jonsonian to the writer, ' to get old Paley, on a cold 

 winter's night, to put up his legs, wrap them well up, stir the 

 fire, and fill him a long Dutch pipe ; he would talk away, sir, 



