208 NOTED SMOKERS. 



like a being of a higher sphere. He declined any punch, but 

 drank it up as fast as we replenished his glass. He would 

 smoke any given quantity of Tobacco, and drink any given 

 quantity of punch.' 



" Parr smoked ostentatiously and vainly, as he did every- 

 thing. He used only the finest Tobacco, half-filling his pipe 

 with salt. He wrote and read, and smoked and wrote, rising 

 early, and talking fustian. He was a sort of miniature 

 Brummagem Johnson. Except his preface to Bellendenus, 

 you might burn all he has written. His * Life of Fox ' is 

 beneath contempt. His letters are simply laughable, 

 especially his characters of contemporaries. He, however, 

 was an amiable and good-natured man, and had sufficient 

 humanity to regard dissent as an impediment to his recogni- 

 tion of intellectual or moral worth. Parr was an arrogant 

 old coxcomb, who abused the respectful kindness he received, 

 and took his pipe into drawing-rooms. I pass over the Duke 

 of Bridgewater, because he was early crossed in love by a 

 most beautiful girl, could not bear the sight of a flower even 

 growing, and passed life in a pot-house with a pipe, listening 

 to Brindley, whose intellect and dialect must have been alike 

 incomprehensible to him. 



" The cigar appeared about 1812 ; it received the counte- 

 nance of the Regent, who had hitherto confined himself to 

 macobau snuff, scented with lavender and the tonquin bean. 

 Porson smoked many bundles of cheroots, which nabobs 

 began to import. After 1815 the continental visits were 

 resumed, and the practice of smoking began steadily to 

 increase. 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 some- 

 what 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 



