NOTED SMOKERS. 



209 



Shakespeare hated every form of debauchery. The peni- 

 tence of Cassio is more prominent than was his fun. ' What ! 

 drunk ? and talk fustian and speak parrot, and discourse with 

 one's shadow?' Shakespeare held drunkenness in disgust. 

 Even Falstaff is more an intellectual man than a sot. What 

 actor could play Falstaff after riding forty miles and being 

 well thrashed ? Yet, when Falstaff sustains the evening at 

 the Boar's Head, he has ridden to Gadshill and back, forty- 

 four miles! No palsied sot, he. Hamlet's disgust at his 

 countrymen is well known. < Grim death, how foul and 

 loathsome is thine image !' is the comment on the drunken 

 Kit Sly. In short, when you look at the smooth, happy, 

 half-feminine face of Shakespeare, you see one to whom all 

 forms of debauchery were ungenial. A courtier certainly, 

 and a lover of money. The king had written against 

 Tobacco, and Will Shakespeare set his watch to the time. 

 Raleigh and Coliban Jonson might smoke at the Mermaid 

 Will kept his head clear and his doublet sweet. 



"Alfred Tennyson is a persistent smoker of some forty 

 years. Dickens, Jerrold and Thackeray all puffed. Lord 



Lytton loves a long pipe 

 at night and cigars by day. 

 Lord Houghton smokes 

 moderately. The late J. 

 M. Kemble, author of 

 ' The Seasons in England,' 

 was a tremendous smoker. 

 Moore cared not for it; 

 indeed, I think that Irish 

 gentlemen smoke much 

 less than English. Well- 

 ington shunned it ; so did 

 Peel. D'Israeli loved the 

 long pipe in his youth, 

 but in middle age pro- 



TENNYSON, SMOKING. ?^M^< the tomb pf 



love.' While I am writ- 

 ing, it is not too much to aver that 99 persons out of 100, 

 taken at random, under forty years of age, smoke habitually 

 every day of their lives. How many in Melbourne injure 

 health and brain, I leave to more skilled and morose critics. 

 But my mind misgives me. Paralysis is becoming very 

 frequent. 



" I have seen stone pipes from Gambia, shaped like the 

 letter U consisting each of one solid flint, hollowed through, 

 14 



