SOCIAL GOSSIP ABOUT THE WEED 171 



Lastly, the ashes left behind 

 May daily shew to move the mind, 

 That to ashes and dust return we must : 

 Thus think, and drink tobacco. 



As a soother of sorrow in wedded life, the story told by 

 Camden of good Richard Fletcher, Bishop of London, 

 shews how over-indulgence in the weed may carry its 

 votary farther than he wots of. For his sins, people would 

 say, the Bishop had to endure the plague of a scolding 

 wife. The burden became greater than he could bear ; he 

 sighed for the peace that failed him, and in his distress he 

 fell to smoking so immoderately that at last his weary spirit 

 took flight on the wings of the weed to the realms of rest 

 he longed for. There is a pathos in the story that awakens 

 a kindred feeling ; one can see the peace-loving prelate 

 quietly slipping away from the domestic storm, and, finding 

 sanctuary in his attic, yielding himself a willing martyr to 

 the solace of St Nicotine. Indeed, if the truth must be told, 

 the clergy, ever since her advent in these islands, have 

 been noted votaries at her shrine. Instances crowd upon us. 



A curious example is found in the pages of the astrologer 

 Lilly's Memoires published in 17 15, thirty-four years after 

 his death. We are told of one, William Bredon, vicar of 

 Thornton, in Buckinghamshire, who was so far given over 

 to the taking of tobacco in a pipe that when his supply was 

 run out he would cut off the ends of the bell-ropes and 

 smoke the bits. But this unworthy lover of his pipe was 

 profoundly learned in Eastern lore, particularly that which 

 related to judicial astrology. It may well be, that, along 

 with his learning, he derived from the same source his 

 knowledge of hashish. The practice of inhaling the fumes 

 of burning hemp, was, as we have already seen, common in 

 the near East, before tobacco had reached the Moslem. 



