i82 ST NICOTINE 



Tobacco, charmer of my mind, 



When like the meteor's transient gleam, 

 Thy substance gone to air, I find, 



I think, alas, my life's the same ! 

 What else than lighted dust am I ? 



Thou shovv'st me what my fate will be ; 

 And when thy sinking ashes die, 



I learn that I must end like thee. 



A more robust, nay, hilarious, spirit pervades the 

 utterances of Dr. Henry Aldrich, Dean of Christchurch, 

 Oxford, who in devotion to the weed surpassed even Dr. 

 Parr of cloud-compelling fame. The genial don had 

 found in the pipe a solace for his somewhat fretful 

 temperament ; it disposed him to look upon life with the 

 benevolent composure of a mind at peace with the world. 

 Indeed, the love he bore his pipe, says his biographer. Sir 

 John Hawkins, was so excessive as to be an entertaining 

 topic of discourse in the University. The belief that the 

 Dean and his pipe were inseparable, led to wagers being 

 laid on the chance of finding him without it. With the 

 keen wits for fun and mischief, characteristic of schoolboys, 

 students would now and then warily peer into his sanctum 

 at early morn or dewy eve, in the hope of settling the 

 disputed point. On one occasion the doctor, learning the 

 object of their visit at an early hour in the morning, readily 

 fell in with their humour, and declared to the foremost boy, 

 that, ' Your friend has lost. I am not smoking, only 

 filling my pipe.' The Dean's geniality comes out well in 

 his humorous ' Catch on Tobacco,' which appeared in his 

 second book of The Pleasant Musical Companion^ 

 published in 1687. He tells us that it is 'to be sung by 

 four men at the time of smoking their pipes.' The first 

 verse is as follows : — 



