FLOKA DOMESTICA. 



Tobacco has been highly panegyrised by the poets : one 

 now living indeed goes great lengths in its praise : 



<e For thy sake, tobacco, I 

 Would do any thing but die, 

 And but seek to extend my days 

 Long enough to sing thy praise." 



C. LAMB. 



Spenser bestows on it the epithet divine : Belphcebe 

 finds the Squire Timias wounded : 



" Into the woods thenceforth in haste she went, 

 To seek for herbs that mote him remedy ; 

 For she of herbs had great intendiment, 

 Taught of the nymph, which from her infancy 

 Her nursed had in true nobility : 

 There, whether it divine tobacco were, 

 Or Panachsea, or Polygony, 

 She found, and brought it to her patient dear, 

 Who all this while lay bleeding out his heart-blood near." 



Some have been as warm in the censure of Tobacco as 

 others have been in its praise : Cowper calls it a " per- 

 nicious weed," and is very severe upon it. Our Scotch 

 king, James I., is well known to have entertained a great 

 aversion to the use of this plant, and even proceeded so 

 far as to write a book against it, under the title of A 

 Counterblast to Tobacco; in which the royal author in- 

 formed his subjects that smoking, or to use the language 

 of the day, taking tobacco, " is a custome loathsome to the 

 eye, hatefull to the nose, harmefull to the braine, danger- 

 ous to the lungs ; and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, 

 nearest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit 

 that is bottomlesse." Many temporary ebullitions of spleen 

 of this monarch against Tobacco are on record: among 

 others, his declaration that if he were to " invite the devil 

 to dinner, he should have three dishes : a pig ; a pole of 

 ling and mustard ; and a pipe of Tobacco for digest ure." It 



