72 TOBACCO IN EUROPE. 



Ben Jonson, in his Alchemist (1610), speaking in praise 

 of the tobacconist, Abel Drugger, notes the adul- 

 teration then practised, and the luxuries used in 

 smoking : — 



He lets me have good tobacco ; and he does not 

 Sophisticate it with sack — lees or oil, 

 Nor washes it in muscadel and grains, 

 Nor buries it in gravel, under ground, 

 Wrapp'd up in greasy leather, or piss'd clouts ; 

 But keeps it in fine lilly pots, that, open'd 

 Smell like a conserve of roses, or French beans. 

 He has his maple block, his silver tongs, 

 Winchester pipes, and fire of juniper." 



Rowlands, in his Knave of Harts (1613), says of a 

 prodigall knave : 



" Iq a tobacco- shop (resembling Hell, 

 Fire, stink, and smoke must be where devils dwell), 

 He sits, you cannot see his face for vapour, 

 Offering to Pluto with a tallow taper." 



The spendthrift Folly-wit, in Middleton's play, A 

 Mad World, my Masters (1608), speaks of the tavern 

 and tobacco-shop as consequences, " to sink down dead 

 in a tavern, and rise in a tobacco-shop," is his mode of 

 action. In Heywood's Fortune by Land and Sea 

 is a scene at a tavern, where the gallants indulge in 

 sack and tobacco. Ardelio, the cashier'd servingman 

 in Marmion's play, Holland's Leaguer (1632), says: — 



• ' The best thing I am fit for is a Tapster, 

 Or else to get a wench of mine own, and sell 

 Bottell Ale and Tobacco." 



Among the Roxburgh ballads in the British Museum, 

 is a wood-cut of this period, which we here copy 



