108 TOBACCO IN EUROPE. 



posing Sir Christopher Heydons defence of judicial 

 astrology, being that time his chaplain; he was so 

 given over to tobacco and drink, that when he had no 

 tobacco, he would cut the bell-ropes and smoke 

 them." 



Prefixed to Band's edition of Skelton's Elinour 

 Bamming, 1024, are some verses by a rhymer of the 

 day, curiously descriptive of the general habit of 

 tobacco smoking, supposed to be uttered by Skelton's 

 Ghost,* who says of his own era : — 



" Nor did that time know 

 To pufie and to blow- 

 In a peece of white clay, 

 As you doe at this day, 

 With fier and coale, 

 And a leafe in a hole ; 

 As my ghost hath late seene, 

 As I walked betweene 

 Westminster Hall 

 And the church of Saint Paul, 

 And so thorow the citie, 

 Where I saw and did pitty 

 My countrymen's cases, 

 With fiery-smoke faces, 

 Sucking and drinking 

 A filthie weede stinking, 

 Was ne're knowne before 

 Till the devil and the More 

 In th' Indies did meete, 

 And each other there greete 

 With a health they desire 

 Of stinke, smoke, and fier. 



* It may be worth while here to note, as a sample of the sort of argu- 

 ments people will adduce for the antiquity of smoking, that this poem has 

 been quoted as a proof that the custom was usual when Skelton lived, in the 

 reign of Henry the Eighth ! The argument is not more unsound than fifty 

 others used pertinaciously by determined discoverers of mare's nests. 



