CELEBRATED SMOKERS. 147 



Another and a greater philosopher, Thomas Hobbes — | 

 of Malmesbury, smoked to excess, and he lived to the 

 age of ninety-two. Aubrey tells us that he always took 

 a pipe of tobacco after dinner as a digestive, a custom 

 held to be of " a rare and singular virtue " in his day. 

 Sir Isaac Newton was also a great smoker, and as if 

 to show the fallacy of many objections to tobacco, one 

 being that it injures the teeth, though he lived to a good 

 old age he lost but one tooth.* 



Of royal symposiums where the weed was largely 

 indulged in, perhaps the most remarkable was that of 

 the first Frederick of Prussia, whose " Tabaks Col- 

 legium " was the cabinet council of the country. It is 

 vividly described by Carlyle, who slyly remarks, in 

 contrasting it with our parliament, " the substitution of 

 tobacco- smoke for Parliainentaiy eloquence, is by some 

 held to be a great improvement." f 



Of literary men Goethe hated tobacco, a very extra- 

 ordinary thing for a German to do. Heinrich Heine 

 had the same dislike. Of French litterateurs Balzac, 

 Victor Hugo, and Dumas, did not smoke ; but the 

 smokers are Alfred de Musset, Eugene Sue, Merimee, 

 Paul de St. Victor, and Madame Dudevant, better 



* Tobacco in powder was formerly used as a dentifrice. la Tobacco, a 

 Poem, 1669, we are told : 



"At Celia's toilet dost thou claim a riglit — 

 The nymph so famed for teeth, like ivory white, 

 For breath more fragrant than the vernal air, 

 Blest with thy aid, makes every swain despair. " 



+ Carlyle is himself a smoker, a becoming qualification in such a dis- 

 tinguished German scholar. 



h 2 



j 



