258 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



Pise. Much good do your heart, and I thank you for that 

 friendly word : and now, sir, my service to you in a cup of 

 More-Lands ale : for you are now in the More-Lands, but 

 within a spit and a stride of the Peak ; fill my friend his glass. 



VIAT. Believe me, you have good ale in the More-Lands, 

 far better than that at Ashborn. '* 



Pise. That it may soon be : for Ashborn has, which is a 

 kind of riddle, always in it the best malt, and the worst ale 

 in England. t Come, take away, and bring us some pipes, 

 and a bottle of ale, and go to your own suppers. Are you 

 for this diet, sir 1 



YIAT. Yes, sir, I am for one pipe of tobacco ; and I per- 

 ceive yours is very good by the smell. 



Pise. The best I can get in London, I assure you.J But, 



* The name of this pretty town is variously written, Ashborn, Ashbourn, 

 Ashborne. The latter is the modern way of spelling it. ED. 



t Such is not the case now, but quite the reverse. Ashborne ale is as good 

 as that of any other town in England. Each publican brews his own ale ; 

 hence a competition that leads to excellency. It is the same at Nottingham ; 

 and I class amongst the best, pleasantest, and purest ales sold publicly those of 

 the above towns. The cellars in each are merely excavations in rock and 

 sandstone, and are peculiarly adapted for preserving and improving malt 

 liquors. ED. 



$ It should seem, by what Walton says, Chap. X. Tart I., that he was a 

 smoker : and the reader sees, by the passage in the text, that Piscator, by 

 whom we are to understand Cotton himself, is so curious as to have his tobacco 

 from London. But our piscatory disciple may do as he pleases. Smoking, or, 

 as the phrase was, taking tobacco, was, in Queen Elizabeth's and her suc- 

 cessor's time, esteemed the greatest of all foppery. Ben Jonson, who mortally 

 hated it, had numberless sarcasms against smoking and smokers ; all of which 

 are nothing, compared to those contained in that work of our King James the 

 First, " A Counter-blast to Tobacco." Nor was the ordinary conversation of 

 this monarch less fraught with reasons and invectives against the use of that 

 weed, as will appear from the following saying of his, extracted from " A Col- 

 lection of Witty Apophthegms," delivered by him and others, at several times, 

 and on sundry occasions, published in 12mo, 1671. " That tobacco was the 

 lively image and pattern of hell ; for that it had, by allusion, in it all the parts 

 and vices of the world whereby hell may be gained ; to wit : First, It was a 

 smoke ; so are the vanities of this world. Secondly, It delighteth them who 

 take it ; so do the pleasures of the world delight the men of the world. Thirdly, 

 It maketh men drunken and light in the head : so do the vanities of the world : 

 men are drunken therewith. Fourthly, He that takes tobacco saith he cannot 

 leave it, it doth bewitch him : even so do the pleasures of the world make men 

 loath to leave them, they are for the most part so enchanted with them. And 

 further, besides all this, it is like hell in the very substance of it, for it is a 

 stinking loathsome thing ; and so is hell. And further, his majesty professed 

 that, were he to invite the devil to dinner, he should have three dishes ; 1. A 

 pig; 2. A pole of ling and mustard ; and 3. A pipe of tobacco for digesture." 

 In Herefordshire, to signify the last or concluding pipe that any one means to 

 smoke at a sitting, they use the term a Kemble pipe, alluding to a man of the 

 name of Kemble, who in the cruel persecution under the merciless bigot Queen 



