254 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



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

 far better than that at Ashborn. 



Piscator. 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.* 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? 



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

 ceive yours is very good by the smell. 



Piscator. The best I can get in London, I assure you.f But, 

 sir, now you have thus far complied with my designs, as to take 



* This seems to be something contradictory to what is formerly stated. 

 A friend informs me that at this time Ashborn ale is quite famous in the 

 northern and inland counties. J. R. 



t It should seem by what Walton says, chap. x. 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. 



Smoking-, or, as the phrase was, taking tobacco, was, in Queen Elizabeth's 

 and her successor's time, esteemed the greatest of all foppery. Ben Jon- 

 son, who mortally hated it, has numberless sarcasms against smoking and 

 smokers ; all 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 Collection of Witty Apothegms, delivered by 

 him and others, at teveral times, and on sundry occasions, published in duo- 

 decimo, 1671. 



" That tobacco was the lively imrge 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, Itdelighteth 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 taketh tobacco saith he cannot leave it, it doth bewitch 

 him even so the pleasures of the world make men loath to leare them, 

 they are for the most part so enchanted with them. And, farther, besides 

 all this, It is like hell in the very substance of it, for it is a stinking loath, 

 some thing, and so is hell. And, farther, 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 a poem, printed anno 1619, written by Samuel Rowley, I meet with 

 the following humorous lines, uttered by two good fellows, lovers of 

 drinking and tobacco, and, since that time, printed on a London tobacco- 

 nist's paper : 



I am as dry as ever was March dust ; 

 I have one groat, and I will spend it just ; 

 O honest fellow 1 if that thou say'st so, 

 Lo I here 'a my groat, and my tobacco too 



I conclude this note on smoking, which, by this time, may have made the 

 reader laugh, with the mention of a fact that may go near to make him 

 weep, which the people of Herefordshire have by tradition. In that county, 

 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 that merciless bigot Queen 

 Mary, being condemned for heresy, in his walk of some miles from the 

 prison to the stake, amidst a crowd of weeping friends, with the tranquil- 

 lity and fortitude of a primitive martyr, smoked a pipe of tobacco ! 



