t?2 St NICOTINE 



It is next to impossible to dip into the pages of the 

 early playwrights and pamphleteers without coming upon 

 mirthful allusions to the new indulgence. Ben Jonson, 

 Thomas Dekker, Samuel Rowlands, and a host of other 

 writers in those jubilant days, found in the weed and the 

 habits of smokers a never-failing source for good-natured 

 raillery. 



In Every Man out of Jit's Humour we learn that the 

 rage for tobacco had spread to the provinces. One, 

 Sogliardo, is described as essentially a clown, yet so 

 enamoured of the name of gentleman that he will have it 

 though he buys it. He comes to town every term to learn 

 the manners of polite society, and readily falls a victim to 

 men of the Bobadil type, who sees in the novelty a new 

 field of enterprise. Jonson describes their methods, and 

 speaks of a bill posted in St. Paul's churchyard notifying 

 fledglings from the country that instruction in the art of 

 taking tobacco can be arranged for. It affords us a glimpse 

 of the smart men-about-town three centuries ago who lay 

 in wait for inexperienced youth. It runs as follows : 



' If this city, or the suburbs of the same, do afford 

 any young gentleman of the first, second, or third 

 head, more or less, whose friends are but lately 

 deceased, and whose lands are but new come 

 into his hands, that, to be as exactly qualified as 

 the best of our ordinary gallants are, is affected to 

 entertain the most gentleman-like use of tobacco ; 

 as first to give it the most exquisite perfume, then 

 to know all the delicate sweet forms for the 

 assumption of it, as also the rare corollary and the 

 practice of the Cuban ebolition, Euripus, and 

 Whiffe, which he shall receive or take in here at 



