SOCIAL GOSSIP ABOUT THE WEED 173 



London, and evaporate at Uxbridge, or farther, if 

 it pleases him. If there be any such generous 

 spirit that is truly enamoured of these good 

 faculties, may it please him but by a note of his 

 hand, to specify the place or ordinary where he 

 uses to eat and lie, and most sweet attendance 

 with tobacco and pipes of the best sort shall be 

 ministered. Stet, qticeso, candide lector. 



After King James had sent forth his famous 

 Counterblaste in 1604, declaring to the world that 

 tobacco was the ' lively image and pattern of hell,' it was 

 not unusual to hear the weed associated with the arch 

 enemy. And rare Ben would seem to have been nothing 

 loth to trim his sails to the new breeze. In his masque 

 entitled The Gipsies Metamorphosed he is so considerate 

 as to wish that his Majesty's nose may be protected from 

 the smell of 



Tobacco with the type 

 Of the Devil's glyster pipe. 



EARLY SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY SMOKERS 



