62 The Soverane Herbe 



the vendors, but to the smokers, of the weed. The 

 herb, as a drug, was sold chiefly by apothecaries, who 

 in token of it exhibited over their doors a big wooden 

 figure of a black Indian, crowned and kilted with 

 tobacco-leaves, and bearing three wooden rolls, repre- 

 senting the three kinds of tobacco then used : Trina- 

 dado roll, or carotte, pudding-cane and Virginia leaf. 

 ' Seller of smoke \fumi vendulus\ said a wit, ' is the 

 best epithete of an apothecary.' 



So great was the demand for tobacco that it was 

 cultivated in England. A considerable export trade 

 in tobacco was done with Turkey and the East, 

 though most of this was in the hands of the Dutch, 

 until James I. restricted its growth, though the 

 culture was not finally prohibited until the eighteenth 

 century. 



Omnipresent as is tobacco, it is not more so than it 

 was in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. The 

 practice of Raleigh and other countries and adven- 

 turers gave so good a standing to the habit, that by 

 the end of the sixteenth century to ' drink tobacco 

 with a grace ' was considered an essential accomplish- 

 ment of every gentleman. The dissipated cavaliers, 

 the rakes, the broken-down soldiers and sailors, the 

 Captain Bobadils became professors of and tutors 

 in the art of smoking. In ' Every Man out of His 

 Humour' Ben Jonson introduces a placard hung up 

 before St. Paul's advertising the teaching of the whole 

 art and mystery of smoking in the high-flown, 

 bombastic language of the period : 



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

 any young gentleman of the first, second, or third 



