The Literature of Tobacco 229 



best verses into his charming anthology, 'Lyra 

 Nicotiana.' 



Though Spenser was among the first to sing the 

 blessings of tobacco, the great poets, with a few note- 

 worthy exceptions, have not tuned their lyres to a 

 nicotian song. Most of them have sought inspiration 

 from the divine herb, and nearly all the poems of the 

 last three centuries have been conceived in tobacco 

 clouds. The literature of tobacco, though actually 

 poor in so far as the herb itself is related, includes 

 the greatest works of the last 300 years. The litera- 

 ture of tobacco, like the weed itself, must be judged 

 not by what it is intrinsically, but by what it includes ; 

 not by what has been written of, but by what has 

 been written by and through tobacco. 



Byron is the only immortal who has sung tobacco ; 

 his rhapsody in ' The Island ' is the classic eulogy, 

 and shows Byron as a true smoker who differentiated 

 between the various ' forms for the assumption ' of the 

 weed, though few will agree with him in awarding 

 the palm to the cigar. Cowper sang the virtues of 

 snuff, proclaiming that it 



' Does thought more quicken and refine 

 Than all the breath of all the Nine.' 



Lowell's * Thanks for Certain Cigars ' ranks after 

 Byron's poetical tribute to the 'weed of glorious 

 feature ': 



' Tobacco, sacred herb though lowly, 

 Baffles old Time, the tyrant, wholly. 

 And makes him turn his hour-glass slowly. 



' . . . This rare plant delays the stream 

 (At least if things are what they seem) 

 Through long eternities of dream.' 



