238 The Soverane Herbe 



and imagine him meditating and maturing many a 

 thought and fancy over a pipe of Virginia. Cannot 

 you trace the broad-minded, generous, intuitive views 

 of Shakespeare to tobacco ? Much of Hamlet's 

 melancholy and indecision would have been dissi- 

 pated had he but smoked. Perchance Shakespeare 

 abstained from the weed to appreciate his hero's 

 despair and vacillation of mind, or drew upon the 

 experiences of his pre-smoking days for example. 

 Yes, Shakespeare was a smoker — decidedly a good 

 smoker. What a rare trio, that — Shakespeare, 

 Raleigh and Spenser gravely puffing tobacco and 

 delighting in the ever-novel and untiring virtues of 

 the new herb ! What would not we give for an 

 authentic account of just one evening at the Mer- 

 maid ? 



Smoke, too, did Marlowe, Fletcher and his collabo- 

 rator, Beaumont. Ben Jonson inveighed against and 

 satirized tobacco, but sought inspiration the while 

 from a pipe. English philosophy began with smoking. 

 Bacon from personal experience declared that tobacco 

 ' hath power to lighten the body and shake oif uneasi- 

 ness.' Old Hobbes of Malmesbury prepared for his 

 day's work by filling ten or twelve pipes with tobacco, 

 and laying them ready for use when writing, thus 

 avoiding the interruptions necessitated by the use of 

 only one pipe. Hobbes held that tobacco was of 

 ' rare and singular virtue,' and proved it by living to 

 the age of ninety-two. Burton praised tobacco as 

 ' a sovereign remedy for all diseases ' when rightly 

 used, and as severely denounced its common abuse, 

 holding it to be too ' divine, rare, super-excellent ' for 



