242 The Soverane Herbe 



the brim of his hat to support his pipe. Hooker, 

 South, Jeremy Taylor, Bishops Hall and Warburton 

 were devout smokers. Isaac Barrow called his pipe 

 his panpharmacon, or cure-all. When George Fox, 

 the founder of Quakerism, first began to show his 

 eccentricities he was recommended to smoke tobacco. 

 He did not, and the world gained a new religion. 



Penn, the Quaker, disliked tobacco — a strange 

 thing for a Friend. Once visiting some acquaintances, 

 he perceived they had been smoking, but had hidden 

 their pipes on his approach, knowing his dislike to 

 the practice. 



' Well, friends,' said Penn, ' I am glad that you are 

 at last ashamed of smoking.' 



' Not at all,' replied one, ' but we preferred laying 

 down our pipes to the danger of offending a weaker 

 brother.' 



Paley smoked like a Dutchman. Robert Hall, 

 most eloquent of Nonconformist divines, found in 

 tobacco an antidote to his melancholia. ' I am quali- 

 fying myself,' said he, ' for the Society of Doctors of 

 Divinity, and this ' (holding up his pipe) ' is the test of 

 my admission.' On being presented with an anti- 

 smoking tract, he said : ' I can't refute these argu- 

 ments, and I can't give up smoking.' 



A lady visitor discovering Paxton Hood with his 

 pipe, exclaimed reproachfully (smoking she regarded 

 as the sole defect in the minister's character ) : 



' At your idol again, Mr. Hood !' 



'Yes, ma'am,' he replied ; ' burning it.' 



Wesley did not smoke, and forbad his preachers 

 to do so. John Foster, the essayist and divine, was 



