Tobacco and Genius 245 



wrote : ' Tobacco has been my evening comfort and 

 my morning curse for these five years ' ; but it was 

 his excessive drinking, not smoking, that produced 

 ill-effects. Smoking never induces headache or dis- 

 sipates energy. Of snuff Lamb was fond also. His 

 sister Mary dipped into his box for inspiration as 

 they together wrote ' Tales from Shakespeare.' ' May 

 my last breath be drawn through a pipe and exhaled 

 in a pun !' exclaimed quaint and winsome Charles. 



Campbell drew the fire which burns in his lyrics 

 from his pipe. Moore smoked, and so did Burns, in 

 those evenings so fatal to his genius. Cowper, first 

 an enemy to tobacco, ultimately became its champion. 

 Describing a clerical friend, he wrote : ' Such is Mr. 

 Bull. But he smokes tobacco — nothing is perfect' 

 Later he learned the virtues of snuff and of tobacco 

 taken in a pipe. In a poetic epistle he laments his 

 need of a ' succedaneum then To accelerate a creeping 

 pen,' and exclaims : 



' 'Tis here, this oval box well filled 

 With best tobacco finely milled.' 



The Waverley novels owe much to tobacco, while 

 in later years Scott forgot his creditors and the 

 pangs of neuralgia under the soothing influence of a 

 pipe. His French follower, Dumas pere, did not 

 smoke, neither did Balzac and Victor Hugo. Goethe, 

 German and genius though he was, hated tobacco. 

 Heinrich Heine would have lost his pessimism if he 

 had puffed a pipe. Voltaire, Rousseau, and Mirabeau 

 preached against tobacco. 



