THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 91 
into favor, owing not more to the lowering of price than to 
the quality of the leaf.* This was about 1620, which some 
writers have called the golden age of tobacco. It had now 
become a prime favorite and was used by nearly all classes. 
Poets.and dramatists sung its praises, while others wrote of 
its wonderful medicinal qualities} Fops and knaves alike 
indulged in its use. 
“ About the latter end of the. sixteenth century, tobacco 
was in great vogue in London, with wits and ‘ gallants,’ as 
the dandies of that age were called. To wear a pair of vel- 
vet breeches, with panes or slashes of silk, an’ enormous 
starched ruff, a gilt handled sword, and a Spanish dagger; 
to play at cards or dice in the chambers of the groom-porter, 
and smoke tobacco in the tilt-yard or at the play-house, were 
then the grand characteristics of a man of fashion. Tobac- 
conists’ shops were then common ; and as the article, which 
appears to have been sold at a high price, was indispensable 
to the gay ‘man about town,’ he generally endeavored to 
keep his credit good with his tobacco-merchant. Poets and 
pamphleteers laughed at the custom, though generally they 
seem to have no particular aversion to an occasional treat to 
a sober pipe and a poute of sack. Your men of war, who 
had served in the Low Countries, and who taught young 
gallants the noble art of fencing, were particularly fond of 
tobacco; and your gentlemen adventurers, who had served 
in a buccaneering expedition against the Spaniards, were no 
less partial to it. Sailors—from the captain to the ship-boy 
—all affected to smoke, as if the practice was necessary to 
their character; and to ‘take tobacco’ and wear a silver 
whistle, like a modern boatswain’s mate, was the pride of a 
man-of-war’s man. 
“Ben Jonson, of all our early dramatic writers, most 
frequently alludes to the practice of smoking. In his play 
of ‘Every Man in his Humour,’ first acted in 1598, Captain 
Bobadil thus extols in his own peculiar vein the virtues of 
tobacco; while Cob, the water carrier, with about equal 
truth, relates some startling instances of its pernicious effects. 
, 
*Neander, in his work on “‘Tobacologia” (London, 1622), mentions eighteen varieties of 
tobacco, or at least localities from whereit was shipped to London, among which are the 
following: Varinas (considered the best), Brazil, Maracay, Orinoco, Margarita, Caracas, 
Cumana, Amazon, Virginia, Phillipines, St. Lucia, Trinidad, and St. Domingo. 
+“ The first author (says an Eng ish writer) who wrote of this Plant was Charles Stepha- 
nus, in 1564. This was a mean, short, inaccurate Draught, till Dr. John Liebault wrote a 
whole Discourse of it next year, and put it into his second Book of Husbandry, which was 
every year reprinted with additions and alterations, for twenty years after. He had a large 
Correspondence, a good Intelligence, and wrote the best of the age, and gathered the great- 
‘est stock of experience about this new Plant.” 
