THE FIRST SNUFFERS. 249 
“ The luckless fate of inventors and originators has become 
proverbial, but the ingenious individual whose nostrils 
rejoiced in the first pinch of snuff stood in no need of the 
niggardly praise of contemporaries or the lavish gratitude 
of posterity. That first ‘ pinch’ was its own priceless reward, 
far above present appreciation or future fame. What mat- 
ters it, that his great name has not been reverently handed 
down to us: that posterity seeks in vain his honored tomb, on 
which to hang her grateful votive wreath; that zealous anti- 
quaries have raised up innumerable pretenders to his unclaimed 
honors, and striven to rob him of his fame? Enough for 
that lucky inventor, wherever he may rest, that he enjoyed 
in his lifetime the reward for which ordinary benefactors of 
their kind are fain to look to the future. 
“Tt is perfectly vain to attempt now to penetrate into the 
mystery which envelopes the name and nation of the first 
snufi-taker: long before rough, noble-hearted Drake cured 
his dyspepsia by the use of tobacco, or Raleigh transplanted 
some roots of that precious weed into English soil, there 
were European noses which had rejoiced at its pulverized 
leaves. Conjecture, lost in the mazy distance, gladly lays 
hold of something substantial in the shape of snufl’s first 
royal patron. This was Catherine de Medicis, who, receiv- 
ing some seeds of the tobacco plant from a Dutch colony, 
cherished them, and elevated the dried and pounded leaves 
into a royal medicine, with the proud title of ‘Herbe 4 la 
Reine.’ Tor in the beginning men took snuff, not as an 
everyday luxury, but as a medicament. Like tea—which a 
hundred years later was advertised as a cure for every ill— 
the new sneezing powder was hailed a universal specific; 
and so pleasant in its operation, that mankind, acting upon 
the wholesome aphorism that prevention is much better than 
cure, and eagerly anticipated the disease it was supposed to 
remedy.” ats 
“The use of ‘the pungent grains of titillating dust’ 
received a somewhat heavy and discouraging blow from an 
unexpected quarter. That ubiquitous power which hurled 
anathemas alike at the heresies of Luther and the length of 
clerical wigs, discountenanced its use, and at length fairly 
lost its temper in the contest with snuff. Whether from 
a prescience of the beneficial influence it was destined to 
exert upon mankind, or from a suspicion of its power of 
sharpening intellects, it is difficult to say; but Popes Urban 
VIIL., and Innocent waged quite a miniature crusade against 
