Social Progress of Tobacco 8i 



even soldiers and carmen did before.' Ralph 

 Thoresby, the Leeds antiquary, recording an even- 

 ing he spent with his brother at Caraway's Coffee 

 House in 1702, says he ' was surprised to see his 

 sickly child of three years old fill its pipe of tobacco 

 and smoke it as audfarrandly* as a man of three 

 score ; after that a second and a third pipe without 

 the least concern, as it is said to have done above a 

 year ago.' Of the precocity of the present genera- 

 tion we are being constantly assured, but seasoned 

 smokers of three years of age are not to be met with. 

 It is not unlikely that Thoresby was mistaken in 

 the age of his nephew, but of the fact that children 

 at an early age were taught to smoke for the sake of 

 their health, as in this case, there is no doubt. 



Under William III., the Prince of that nation of 

 smokers, the Dutch, tobacco in England became even 

 more popular. Pipes grew bigger and smoking more 

 and more common. Misson, in his 'Memoirs of 

 Travels over England,' 1697, noted the ' perpetual 

 use of tobacco ' among men and women, especially in 

 the country. This, the Frenchman concluded, ' makes 

 the generality of Englishmen so taciturn, so thought- 

 ful, and so melancholy. Smoking makes men pro- 

 found theologists, for no men in the world will smoke 

 a pipe better than an English clergyman, and all the 

 world knows that the English theology is the most 

 profound theology of all.' 



At that time tobacco was ubiquitous, smoking in- 

 cessant. In 1621 the House of Commons had con- 

 sidered the advisability of banishing tobacco from 

 * Old-fashioned. 



6 



