The Literature of Tobacco 219 



tobacco, confining itself to short sketches of, and 

 extracts from, some of the numerous volumes pub- 

 lished in praise and depreciation of the Indian herb. 



Like most successful things, smoking excited 

 opposition and abuse by its very success. Ten or 

 twenty years after its introduction into England 

 tobacco began to be fiercely assailed in poems, 

 pamphlets and treatises. In 1602 was published 

 ' Worke for Chimney-Sweepers,' the first English book 

 devoted to the abuse and condemnation of smoking. 

 Its successors are appearing even in this day, repro- 

 ducing the same arguments, drawing the same conclu- 

 sions, and indulging in the same vituperation with 

 which the first anti-tobacconists attacked the practice 

 300 years ago. Originality, even in abuse, is a vice 

 to which non-smokers certainly are not addicted. 

 This first attack on smoking was followed speedily 

 by a ' Defence of Tobacco.' Before that, however, 

 Spenser, in the ' Faerie Queene,' had sung of the 

 healing virtues of ' divine tobacco,' and Lilly, Eliza- 

 beth's Court poet, had praised the curative effects of 

 ' our holy herb nicotian.' It may be pointed out that 

 the adjective ' divine,' now applied to tobacco in a 

 merely metaphorical or euphemistic sense, was then 

 literally correct, tobacco being considered by the 

 Indians as a gift from the gods, and so used in their 

 sacred rites. 



In ' Dyet's Dry Dinner' Henry Buttes praised 

 tobacco for its hunger-quenching virtues, as many a 

 mortal since has done and will do — a complete meal 

 in itself without wine or liquor. Similarly Rowlands 

 in 161 1 declared : 



