SnufF and Snuff-takers 277 



mind, as our list of famous users shows. Smoke is 

 the humour and snuff the wit of tobacco ; the one 

 tends to philosophy, the other towards the arts. Snuff 

 also is associated with laxity of morals, as well as 

 brilliance of society ; smoke with a stricter code of 

 morals and sterner virtus. The brilliant and profli- 

 gate Court of France was the home of snuff. Puritan 

 England smoked. The brilliant gaiety and licentious 

 excesses of eighteenth-century society was ushered 

 in with snuff, and the dawn of the purer Victorian 

 era was synchronous with the revival of smoking. 



It would be curious and interesting to trace the 

 connection between the sobriety and prose of this 

 smoking age and the brilliance and wit of our snuff- 

 taking ancestors. In dress and life we are as dull as 

 our ancestors were gay ; in national affairs as cautious 

 and fearful as they were decisive and bold. Nowa- 

 days we do not converse ; we talk and listen. The 

 highest effort to which one aspires is the reproduction 

 of the arguments and news of the morning's paper. 

 Originality, bon mots, and epigrams are unheard of. 

 Is smoking to answer for this ? A return to the 

 snuff with its soul-stirring pungency would lead, per- 

 chance, to the brilliance in conversation and bright- 

 ness of life of our century-old ancestors, for rappee 

 seems to be as synonymous with repartee, and snuff 

 with epigram, as periwigs with courtesy and knee- 

 breeches with gallantry. 



