OE THE OLD AND NEW WORLD. 213 



It may be, indeed, that the recently acquired knowledge of tobacco 

 and its fumes, in Europe, sufficed to prevent the poet introducing 

 such an anachronism amid scenes of ancient Scottish story. Never- 

 theless, a hypercritical adherence to archaeological proprieties never 

 interferes with the graphic touches which give life to every scene of 

 the Shakespearean drama ; and that the mere anachronism would not 

 of itself have deterred Shakespeare from an allusion to tobacco, if its 

 unfamiliar novelty did not render it unsuitable for his purpose, may 

 be inferred from liberties of a like kind which have proved fertile 

 texts to many a verbal critic. The soldier's simile in the same 

 tragedy, (Act I., Scene II.,) where he compares the royal captains, 

 Macbeth and Banquo, to " cannons overcharged with double cracks ;" 

 or Sweno of Norway, disbursing his ten thousand dollars at Saint 

 Colmes Inch ; (Act I., Scene 111.,) or Menenius, in " Coriolanus," 

 (Act V., Scene I..) with his: — 



" Fair of tribunes that have rack'd for Rome 

 To make coals chiap;" 



or a hundred similar instances, familiar to the readers of our great 

 dramatist, would all seem equally inadmissible were they not already 

 there. It seems to me, however, that the association of tobacco 

 "fumes" with "wine and wassail," a very few years later than the 

 production of " Macbeth," would have prevented the use of the for- 

 mer term, in such an association in its less popular sense, as is done 

 in that drama. The allusion there is to the rising of fumes of 

 vapour, in distillation; but Bacon, who, in his thirty -tmird essay : 

 li Of Plantations," speaks of the tobacco of Virginia as one of the 

 " commodities which the soil where the plantation is, doth naturally 

 yield," elsewhere recommends " that it were good to try tie taking 

 of fumes by pipes, as they do in tobacco, of other things to dry and 

 comfort." Here therefore, we perceive the adoption of Shakespear's 

 term "fumes," for the smoke of tobacco within a very few years 

 after the production of " Macbeth," a work assigned by nearly all 

 his best editors to the reign of James I. 



It is curious indeed to note how nearlv Ave can approximate to a 

 precise date for the literary recognition of the " Indian weed," which 

 has been such a favourite of the student in later times. Warner, who 

 wrote his onc<.- popular (i Albion's England," in 1586, added to it 

 three additional books in 1606, in the first of which (Book XIV. 

 chap. 91.), a critical imp inveighs against the decline of the manners 

 of the good old times; and among other symptoms of decay, misses 

 the smoke of the old manor-chimney, which once gave evidence of 



