Or THE OLD AND NEW WORLD. 245 



"The Scornful Lady" speaks ironically of "wealthy tobacco-mer- 

 chants, that set up with one ounce, and break for three !" It shares 

 indeed, with gambling, drinking, and other vices, in helping on the 

 young spendthrifts of the drama to speedy ruin. In " Bartholomew 

 Fair," (Act II., Scene VI,) the puritan Justice, Overdo, warns 

 against " lusting after that tawny weed tobacco, whose complexion is 

 like the Indian's that vents it !" and after berating it in terms 

 scarcely quotable, he reckons the novice's outlay at " thirty pounds 

 a week in bottle-ale, forty in tobacco !" So, too, in Beaumont and 

 Fletcher's " Wit without Money," Valentine " a gallant that will not 

 be persuaded to keep his estate," picturing to his faithless rival-! in 

 his love suit, the beggary that awaits them, sums up a list of the 

 slights of fortune with : " English tobacco, with half-pipes, nor in 

 half a year once burnt." More quaint is the allusion with which 

 Robin Goodfellow, in "the Shepherd's Dream." (1(512.) fixes the 

 introduction of the novel luxury, where reluctantly admitting the 

 benefits of the Eeformation, he bewails the exit of popery and the 

 introduction of tobacco as concurrent events! 



From this date the allusions to the use and abuse of the Indian 

 weed abound, and leave no room to question the wide diffusion of the 

 practice of smoking in the seventeenth century. Burton, in his 

 " Anatomy of Melancholy," (1621).. prescribes tobacco as " a 

 sovereign remedy to all diseases, but one commonly abused by most 

 men ;" while in Zacharie Boyd's " Last Battell of the Soulein Death," 

 printed at Edinburgh in 1629. the quaint old divine speaks of the 

 backslider as one with whom " the wyne pint and tobacca pype 

 with sneesing pouder, provoking sneuele, were his heartes delight !" 



The term employed by Zacharie Boyd for snuff, is still in the 

 abreviated form of " sneeshin" the popular Scottish name for this 

 preparation of tobacco. There are not wanting, however, abundant 

 proofs of the ancient use of aromatic powders as snuff, long before 

 the introduction of tobacco to Europe. One familiar passage from 

 Shakespeare will occur to all ; where Hotspur describing the fop- 

 ling lord "perfumed like a milliner," adds : — 



" And 'twixt his finger ami bis thumb be held 

 A pouncet-box, which ever and ,inon 

 He gave bis nose, and took't away again ; 

 Who, therewith angry, when it next came there 

 Took it in snuff." 



The illustration which this passage affords of the ancient use of 

 pungent and aromatic powders in one manner in which tobacco has 

 been so extensively employed since its introduction into Europe, 



