OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLD. 253 



sufficiently clear evidence that smoking was unknown to Europe 

 before the discovery of this continent. Spain doubtless first en- 

 joyed the novel luxury ; probably — at the latest, — not long after the 

 commencement of the sixteenth century. The year 1560 is assigned 

 for its introduction into France, and most commonly that of 158(3, — 

 in which Admiral Drake's fleet returned from the attack on the west 

 Indian Islands — for its reaching England. But though in all pro- 

 bability only begiuning at these dates to attract special attention, 

 the custom of smoking tobacco can scarcely be supposed to have re- 

 mained unknown to the Spaniards before the close of the fifteenth 

 century, or to have failed to have come under the notice both of French 

 and Englishmen at an early period thereafter. "When at length fairly 

 introduced into England, it met with a ready welcome. So ea'ly as 

 1615, we find the popular poet, Joshua Sylvester following in the 

 wake of the royal counterblast, with his : — " tobacco battered, and 

 the pipes shattered about their ears that idly idolize so base and 

 barbarous a weed, or at leastwise overlove so loathsome a vauity, 

 by a volley of holy shut thundered from Mount Helicon." — tolerable 

 proof of the growing favour for the '' weed." The plant itself w r as 

 speedily brought over and cultivated in various districts, till prohibited 

 by an act of Parliament; and Pepys, in his Diary, — referring to 

 Winehcoinbe, in Gloucestershire, where tobacco is affirmed to have 

 been first raised in England, — under the date, September 19th, 1667, 

 mentions the information communicated to him by his cozen, Kate 

 Joyce: ''now the life-guard, which we thought a little while siace 

 was sent down into the country about some insurrection, was sent 

 to Winehcoinbe, to spoil the tobacco there, which it seems the people 

 there do plant contrary to law, and have always done, and still been 

 under force and danger of having it spoiled, as it hath been oftentimes, 

 and yet they will continue to plant it."* 



Another entry of the same indefatigable diarist, furnishes evidence 

 not only of the early faith in the anti-contagious virtues of tobacco, 

 but also of the no less early mode of using it in England according 

 to a fashion which is now more frequently regarded as a special preroga- 

 tive of young America. On the 7th of June, 1665, Pepys notes that 

 the first sight of the plague-cross, with its accompanying solemn 

 formula of prayer, moved him, not to a devotional ejaculation, as 

 might perhaps seem most fitting, but only to chew tobacco ! " The 

 hottest day," he writes, '-that ever I felt in my life. This day, much 

 against my will, I did in Drury Lane, see two or three houses marked 



* Pepys' Diary, 4th Edition. Vol. III., p. 252. 



