OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLD. 341 



which goes far beyond all the panaceas, potable gold, and philo- 

 sopher's stones, a sovereign remedy to all diseases. A good vomit, 

 I confess ; a virtuous herb, if it be well qualified, opportunely taken, 

 and medicinally used ; but as it is commonly abused by most men, 

 which take it as tinkers do ale, 'tis a plague, a mischief, a violent 

 purger of goods, lands, health; hellish, devilish, and damned tobacco, 

 the ruin and overthrow of body and soul !" Such a description of 

 the extent to which tobacco was " commonly abused," in the early 

 part of the seventeenth century (1621) is only explicable by such 

 modes of partaking of it as still prevail among savage tribes, for 

 scarcely even the grossest excesses of the modern smoker and chewer 

 would admit of such terms of denunciation. 



The growing size of the tobacco pipe, as it approaches the era of 

 the Revolution, indicates the introduction of a contemporaneous 

 nicotian revolution also, which adapted the pipe of the Indian 

 medicine-man to the philosophical reveries of an English Newton; 

 and within a centnry from Zacharie Boyd's association of tobacco 

 with the dissipation of " The wine pint," enabled the devout author 

 of the il G-ospel Sonnets," to superadd to these his " Smoking 

 Spiritualized : inserted as a proper subject of meditation to smokers 

 of Tobacco ; the first part being an Old Meditation upon smoking 

 Tobacco ; and the second a new addition to it, or Improvement of 

 it."* In his " improvement "of his text the grave divine indulges in 

 nicotian similes, such as, from less reverent hands, would seem 

 profane ; comparing the " naughty foreign weed " to " the plant of 

 great renown," to "Jesse's flower" and "Sharon's Eose !" and 

 " The smoke, like burning incense," to devout prayer; closing each 

 stanza with the refrain : 



" Thus think, and smoke Tobacco." 



In this the fanciful moralist "improved" on an old song, which 

 has been traced to the early part of the seventeenth century, and is 

 still preserved on more than one Broadside of dates as early at least 

 as 1670 and 1672. In the former of these it bears the initials " Gr. 

 ~WV' supposed to be those of George Wither, who is reputed to 

 have found solace in the luxury it celebrates. This unlucky puritan 

 poet, who died in 1667, is said by his unloving biographer, Anthony 

 A'Wood, to have owed his life, on one occasion, to a bon-mot of a 



* " Gospel Sonnets, or Spiritual Songs, in six parts, concerning Creation and Redemption, 

 Law and Gospel. Justification and Sanctification, Faith and Sense, Heaven and Hell. By 

 the late Reverend Mr. Ralph Erskine, Minister of the Gospel at Dunfermline." My 

 copy is the 2oth Edition. Edinburgh, 1797 :— a sufficient evidence of the popularity which 

 this work once had. 



