CHAPTER III. 



TOBACCO IN EUROPE. 

 (and its literary associations.) 



The history of the origin of popular customs is 

 generally involved in obscurity, it is the natural result 

 of that very popularity which seems to render the office 

 of historian unnecessary. Tradition thus occupies the 

 place of the written chronicle, and when the latter has 

 to be compiled, many facts have been lost or distorted. 

 It is thus that the European use of Tobacco has been 

 descanted on by various writers, some of whom, not 

 content with doubting the persons who are popularly 

 thought to have introduced it in the sixteenth century, 

 have asserted its use in the East as an historic fact 

 some centuries before the discovery of America. It is 

 certain that the fumes of plants were used in medicine 

 from a very early period; but the wild assertions 

 deduced therefrom as to the early custom of tobacco 

 smoking in the Old World, can only be classed among 

 " the curiosities of literature," * inasmuch as no one 



* We must dispose of some few of these in a note. The " tradition " of 

 the Greek Church that Noah was intoxicated by tobacco would seem to be 

 the production of some holy humourist. The grave assertion of Dr. Yates 

 that he saw a representation of a smoking party in an ancient tomb in 



