56 TOBACCO IN EUROPE. 



may be of gold or silver, if lie can reach the price of 

 it ; it will be a reasonable useful pawn at all times, 

 when the amount of his money falls out to run low. 

 And here you must observe to know in what tobacco is 

 in town, better than the merchants, and to discourse of 

 the apothecaries where it is to be sold ; then let him 

 show his several tricks in taking it, as the whiff, the 

 ring, &c, for these are compliments that gain gentle- 

 men no mean respect." 



What we now call smoking was at this period gene- 

 rally termed drinking tobacco. The author of " Vox 

 Civitatis, or London's complaint against her children 

 in the country " (1686) ; speaking of the dissolute and 

 debauched who loiter about taverns and public places 

 says, "Men will not stand upon it to drink either wine, 

 or tobacco with them who are more fit for Bride- 

 well." * 



The term, no doubt, originated in the custom of in- 

 haling the smoke, and allowing it to escape through the 

 nose;f a fashion in which it was originally enjoyed by 

 the Indians. The Duke of Newcastle, in his Comedy 

 of The Triumphant Widow (Act 3, Sc. 1), speaks of a 



* Two more illustrations of the use of the term are here given : — 

 "We'll stay here to drink tobacco." — Miseries of Inforced Marriage, 

 1607. (Dodsley's Old Plays.) " The smoke of tobacco (the which Dodo- 

 neus called rightly Henbane of Peru) drunlce and draiven by a pipe, filleth 

 the membranes of the braine, and astonisheth and filleth many persons 

 with such joy and pleasure, and sweet losse of senses, that they can by no 

 means be without it." — The Perfuming of Tobacco, and the great abuse 

 committed in it, 1611. 



*f* Marston in his Mountebank's Masque says, humorously, ' ' The 

 divell cannot take tobacco through his nose, for St. Dunstan hath seared 

 that up with his tongs." 



