DRINKING TOBACCO. 



57 



joker making a party laugh, so that "the tihie took a 

 reverend old gentlewoman when she was a drinking, 

 and she did squirt the beer out of her nose, as an Indian 

 does tobacco." The term was constantly used until the 

 middle of the seventeenth century ; for the catalogue 

 of Rubens' effects, sent over by Sir Balthazar Gerbier 

 to Charles I. in 1640, calls a Dutch picture of smokers 

 " the Tobacco-drinkers." The fashionable mode of 

 thus inhaling tobacco-smoke, and expelling it by the 

 nose, is curiously shown in the accompanying cut, 



copied from a rare little volume in 12mo, printed at 

 Eotterdam in 1623, and entitled, Een Korte beschry- 

 vinge van liet wonderlycke kruyt Tobacco* The 

 engraving is valuable for the clear way in which it 



* This work is dedicated to an Englishman, "The worthy nobleman , 

 M. Humphry King, Knight, and Chief Sovereign of the Order of Glorious 

 Tobacco." The Dutch were always enthusiasts for the herb. 



