TOBACCO IMPERSONATED. 95 



In a MS. volume of poetry in the possession of Mr. 

 J. Payne Collier, is a poem on tobacco, which seems to 

 be an amplification of Mr. Butler's Busse against 

 Tobacco* (Gough's Norfolk MS., 43 Bodl. Lib.), and 

 begins thus : 



" Tobacco's an outlandish, weed, 

 Doth in the land strange wonders breed ; 

 It taints the breath, the blood it dries, 

 It burns the head, it blinds the eyes ; 

 It dries the lungs, scourgeth the lights, 

 It 'numbs the soul, it dulls the sprites ; 

 It brings a man into a maze, 

 And makes him sit for other's gaze ; 

 It makes a man, it mars a purse, 

 A lean one fat, a fat one worse ; 

 A sound man sick, a sick man sound, 

 A bound man loose, a loose man bound ; 

 A white man black, a black man white, 

 A night a day, a day a night ; 

 The wise a fool, the foolish wise, 

 A sober man in drunkard's guise ; 

 A drunkard, with a draught or twain, 

 A sober man it makes again ; 

 A full man empty, and an empty full, 

 A gentleman a foolish gull ; 

 It turns the brain like cat in pan, 

 And makes a Jack a gentleman." 



In Brewer's " pleasant comedy " entitled Lingua ; 

 or_ the Combat of the Tongue and the Five Senses for 

 superiority, 1617, tobacco is impersonated as one of 

 the suite of Olfactus, or the sense of smelling, and his 

 appearance is thus described : " Tobacco apparelled in 



* This appears to have been written jestingly, as Lamb wrote his verses 

 against smoking. Butler was an eminent physician and humorist. See 

 a recipe of his, p. 98, note. He was a lover of tobacco. 



