LAUDATORY SONGS. 101 



It is not the smack 

 Of ale or of sack, 



That can with tobacco compare : 

 For taste and for smell, 

 It bears away the bell 



From them both, wherever they are : 

 For all their bravado, 

 It is Trinidado, 



That both their noses will wipe 

 Of the praises they desire, 

 Unless they conspire 



To sing to the tune of his pipe. 



The verse that has been written in the praise and 

 dispraise of tobacco, would, of itself, fill a volume ; but, 

 among the quantity, no piece has been more en- 

 duringly popular than the song of Tobacco is an 

 Indian iveed. It has undergone a variety of changes 

 (deteriorating rather than improving it), and through 

 these it may be traced, from the reign of James I., 

 down to the present clay. 



The earliest copy I have seen (says Mr. Chappell, in 

 his Popular Music of the Olden Time) is in a manu- 

 script volume of poetry transcribed during James's 

 reign, and which was most kindly lent to me by Mr. 

 Payne Collier. It there bears the initials of G[eorge] 

 W[ither], a very likely person to have written such a 

 song. A courtier poet would not have sung the praises 

 of smoking — so obnoxious to the King as to induce 

 him to write a Counterblaste to Tobacco — but Wither 

 despised the servility which would have tended to his 

 advancement at court. " He could not refrain," says 



had the gods known thy immortal smack, 



The heavens 'ere this time had been colored Had:' 



