As the new sedative gains in esteem, we find Francis Quarles, in his "Emblems," treating it in this serio-comic vein:--
"Flint-hearted Stoics, you whose marble eyes Contemn a wrinkle, and whose souls despise To follow Nature's too affected fashion, Or travel in the regent walk of passion,-- Whose rigid hearts disdain to shrink at fears, Or play at fast-and-loose with smiles and tears,-- Come, burst your spleens with laughter to behold A new-found vanity, which days of old Ne'er knew,--a vanity that has beset The world, and made more slaves than Mahomet,-- That has condemned us to the servile yoke Of slavery, and made us slaves to smoke, But stay! why tax I thus our modern times For new-born follies and for new-born crimes? Are we sole guilty, and the first age free? No: they were smoked and slaved as well as we. What's sweet-lipped honor's blast, but smoke? what's treasure, But very smoke? and what's more smoke than pleasure?"
Brand gives us the whole matter in a nutshell, in the following quaint epigram, entitled "A Tobacconist," taken from an old collection:--
"All dainty meats I do defy Which feed men fat as swine; He is a frugal man, indeed, That on a leaf can dine.
"He needs no napkin for his hands His fingers' ends to wipe, That keeps his kitchen in a box, And roast meat in a pipe."
And so on, the singers of succeeding years, _usque ad nauseam_,--a loathing equalled only by that of the earlier writers for the plant, now so lauded.
Tobacco-worship seems to us to culminate in the following stanza from a German song:--
"Tabak ist mein Leben, Dem hab' ich mich ergeben, ergeben; Tabak ist meine Lust. Und eh' ich ihn sollt' lassen, Viel lieber wollt' ich hassen, Ja, hassen selbst eines Mädchens Kuss."
As it is with your sex, my dear Madam, that this question of Tobacco is to be mainly argued,--for, to your honor be it spoken, you have always been of the reformatory party,--let us hope, that, provided you have not read or translated the last verse, you have recovered your natural amiability, ruffled perhaps by this odious subject, and are prepared to believe us when we tell you that these opposite opinions cannot be wholly reconciled, and to follow us patiently while we attempt to show that a certain gentleman, introduced to your maternal ancestor at a very remote period of the world's history, is not so black as he is sometimes painted. Let us keep good-natured, at least, in this discussion; for we propose to settle it without taking off the gloves, as we intimated in the opening paragraph. Your patience will be much needed for the sad army of facts and figures which is to follow. Therefore it is but just that you should speak now, after these long sentences.