J23
339.84
! i

Тавасси
THE LIBRARY
OF THE
UNI
RSIT
OMNIBUS ARTIBUS)
COMPUNE VINCU
CLASS
BOOK
OF
*
MINNESOT
339.84
J23
A
COUNTERBLAST TO TOBACCO,
BY JAMES THE FIRST,
KING OF ENGLAND.
WITH NOTES & ILLUSTRATIONS,
BY CHARLES BECKINGTON.
PRICE TWO SHILLINGS.
1843.
86
A
COUNTERBLAST TO TOBACCO,
BY
JAMES THE FIRST,
KING OF ENGLAND.
WITH NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS,
BY CHARLES BECKINGTON.
NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE:
PRINTED BY PATTISON AND ROSS, 48, PILGRIM STREET.
1843.
FED 1 36
339.84
J23
PREFACE.
IN
In this age of curiosity, when whatever seems
to throw light upon the history, literature, or
manners of our country in ancient times, is
anxiously sought after, the publication of the
following tractate, the production of James
the First, may be acceptable to the public.
It was first printed in quarto, without name
or date, by Barker and Bill, London (1616).
In the frontispiece was engraved the Tobacco
smoker's coat of arms, consisting of a blacka-
moor's head, cross pipes, cross leg bones, death
heads, &c., curiously and scientifically dis-
posed, as a warning to Tobacconists. In 1672,
it was again published (inter alia) under the
following title-page: "Two Broadsides against
Tobacco; the first given by K. James, of fa-
mous memory, his Counterblast to Tobacco;
643660
iv
the second transcribed out of that learned
Physician, Doctor Everard Maynwaring's
Treatise on the Scurvy. To which is added,
Serious Cautions against Excess in Drinking,
&c., with a short Collection out of Doctor
George Thompson's Treatise on Blood, against
Smoking and Drinking, with two Poems
against Tobacco and Coffee. Printed and
published as very proper for this age, London,
1672." An impression of the latter work is
preserved in the Library of the British Mu-
seum; and for the following reprint the edi-
tor is indebted to that source. For the notes
and other illustrations of the volume, he is
himself responsible; and although his labours
may not be appreciated, and his pains in pre
paring this edition for the press may go un-
rewarded, he will yet have the satisfaction of
having rescued from oblivion the genuine
work of a genius-a king of England-and
one of the most illustrious characters of his
age.
!
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
ON THE
PRIMITIVE USE OF TOBACCO IN ENGLAND.
1
In order to form a just estimation of the character and
dispositions of any particular people, it is necessary to
investigate their domestic customs, and to follow them
into their retirements, where no disguise is necessary.
Such, in part, is the province of this Introduction, which
is intended to illustrate a certain portion of our English
history-the estimation in which Tobacco-smoking was
held by King James the First, and the forms in which
the usage appeared when the following "Counterblast"
was discharged against it.
Smoking was the first mode of taking Tobacco in
England; and we learn from the comic writers towards
the close of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seven-
teenth centuries, that "to wear a pair of velvet breeches,
with panes or slashes of silk, an enormous starched ruff,
a gilded handled sword, and a Spanish dagger, to play
at cards or dice in the chamber of the groom-porter,
and to smoke tobacco in the tilt-yard, or at the play-
house, were then the grand characteristics of a man of
b
vi.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
fashion and spirit." It is well known that Sir Walter
Raleigh was the first to set the practice of smoking;
and there is a tradition, that in order to escape obser-
vation, he began to smoke privately in his dwelling at
Islington, the remains of which were till lately to be
seen as an inn, long known at the Pied Bull. This
house was the first in England in which Tobacco was
smoked, and Raleigh had his arms emblazoned there
with a Tobacco plant upon the top. If we may credit
what the author of the Biographia Britannica assures
us to be a fact, during one of these pleasing reveries
under the soothing influence of the pipe, the servant,
whose duty it was to attend Raleigh with his tankard
of ale, happened to come as he was intent upon his book.
Seeing the smoke issue from his mouth, and believing
he was actually on fire, the artless fellow threw upon him
the contents of the tankard, and by his cries aroused the
family to his assistance with buckets of water. Fortu-
nately for the knight, however, the deposit had extin-
guished the pipe, and the latter expedients were not
required.
In communicating the art to his friends, Sir Walter
was in the habit of giving entertainments at his house,
where his guests were usually treated with pipes of To-
bacco, a mug of ale, and a nut-meg-a somewhat curious
origin of smoking parties or divans in England. The
celebrated Tobacco-box of Sir Walter was made use of
on these occasions: it was of a cylindrical form, about
seven inches in diameter, and 13 inches high; the outside
was of gilded leather, and within was a receiver of glass
or metal, which would hold about a pound of Tobacco;
a kind of collar connected the receiver with the case,
and on every side the box was pierced with holes for the
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
vii.
1
pipes. This relique was preserved in the museum of
Mr. Ralph Thoresby, of Leeds, in 1719, and was only
recently added by his late Royal Highness the Duke of
Sussex to that prince's collection of the Smoking Uten-
sils of all Nations.
Malcolm has preserved a tradition which existed in
the parish of St. Matthew, Friday Street, London, that
Raleigh was accustomed to sit smoking at his door, in
company with Sir Hugh Middleton. "The custom was
probably promoted," adds Malcolm, "through the pub-
lic manner in which it was exhibited, and the aromatic
flavour inhaled by the passengers, exclusive of the singu-
larity of the circumstance, and the eminence of the par-
ties. Indeed the two last motives," he continues, "are
alone adequate to establish a custom ten times more
loathsome than King James describes Tobacco to be."
The example of men so celebrated and popular was soon
imitated by Elizabeth, who, notwithstanding her strong
and powerful mind, possessed the sex's natural vanity
and love of novelty, and would seem very warmly to have
patronized the custom even in her own person.*~(Quar-
terly Journal of Agriculture.)
A claimant for the honour of being the first female smoker in Eng-
land, appears in the person of MARY FRITH, or, as she was generally
called Moll Cutpurse. This extraordinary being lived near Fleet Street
Conduit, which she made to run with wine on the return of Charles I. from
Scotland in 1638. In the civil war, when the women and maids of every
parish went rank and file, with mattocks, shovels, and buckets, to work
at the fortifications round the city of London, Moll was their superin-
tendant. She was a participator in most of the crimes and wild frolics
of her time, and kept up a regular correspondence with the thieves.
Upon a sentence in the Court of Arches, she did penance at St. Paul's
Cross for wearing indecent apparel. She robbed the celebrated General
Fairfax on Hounslow Heath, and was one of the women barbers of Drury-
b 2
vill.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
"Queen Bess, she was a noble queen a,
"And a brave merry lass I ween a,
"She often smoked, would I had seen her,
Tobacco.
"Oh, these were golden times and blest,
"When she was every where confest
"To be the belle who smoked the best
Tobacco.
(Old Song.)
"It soon became of such vogue at her court, that
some of the great ladies,* as well as noblemen therein,
would not scruple to blow a pipe sociably."-(Biog.
Brit.) Elizabeth herself smoked in concert with Sir
Walter Raleigh, and it would seem that the vapour of
the pipe did not cast a cloud over the brilliant wit of
either. Conversing with his royal mistress upon the
singular properties of this new and extraordinary herb,
Raleigh assured her that he could ascertain the exact
Lane. When she found death had ordered her to lay by her pipe and
pot, she bequeathed the greater part of her property to her nephew,
with an order that he should not lay it out foolishly, but get drunk with
it while it lasted. She died in 1662, aged 73 years. Upon due
examination, it appears that at the death of Elizabeth, Cutpurse had
only attained her 14th year; and as the practice of fuming Tobacco was
in vogue by the British fair at Elizabeth's court, no one is certainly ·
better entitled than the queen herself to the premiership awarded to
Frith by her numerous admirers. In the reign of James I., however,
notwithstanding that king's Counterblast, Moll may have sUPERIN-
TENDED the practice, and thereby acquired her reputation for holding
the pipe between "the parted coral of her lips."
It is re-
* The patronage of the ladies did not extend to Acton.
corded that Raleigh, being upon a stand at Sir Robert Poyntz's Park,
"took a pipe of Tobacco, which made the ladies quit it till he had done."
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
ix.
weight of the smoke exuding from any quantity proposed
to be consumed. Her majesty, regarding the impracti-
cability of the perfumed vapour being confined in a ba-
lance, yet not without suspecting that he was playing
the traveller with her, laid a handsome wager for the
proof of his proposal. Upon this he selected the quan-
tity agreed upon, and, having thoroughly smoked it,
set himself to weighing of the ashes, and, in conclusion,
demonstrated to the queen that the difference between
them and the original weight of the Tobacco gave the
solution required. Elizabeth paid down the money,
telling Sir Walter that she had heard of many labourers
in the fire who had turned their gold into smoke; but
he was probably the first adventurer who had turned
smoke into gold.-—(Apophthegms of the English Nation,
MSS.)
After Raleigh had lost the countenance and favour of
his queen, in consequence of the excess to which the
fashion of smoking was carried, "the bodies of English-
men (as one wittily said), who are so highly delighted
with the Plant, seem to have degenerated into the na-
ture of barbarians, seeing that they delighted with the
same thing which the barbarians use, and think they can
be cured by it."* Elizabeth, ostensibly upon that ac-
count, published an edict against it. Little opposition,
however, was offered to the practice, and the edict itself
was probably withdrawn upon the restoration of Raleigh
to the royal favour.
* Camden thus states this fact:--" Anglorum corpora in barbarorum
naturam degenerasse, quam iidem ac barbari delectentur."- Annales
Rer. Anglica, p. 415.-1625.
It appears that the plant was used against crudities.
X.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
It appears from a note in the Criminal Trials, vol. 1,
p. 361, that in 1600, the French ambassador, in his
despatches, represented the peers on the trial of the
earls of Essex and Southampton as smoking Tobacco
copiously, while they deliberated on their verdict. Sir
Walter Raleigh, too, was accused of having sat with his
pipe at the window of the Armoury, while he looked on
at the execution of Essex, in the Tower, and of puffing
out Tobacco in disdain of him. But Sir Walter, whilst
on the scaffold for his own execution, said, in defence of
this, "I take God to witness that my lord of Essex did not
see my face at the time of his death, for I had retired
far off into the Armoury, where I indeed saw him and shed
tears for him." The first story also is most probably un-
true. Another accusation went to charge Raleigh with
sending a parcel of Tobacco to Lord Cobham. At length,
indeed, such became the extreme and almost unaccount-
able popular aversion to this great man, that as he tra-
velled to Winchester to stand his trial there, he was
followed by the execrations of the people through Lon-
don and other places, and TOBACCO PIPES, stones, and
mud were thrown into his coach. Raleigh had his pipe
every morning with his breakfast; and even on the morn-
ing of his death, he smoked his KEMBLE PIPE,* which,
said a writer of that day, "some formal persons were
* The explanation of the Kemble pipe is thus given by Bugslin, in
his edition of Walton and Cotton's Angler, 1808 :-"In the cruel perse-
cutions under that merciless bigot Queen Mary, a man of the name of
Kemble being condemned for heresy, in his walk of some miles from the
prison to the stake, amidst a crowd of weeping friends, SMOKED A PIPE
OF TOBACCO." In Herefordshire, the county of his death, to signify the
last or concluding pipe that any one intends to smoke at a sitting, the
term A KEMBLB PIPE is used to the present day.
}
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
xi.
scandalized at; but I think," he adds, "'twas well and
properly done to settle his spirits." On being asked if
it pleased him, “Aye," said Raleigh, "'tis indeed good
if a man might tarry by it."
From imitation of their superiors, and a favourable
opinion of its salutary qualities, Raleigh's fragrant herb,
which was "wont to be taken by gentlemen and gallants,
was now made the companion of every tapster and house-
keeper." Although sold at a high rate, sailors, from the
captain to the ship-boy, all affected to smoke, as if the
practice was necessary to their character, and to "take
Tobacco," and wear a silver whistle like a modern boat-
swain's mate, was the pride of a man of war's man. The
quid, one of the three indispensables of a modern mid-
shipman,* does not appear to have been chewed by
either seamen or landmen, for we read in Hymnus Ta-
baci (1625):—
"Some secret power lies
In this rare plant hid from our outward eyes.
Trust not the green juice then into your maw;
Eat not the leaf, there's danger in it raw.
Phoebus shall cook it for you, so you may
Take wholesome draughts, purged by his scorching ray.
For sure kind nature, if we may be bold
So far her cabinet councils to unfold,
Invented it a banquet for the brain,
Not for the belly."
Poets, players, play-wrights, and musicians were espe-
cially addicted to smoking; and a writer of that age,
* "You must learn to chew Backy, drink grog, and call the cat a
beggar, and then you know all a midshipman is expected to know now-
a-days."-Peter Simple, chap. 2.
xii.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
supposed to be Milton's father, describes many of the
ordinary play-books, pamphlets, and such like, as being
conceived over night by idle brains impregnated with
Tobacco smoke and mulled sack, and brought forth by the
help and midwifery of a caudle next morning.—(A sixe-
fold Politician, with a sixe-fold Precept of Policy, by
J. M., 8vo., 1609, p. 35.)
At the theatres (in Shakespeare's time) the spectators
were allowed to sit on the stage during the perform-
ances, and to be attended by pages, who furnished them
with Pipes and Tobacco, which they smoked there as
well as in other parts of the house.-(Malone's History
of the English Stage, 1598.) Hence we read-
"See you him yonder who sits on the stage,
With his TOBACCO-PIPE now at his mouth."
SKIALETHIA, a Collection of Epigrams
and Satires, 1598.
Such was the fondness of the times for dramatic en-
tertainments, that not fewer than 19 play-houses had
been opened in London before the year 1633. The ex-
penses of these amusements varied according to the qua-
lity of the visitors. Simple admission into the theatre
might be obtained for 2d., 3d., and 4d.; and the ex-
penses of the evening, including coach hire, boat hire,
Tobacco, wine, and beer, (the usual concomitants of the
place, as now at Saddler's Wells) have been calculated
at from 1s. to 5s.-(Prynn's Histriomastrix, 1633.)
For 6d. the gallant was admitted to a room or upon the
stage; and, for the like money, a stool was allowed him
in either place.-(Gull's Hornbook.) The stage was
considered a post of honor, and was usually resorted to
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
xiii.
by the fop and coxcomb for a convenient display of their
sweet persons.
Decker has ludicrously described the
advantages of the gallant in thus sitting upon the stage.
Not only is he thus better enabled to "get his match
lighted," &c., but a more weighty reason is, that, "as
your stinkard has the self same liberty to be there in his
Tobacco fumes which your sweet courtier hath,
*
it is fit that he whom the most tailors' bills do make
room for when he comes, should not be basely (like a
viol) cased up in a corner." An ancient satirical piece
called the Black Book, London, 1604, 4to, leaves a le-
gacy to one whom it calls "Arch Tobacco taker of Eng-
land in ordinaries upon stages both common and private;"
and no doubt a degree of reputation, a name, and
fame, was sometimes conferred upon parties. Indeed,
so much, we think, may be collected from the following
lines, of seeming individual application :--
"When young Roger goes to see a play,
His pleasure is you place him on the STAGE,
The better to demonstrate his array,
And how he sits attended by his page,
That only serves to fill those PIPES with smoke
For which he pawned his riding cloak."
Springs to catch IVoodcocks.—1598.
Taylor, the Water Poet, in his Proclamation for
Tobacco's Propagation, strongly protests against the wan-
tonness of the age. "Let playhouses," says he, "drink-
ing schools, taverns, &c., be continually haunted with
the contaminous vapours of it; nay (if it be possible)
bring it into the churches,* and there choak up the
* This was really the case at Cambridge, whither James I. sent a let-
ter in 1607, against taking Tobacco in St. Mary's.-Steevens's Origin
of the English Stage.
с
xiv.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
preachers." (Works, p. 253.)
(Works, p. 253.) Sir John Davis also
has mentioned the practice in a satirical epigram, written
in 1598 :-
"Who dares affirm that Sylla dares not fight?
He that dares TAKE TOBACCO ON THE STAGE
Dares dance in Paul's."
The absurd custom of sitting upon the stage during
the performances, formed the subject of a royal procla-
mation, issued by Queen Anne in 1711 :-" Whereas
we are informed that the order we have already given
for the reformation of the stage, by not permitting any
thing to be acted contrary to religion or good manners,
have in great measure had the effect we proposed; and
being further desirous to reform all other indecencies and
disorders of the stage, our will and pleasure therefore is,
and we do strictly command, that no person, of what
quality soever, presume to stand behind the scenes, or
come upon the stage either before or during the acting
of any opera or play; and that no person come into
either of our houses for opera or comedy, without paying
first the established prices for their respective places,
&c. This proclamation would appear to have had the
desired effect; for, in 1729, when the managers of Drury
Lane Theatre placed a seat on the stage for the
accommodation of the Duchess of Queensbury, the
audience loudly expressed their dissatisfaction of the
circumstance, and the seat was removed. The equally
absurd practice of placing two sentinels on the stage,
was not discontinued even so late as 1763; for it is men-
tioned that one of the soldiers, who was then on duty,
was fined 12d., having laughed at a player, in the
part of Sir Andrew Aguecheek, until he actually fell
99
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
XV.
convulsed on the boards. But to resume the thread, or,
more technically speaking, the twist of our historical
narrative.
When James ascended the British throne, the extreme
use of Tobacco had become a pest to society:
"The wine grew busie, and betwixt each cup
(As in a play 'twixt the acts) the pipes struck up."
As a luxury, the practice appears to have gained its
climax about 1610. "Every where," says Hentzner,
"the English are constantly smoking of Tobacco, and in
this manner they have pipes on purpose made of clay,
into the furthest end of which they put the herb so
dry that it may be rubbed into powder, and putting
fire to it, they draw the smoke into their mouths, which
they puff out again through their nostrils, like funnels,
along with it plenty of phlegm and deflux of the head."
Camden furnishes a similar description of its general
use as follows:-"Many persons every where, some
through wantonness (lascivientes), and others for the
sake of health, with inexpressible greediness sucked in
through an earthen pipe its excessively stinking smoke
(grave-olentum illius fumum), which they afterwards
blew out through their nostrils." This manner of taking
Tobacco, by partially swallowing the smoke and blowing
it out at the nostrils, was known at the period now un-
der review as Tobacco drinking; and it is probable that
this term was also applied to the practice of smoking and
swallowing the saliva, which habit enables many to do
with impunity, as well as in more ancient times to the
swallowing of the smoke itself, as Monardes tells us,
"The Indian priests drink the Tobacco fumes, with the
vigour and strength of which they fall suddenly to the
c 2
xvi.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
ground as dead men, remaining so according to the
quantity of smoke that they had taken." In A Work
for Chimney Sweepers, 1602, the practice of drinking
Tobacco is also mentioned:-" And in these our days,
many excellent physicians, and men of singular learning
and practice, do, by their daily account and custom in
drinking of Tobacco, give credit and authority to the
same." A reference is again made to the custom by
Ben Jonson:-"By this air," says he "the most divine
Tobacco that ever I drunk."--(Every Man in his Hu-
mour.) In Hymnus Tabaci it is also mentioned; and
here a definition is given of the term, drinking Tobacco,
according to the then prevailing practice in England :—
"Tobacco is not an indifferent thing,
But to the drinker good or ill may bring.
First try thy body then, and learn to know
Whether thy chimney carry smoke or no.”
Joseph Hall, afterwards Bishop of Norwich, in his
censure of the decline of ancient hospitality, in his Sa-
tires, printed in 1597, also refers to it:-
"Look to the towred chimneys, which should be
The wind pipes of good hospitality,
Through which it breatheth to the open air,
Betokening life and liberal warfare:
Lo, there the unthankful swallow takes her rest,
And fills the tunnel with her circled nest;
Nor half the smoke from all his chimneys goes
Which one Tobacco pipe drives through his nose."
This mode of smoking, or drinking Tobacco, continued
in vogue until towards the latter end of the reign of
James I., when the Tobacco takers discharged their
smoke by a less circuitous route; yet, at the present day,
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
xvii.
there are amateurs who occasionally test the flavour of a
cigar after the same fashion.
From the following passage in Ben Jonson's Alche-
mist, first acted in 1610, we gather some curious parti-
culars respecting the business of a Tobacconist* of that
period. It occurs in the first act, where Face thus in-
troduces Abel Drugger to Subtle :-
"This is my friend Abel, an honest fellow;
He lets me have good Tobacco, and he does not
Sophisticate it with sack leaves or oil,
Nor washes it in muscadel and grains,
Nor bruises it in gravel under ground,
Wrapped up in greasy leather or pissed clouts,
But keeps it in fine lily pots, that, opened,
Smell like conserve of roses or French beans.
He has his maple block, his silver tongs,
Winchester pipes, and fire of juniper ;-
A neat, spruce, honest fellow, and no goldsmith."
Before proceeding to explain the different modes of
sophistication, and two or three other particulars men-
tioned by Face relating to the business of a Tobacconist,
it seems necessary to premise a few remarks on the form
in which Tobacco was imported about that period. The
Virginian Tobacco was usually imported in the leaf, tied
up in small loose bundles as at present; while a consi-
derable portion of the Spanish Tobacco was imported in
the form of what the French term carottes, and in balls.
The obscene name by which the carottes were then known
in England is not yet wholly obsolete. Our sailors still
call them by their old names; and every person who has
visited the West Indies has heard of the facetious reply
* This term was applied to one who used Tobacco, as well as to one
who usually sold it.
xviii.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
of a sailor to a captain's wife, who, happening to see him
employed about some Tobacco, asked him what he was
going to make of it.
“Tenem volo fabricari domina sed
vereor ne ex illo coleos faciam." Neander, in his Tabaco-
logia, 1622, mentions that this kind of Tobacco was also
known to the Dutch by the same name.
The carottes,
which were about a cubit long and three inches in dia-
meter, were formed by laying the leaves, previously
sauced with molasses or some other liquid preparation,*
above each other, and then binding them tightly together
with packthread. The balls, which were about the size
of a man's head, were formed of Tobacco, coarsely spun
into a kind of thick twist, not unlike that of modern
Varinas. Those writers who were opposed to the
custom of smoking, frequently mention the filthy tricks
said to have been played by the Spanish slaves, in
preparing the Tobacco for the English market. The
leaf Tobacco, after it was brought into this country,
was frequently sprinkled with the lees of wine, salt
water, and other preparations, in order to improve its
flavour, or perhaps to increase its weight. In order to
prevent it becoming dry, it was frequently kept by deal-
ers wrapped up in sheep's skin or damp cloths; and To-
bacco that had become musty was occasionally buried in
gravel, in order that it might thus lose its unpleasant
odour. When the leaves were used for smoking, they
were generally rubbed small; while the carotte and ball
Tobacco were cut into small pieces on a block with a
knife. Abel Drugger's maple block probably served for
* In order to render the use of Tobacco more particularly disgusting
to Protestant smokers, it was stated that the black Popish slaves were
accustomed to call the filthy stuff with which they slubbered the leaves,
Sauce for Lutheran dogs."
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
xix.
this purpose, when he wished to cut extempore a choice
sample for a favourite customer. The lily pots were
white jars, similar to those which are frequently brought
from Holland. The juniper wood, which, when once
lighted, retains its fire long, was probably kept burning
in a kind of chafing dish, such as is seen in old Dutch
pictures; and the silver tongs were used by the custom-
ers to take up a piece of the burning embers to light
their pipes with. The art of manufacturing Tobacco
into fine threads was not then known. The pipes of
that period were shorter and straighter in the stem, and
more upright in the bowl, than at present. Those ma-
nufactured at Winchester appear to have been in the
greatest request. The author of the Sixe-fold Politician,
speaking of projectors, says, "If you desire to know
them further, they are pedling informers of the state,
men that have lapped up from the vomit of other men's
wits some excrements of court phrases, and thereupon
turned factors about the court, and contrive projects and
strange devices of Tobacco pipes, Cardas finas, brown
paper, French wares, dunghill shreds, and a thousand of
the like conceits." When Face commends Abel Drug-
ger as being no goldsmith, he means that he was not
accustomed to insure himself against the risk of bad
debts by charging an exorbitant price to his customers
who dealt with him on credit.-(A Paper of Tobacco,
Tyas, 1840.)
From a passage in an old English book, printed about
1597, we learn that Tobacconists were accustomed to
purchase unreadable poems and pamphlets, for the pur-
pose of folding their Tobacco; and, from the following
lines, it appears it was usual with them to decorate their
papers with a motto:
XX.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
"A shop neighbouring neare Iaccho,
When Young vends his old Tobacco;
'As you like it,' sometimes sealed
With impression since repealed.
As you make it, he will have it,
And in chart and front engrave it."
The rapid increase of smoking, towards the year 1610,
induced a proportionate supply of the plant; and in almost
every town of the kingdom, Tobacco taverns (Taberna
Tabaccana) became as general in that year as wine or
beer houses. Barnaby Rych (commonly called Drunken
Barnaby), in a pamphlet entitled "The Honesty of the
Age," 4to, London, 1614, says, "I have heard it told
that of very lately there hath been a catalogue taken of
all those new-erected houses that have set up that trade
of selling Tobacco in London, and near about London;
and if a man may believe what is confidently reported,
there are found to be upwards of 7,000 houses that doth
live by that trade." A Tobacconist's sign, about this
period, was frequently a lighted pipe and a chafing dish;
and the sign of the blackamoor smoking, with a roll of
Tobacco at his feet, is of equal antiquity.
So early as 1620, the Society of Tobacco Pipe Makers
in London, which had become a considerable body, was
incorporated by royal charter, and bore on a shield a
Tobacco plant in full blossom; and it is recorded that,
from the multiplicity of pipes in London, the children
played with broken ones instead of corals, to make way
for their teeth. Smoking had, in fact, become so serious
a nuisance, that, for many succeeding years, especial
orders were every where issued for the protection of the
higher classes generally, and of the ladies in particular.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
xxi.
Spencer, in his Fairy Queen, calls the plant "divine
Tobacco; but he probably spoke thus respectfully of it
in compliment to his friend and patron, Sir Walter Ra-
leigh. The epithet divine, however, was not destined to
be permanently attached to the herb; and about the
time that the Turkish vizier was thrusting pipes through
the noses of smokers, and the Shah of Persia was crop-
ping their ears and snipping their noses, the British king
was writing the following book against the same unhappy
class of persons.
Notwithstanding his violent anti-
pathy, we find it a stipulation in the treaty for Guiana,
that one tenth of the Tobacco cultivated there should of
right belong to the king (Harris, vol. i., p. 7); and
had he been aware that the herb against which he railed
would become, in future times, one of the most produc-
tive resources of the British revenue, he would probably
have left the subject to the town satirists, and to others
whom it more immediately concerned.
Several pamphleteers and poets, following the example
of the king, now discharged frequent, but ineffectual
tirades against the plant. It has been conjectured that
the "juice of cursed hebenon," by which the king of Den-
mark is said to be poisoned in Shakspeare's tragedy of
Hamlet, was the essential oil of Tobacco. To counte-
nance this, it is supposed by Dr. Gray that the word
*"Into the woods thenceforth in haste she went,
To seek for herbs that might him remedy;
For she of herbs had great intendiment,
Or of the nymph which from her infancy
Her nursed had in true nobility.
There, whether it divine Tobacco were,
Or Panachæa or Polygony,
She found and brought it to her patient dear,
Who all the while lay bleeding out his heart's blood near."
d
xxii.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
hebenon is a mistake of the poet or transcriber for hene-
bon, that is, henbane. From Gerarde it appears that
Tobacco was commonly called henbane of Peru (Hyoscy-
amus Peruvianus); and it is supposed by an ingenious
commentator, that Shakspeare, playing the courtier, in-
troduced the hebenon to accommodate himself to the
prejudices of King James; but, unfortunately for this
hypothesis, the tragedy of Hamlet, according to Mr.
Malone, was written in 1596, seven years before the ac-
cession of James to the throne of England. It has also
been said that it was to please his kingly patron that
Joshua Sylvester, the translator of Du Bartas' Divine
Weeks, and "A demy Captive to his puffing Pride,"
published his celebrated poem, with the following singu-
lar and long-winded title:"Tobacco battered and the
Pipes shattered (about their Ears that idly idolize so
base and barbarous a Wecd, or at leastwise overlove so
loathsome a Vanity) by a Volley of holy Shot from
Mount Helicon." But this work was written in 1586,
full ten years even before the tragedy of Hamlet. It
is possible, however, that the king's antipathy had
an effect upon Peter Campbell, a Derbyshire gentleman,
who made his will on the 20th October, 1616, from
which we extract the following extraordinary clause :—
"Now for all such household goods at Derby, whereof
John Hosen hath an inventory, my will is that my son
Roger shall have them all toward house keeping, on this
condition, that if at any time hereafter any of his bro-
thers or sisters shall find him taking of Tobacco, that
then he or she so finding him, and making just proofs
thereof to my executors, shall have the said goods, or
the full value thereof according as they shall be appraised,
which said goods shall presently after my death be va-
lued and appraised by my executors for that purpose."
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
xxiii.
It is a curious fact that James is said to have allowed
to absoluta libertas pedendi.* However, as his aversion
was adopted by his courtiers, who all pretended a great
horror to smoking, the presence chamber would not re-
quire fumigation. Until his death in 1625, he continued
his opposition to the herb; and even his ordinary con-
versation was fraught with reasons and invectives against
the use of it. From "A Collection of witty Apoph-
thegms, delivered by King James and others, at several
Times and on sundry Occasions," published in 12mo,
1671, we extract that "Tobacco is the lively image and
pattern of hell, for that it has by allusion in it all the
parts and vices of the world, whereby hell may be gained.
For, first, it is smoke: so are all the vanities of the
world. Secondly, it delighteth them that take it: so do
all the pleasures of the world. Thirdly, it maketh men
drunken and light in the head: so do all the vanities of
this world. Fourthly, he that taketh Tobacco saith he
cannot leave it, it doth bewitch him: even so the plea-
sures of the world make men loth to leave them. And
further, besides all this, it is like hell in the very sub-
stance of it; for it is a stinking loathsome thing, and so
is hell."
The historian Howell relates, that during the time of
his majesty's hunts, whenever a fog came on, the king
was used to say that the devil was smoking Tobacco;
and so greatly was he offended at the common use of it,
that he declared, were he "to invite the devil to a ban-
quet, he should have three dishes: first, a pig; second,
a poll of ling and mustard; and, third, a pipe of Tobacco
for digestion." So convinced his majesty appears to
* The broad English of this privilege is to be found in a small tract
on the use of Tobacco, printed at London, 1722.
d 2
}:
xxiv.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
have been of its extraordinary medicinal virtues; but he
seems to have forgot that according to an act of his own
reign, and perhaps also of his own invention, it was fe-
lony either to raise the devil or to feed him when raised!
James doubtless would consider this entertainment as
the offscouring of his table; but we really cannot see
the necessity of an act which is opposed to hospitality,
and which prevents that warmth of reception which an
old friend, after travelling so far, will both expect and
deserve.
Amongst other weak inventions of the enemy, a slan-
der was passed on the plant by Sir William Vaughan
(1613), which is perhaps worthy of a notice in this place.
"To conclude the abuses of Tobacco," says he, “I wish
the favourites thereof to repeat over these plain rhymes-
Tobacco, that outlandish weed,
It dulls the sprite, it dims the sight,
It robs a woman of her right.”
Directions for Health.
"The evidence of facts," as the philosophers say, has
proved that this opinion is unfounded. After so many
years, notwithstanding the use of Tobacco, the popula-
tion has not decreased; and it would seem that at an
early period the like result has been also ascribed to tea,
coffee, and chocolate. Raphael Thorius, who refers to
this argument, takes a position professedly adverse to
that of Vaughan; whilst, at the same time, he concedes
to him that-
"Like hemp or water lilies happily,
It may the number bate, not utterly
Destroy the gift of procreation.”
And then, as it were, remembering suddenly the cause
he had espoused, he continues:-
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
XXV.
"What it doth from the number take away,
I' the goodness of the breed it doth repay:
An excellent benefit, where the fortunes mean
Not able numerous offspring to maintain,
Or where the commonwealth rejoiceth more
In the strength and quality than in the store."
Thus, what had been advanced by an opponent of
Tobacco, being received with due allowance on account
of that motive, was likely to become, in the hands of
Thorius, a mighty and a valuable engine for a most im-
portant use. But the poet was by far too flattering
with his incense; and even the best of its admirers are
not desirous to see the plant registered amongst checks to
population, however desirable it may be, in the opinion
of certain philanthropists,-
"To free the world from giddiness, the jolly
Stripling from rage, and the grey head from folly."
We come now lastly to consider what was the effect
of the interested and violent opposition which was offered
to the use of the plant. Generally speaking, the people
paid no attention to the various means which were taken
to discountenance the practice; whilst the lovers of the
weed laughed at the arguments or the wit, as the case
might be, of their opponents, and continued to smoke on
"fancy free." The medical profession had already turned
their attention to it; and, as one extreme brings on an-
other, it was not long before the general opposition to
the herb was succeeded by a belief in its extraordinary
medicinal effects. The poets now enhanced, with mighty
eloquence, on its virtues; and nothing can be more re-
markable than the game of deception which was played
with England generally by the admirers of the "golden
leaf," "the berry tinted Yarico." Raphael Thorius
attributes to it manifold virtues; and, with the assistance
?
xxvi.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
of his muse, he vindicates and finds a use even for the
poisonous oil of Tobacco. The external application of
this oil, he says, is-
"Good for young girls who have rough and scabby hands,
On which, as on fen grounds, the water stands :
For, being applied, it smooths and drains them quite,
And renders them even to wonder white.
For the piercing air thro' the secret pores
Shaketh the heart, and having set both doors
Of the stomach ope, from thence wind music plays,
To the hearers' mirth and to the minstrel's ease.
Thus they the laughter of their friends do gain,
And purchase beauty with a little pain."
In the present day, the oil of Tobacco is not commonly
used; and it is a circumstance to be deplored, that our
customs are not regulated by a better regard for health.
It has been conjectured that the humours of the body
can only be purged by Tobacco; and a conceit prevailed
that the humours which find a vent only in talkativeness,
and are thus purged at the mouth, are the effects of an
excessive indulgence in the use of the plant as a luxury.
Such was the opinion of a learned author of 1722, as will
appear from the following quaint title of his work. To
those ladies, especially, who are said to void the humours
at the mouth, and who scorn the imputation of "the pipe,"
the application of the oil will be peculiarly beneficial, and
may be recommended with safety.
"Of the Use of Tobacco, Tea, Coffee, Chocolate, and Drams, under
the following Heads :-
"1. Of smoking Tobacco.
"2. Of chewing.
"3. Of Snuff.
"4, 5, 6, and 7. Of Coffee, &c.
"Clearly shewing how the stopping of these hot Liquors, sucking
into the Body as much of Wind as Liquors, produces Flatulency, which
(by being debarred a free passage downwards) not only grumble in the
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
xxvii.
Bowels, and cause Wind, Cholics, Obstructions, Spleen, Vapours, &c.,
but also (in Women of a more strong Constitution) recoil up to the
Head, and vent themselves entirely in Talkativeness and other Distem-
pers incident to Women; all which a free Vent of the Wind downwards
might have prevented.
“This Book is given gratis up one Pair of Stairs, at the Sign of the
Anodyne Necklace, without Temple Bar, London, 1722."
An account, published by W. Kemp, most sagely re-
commends Tobacco as an antidote for every evil under
the sun.
This writer tells us a third method, in which
the humours are purged by the use of Tobacco, not by
wind, according to the statement of the preceding writer,
but by water, viz. salivation; a knotty point, which is
ably disputed by King James. (Count., p. 10.) "The
American silver weed, or Tobacco," says Kemp, "is an
excellent defence against bad air, being smoked in a pipe
either by itself, or with nutmeg shred and rue seeds
mixed with it; especially if it be nosed, for it cleanseth
the air, and choaketh and suppresseth and disperseth
any venomous vapour. It hath both singular and con-
trary effects: it is good to warm one being cold, and
will cool one being hot. All ages, all sexes and consti-
tutions, young and old, men and women, the sanguine,
the choleric, the melancholy, the phlegmatic, take it
without any manifest inconvenience. It giveth thirst,
and yet will make one more able and fit to drink. It
chokes hunger, and yet will give one a good stomach.
It is agreeable with mirth or sadness, with feasting and
with fasting. It will make one rest that wants sleep,
and will keep one waking that is drowsy. It hath an
offensive smell, and is more desirable than any perfume.
That it is a most excellent preservative, both experience
and reason teach. It corrects the air by fumigation,
and avoids corrupt humours by salivation; for when one
ご
​xxviii.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
takes it by chewing it in the leaf, or smoking it in the
pipe, the humours are brought and drawn from all parts
of the body to the stomach, and from thence rising up
to the mouth of the TOBACCONIST, as to the helm of a
sublunatory, are voided and spitted out."
Some of the German writers described Tobacco as the
holy or Indian healing herb-Heiligwrmakrant, or In-
dianisch windkrant. Amongst other ridiculous accounts
may be mentioned that of Howell, in his Letters (1678),
and that of Barton, in his Anatomie of Melancholy
(1630). The latter says, "Tobacco-divine, rare, su-
perexcellent Tobacco-which goes far beyond all the
panaceas, portable gold, and philosopher's stone," and
certainly addresses the herb with all the devotion of a
true admirer. Yet, let Barton soar his highest Castor,
Duranti is still a pinch beyond. Amongst other things
which he states to be within the power of the plant, he
sings:-
"The herb which borrows Santa Croce's name
Sore eyes relieves, and healeth wounds the same ;
Discusses the king's evil, and removes
Cancers and boils; a remedy it proves
For burns and scalds, repels the nauseous itch,
And straight recovers from convulsion fits.
It cleanses, dries, binds up, and maketh warm ;
The head ache, tooth ache, cholic, like a charm
It easeth; soon an ancient cough relieves;
And to the reins and milt and stomach gives
Quick riddance from the pain which each endures;
Next the dire wounds of poisoned arrows cures;
All bruises heals; and when the gums are sore,
It makes them sound and healthy as before.
Sleep it procures; our anxious sorrow lays;
And with new flesh the naked bone arrays.
No herb hath greater power to rectify
All the disorders in the heart that lie,
Or in the lungs."
A COUNTERBLAST TO TOBACCO.

T
HAT the manifold abuses of this
vile custom of Tobacco taking may
the better be espied, it is fit that
first you enter into consideration
both of the first original thereof, and likewise
of the reasons of the first entry thereof into
this country; for certainly as such customs
that have their first institution either from a
godly, necessary, or honorable ground, and are
first brought in by the means of some worthy,
virtuous, and good personage, are ever and
most justly holden in good and reverend esti-
mation and account by all wise, virtuous, and
temperate spirits, so should it by the contrary
justly bring a great disgrace into that sort of
customs, which, having their original from
base corruption and barbarity, do in like sort
make their first entry into a country by an
inconsiderate and childish affectation of, no-
velty, as is the true case of the first institu-
B
2
A COUNTERBLAST TO TOBACCO.
tion of Tobacco taking, and of the first entry
thereof amongst us-for Tobacco being a
common herb, which (though under divers
names) grows almost every where, was first
found out by some of the barbarous Indians
to be a preservative or antidote against the
Pox, a filthy disease whereunto these barba-
rous people are (as all men know) very much
subject, what through the uncleanly and adust
constitution of their bodies, and what through
the intemperate heat of their climate-so that
as from them was first brought into Christen-
dome that most detestable disease, so from
them likewise was brought this use of To-
bacco, as a stinking and unsavoury antidote
for so corrupted and execrable a malady, the
stinking fumigation whereof they yet use
against that disease, making so one canker or
vermin to eat out another.*
* The return of Hernandez de Cortez from Tabasco in
1519, brought with it the Mal de las Buvas into Europe.
It was this circumstance that served to procure for Tobacco
a most sanguine welcome; for the sailors composing the fleet
made use of it, after the instructions of the natives, as the
only effectual antidote against its ravages. They did not feel
their misery, as Oviedo (Natural Historia de las Indians,
1526) says, whilst the Tobacco which they smoked affected
them; but when the inefficacy of the plant to cure the dis-
ease was proved, it sunk at once in the estimation of its wor-
shippers. Indeed, into such obscurity did it fall after the
A COUNTERBLAST TO TOBACCO.
3
And now, good countrymen, (I pray you)
consider what honor or policy can move us to
imitate the barbarous and beastly manners of
the wild, godless, and slavish Indians, espe-
cially in so vile and stinking a custom. Shall
we that disdain to imitate the manners of our
hopes it had vainly excited, that nearly 30 years elapsed
before it obtained any notice worth commemorating; and,
according to Monardes, it was used during that time "more
to adornate gardens with the fairness thereof, and to give a
pleasant sight, than that it was thought to have any marvel-
lous medicinal virtues." At about the end of that period
(1549), we find that it regained the eminence it had pre-
viously lost, on a surer and better footing, as a soothing and
gentle stimulant-it acquired the name and the esteem of a
"Universal Medicine," and was again used "more for his vir-
tues than for his fairness." It does not appear, however, that
the herb, under its new title, possessed any healing virtue with
respect to the Great Western Evil; but it is candour to suppose
that that virulent disease formed a particular exception. By
communicating it to their conquerors in exchange for To-
bacco, the Indians have amply revenged their own wrongs;
and-
"Should it be questioned (as right well it may)
Whether discovery of America,
That new-found world, have yielded to our old
More hurt or good, till further answer should
Decide the doubt and quite determine it,
Thus, for the present, might we answer fit:
That thereby we have (rightly understood)
Both given and taken greater hurt than good;
And that on both sides, both for CHRISTIANS
It had been better, and for INDIANS,
B 2
4
A COUNTERBLAST TO TOBACCO.
neighbour France (having the style of the
great Christian kingdom), and that cannot
endure the spirit of the Spaniards (their king
being now comparable in largeness of domi-
nion to the greatest emperor of Turkey), shall
we, I say, that have been so long civil and
wealthy in peace, famous and invincible in
war-fortunate in both-we that have been
ever able to aid any of our neighbours (but
never deafed any of their ears with any of our
supplications for assistance)-shall we, I say,
without blushing abase ourselves so far as to
imitate those beastly Indians, slaves to the
Spaniards, refuse to the world, and as yet
aliens from the holy covenant of God? Why
That only good men to their coast had come,
Or that the evil had still staid at home.
*
*
*
*
*
For what our people have brought thence to us
Is like the head piece of a POLypus,
Wherein is (quoted by sage Plutarch's quill)
A pest'lence great good, and great pest'lence ill.-
Their freight was SLOTH, LUST, AVARICE, and DRINK
(A burden able with the weight to sink
The hughest carrak, yea, those hallowed twelve,
SPAIN'S great Apostles, even to overwhelve).
They carried SLOTH, and brought home scurvy skin;
They carried LUST, and brought home ills within ;
They carried AVARICE, and gold they got ;
They carried BACCHUS, and Tobacco brought.”
Tobacco battered and the Pipes shattered, 1586.
A COUNTERBLAST TO TOBACCO.
5
X
do we not as well imitate them in walking
naked, as they do-in preferring glass, fea-
thers, and such toys, to gold and precious
stones, as they do-yea, why do we not deny
God and adore the devil, as they do? 1.Ash
Now to the corrupted baseness of the first
use of this Tobacco doth very well agree the
foolish and groundless first entry thereof into
this kingdom. It is not so long since the first
entry of this abuse amongst us here as this
present age cannot yet very well remember
both the first author and the form of the first
introduction of it against us. It was neither
brought in by king, great conqueror, nor
learned doctor of physic.
With the report of a great discovery for a
conquest, some two or three savage men were
brought in, together with this savage custom ;
but the pity is the poor wild barbarous men
died, but that vile barbarous custom is still
alive, yea, in fresh vigour; so as it seems
a miracle to me how a custom, springing from
so vile a ground, and brought in by a father
so generally hated,* should be welcomed upon
* It is not unlikely that the king was induced to write the
Counterblast from his dislike to Sir Walter Raleigh, the re-
cognized introducer of the practice of smoking. Raleigh, it
is to be observed, was not popular with the multitude: they
considered him, in the heyday of his prosperity, as a court
6
A COUNTERBLAST TO TOBACCO.
so slender a warrant; for if they that first
put it in practice here, had remembered for
what respect it was used by them from whence
it came, I am sure they would have been loth
to have taken so far the imputation of that
disease upon them, as they did by using the
cure thereof; for Sanis non est opus medico,
and counter poisons are never used but where
poison is thought to proceed.
But since it is true that divers customs,
slightly grounded and with no better warrant
entered in a common wealth, may yet, in the
use of them thereafter, prove both necessary
and profitable; it is therefore next to be exa-
mined if there be not a full sympathy and
true proportion between the base ground and
foolish entry and the loathsome and hurtful
use of this stinking antidote.
I am now therefore heartily to pray you to
consider, first, upon what false and erroneous
grounds you have first built the general good
liking thereof; and, next, what sins toward
God, and foolish vanities of the world, you
commit in the detestable use of it.
As for those deceitful grounds that have
specially moved you to take a great and good
minion, who engrossed too much of Elizabeth's favour; and,
towards the end of her reign, they disliked him on account
of his enmity to Essex.
A COUNTERBLAST TO TOBACco.
7
༤
conceit thereof, I shall content myself to exa-
mine here only four of the principal of them;
two founded upon the theory of the deceiva-
ble experience of reason, and two of them
upon the mistaken practice of general expe-
rience.
First, it is thought by you a sure aphorism
in the physic, that the brains of all men being
naturally cold and wet, all dry and hot things
should be good for them, of which nature this
suffumigation is, and, therefore, of good use
to them.* Of this argument both the propo-
sition and assumption are false, and so the
conclusion cannot but be void of itself; for
as to the proposition, that because the brains
are cold and moist, therefore things that are
hot and dry are best for them, it is an inept
consequence; for men, being compounded of
the four complexions (whose fathers are the
four elements) although there be a mixture of
them in all the parts of his body, yet must the
divers parts of our microcosme, or little world
within ourselves, be diversly more inclined,
some to one, some to another complexion, ac-
* Perhaps no smoker in the present day would dream to
explain his attachment to the pipe after the manner of the
proposition mentioned in the king's first argument. That a
man should benefit from Tobacco because his brains are cold and
moist, the king certainly shews to be an "inept consequence."
8
A COUNTERBLAST TO TOBACCO.
cording to the diversity of their uses, whereof
these discords a perfect harmony may be
made up for the maintainance of the whole
body.
The application, then, of a thing of a con-
trary nature to any of these parts is to in-
terrupt them of their due function, and by
consequence hurtful to the health of the whole
body; as if a man, because the liver is as the
fountain of blood, and as it were an oven to
the stomach, would, therefore, apply and wear
close upon his liver and stomach a cake of
lead, he might, within a very short time (I
hope), be sustained very good and cheap at an
ordinary, besides the clearing of his conscience
from that deadly sin of gluttony; and as if
because his full of vital spirits are in perpetual
motion, a man would, therefore, lay a heavy
pound stone on his breast for staying and
holding down that wanton palpitation, I doubt
not but his breast would be more bruised with
the weight thereof than the heart would be
comforted with such a disagreeable and con-
trarious cure. And even so it is with the
brains; for if a man, because the brains are
cold and humid, would therefore use, inwardly
by smells or outwardly by application, things
of hot and dry quality, all the gain that I
could make thereof would only be to put him-
A COUNTERBLAST TO TOBACCco.
9
self in great forwardness for running mad by v
over watching himself, the coldness and mois-
ture of our brains being the only ordinary
means that procure our sleep and rest. In-
deed I do not doubt that when it falls out
that any of these, or any part of our body
grows to be distempered, and to tend to an
extremity beyond the compass of nature's tem-
perate mixture, that in that case cures of con- /
trary qualities, by an intemperate inclination
of that part being wisely prepared and dis-
creetly ministered, may be both helpful and
necessary for strengthening nature in the ex-
pulsion of her enemies, for this is the true de-
finition of all profitable physic. But first
those cures ought not to be used but where
there is need of them, the contrary whereof is
daily practised in this general use of Tobacco,
by all sorts and complexions of people.
And next, I deny the minor of this argu-
ment, as I have already said, in regard that
this Tobacco is not simply of a dry and hot
quality, but rather hath a certain venomous
faculty, joined with the heat thereof, which
makes it have an antipathy against nature, as
by the hurtful smell thereof doth well appear;
for the nose, being the proper organ and con-
voy of the sense of smelling to the brains,
which are the only fountain of that sense,
C
10
A COUNTERBLAST TO TOBACCO.
doth ever serve us for an infallible witness,
whether that odour which we smell be health-
ful or hurtful to the brain (except when it
falls out that the sense itself is corrupted and
abused through some infirmity and distemper
in the brain); and that the suffumigation
thereof cannot have a drying quality, it needs
no further probation than that it is a smoke,
all smoke and vapour being of itself humid,
as drawing near to the nature of air, and easy
to be resolved again into water, whereof there
needs no other proof but the meteors, which,
being bred of nothing else but of the vapours,
are exhalations sucked up by the sun from the
earth, the sea, and waters; yet are the same
smoky vapours turned and transformed into
rains, snows, dews, hoar frosts, and such like
watery matters; as, by the contrary, the rainy
clouds are often transformed and evaporated
in blustering winds.
The second argument, grounded on a shew
of reason, is, that the filthy smoke, as well
through the heat and strength thereof as by a
natural force and quality, is able and fit to
purge both the head and stomach of rheums
and distillations, as experience teacheth, by
the spitting and avoiding flegm immediately
after the taking of it. But the falsity of this
argument may easily appear by my late pre-
A COUNTERBLAST TO TOBACco.
11
ceding descriptions of the meteors ;* for even
as the smoky vapours, sucked by the sun, and
stayed in the lowest and cold region of the
air, are there contracted into clouds, and
turned into rain and such other watery me-
teors, so this stinking smoke, being sucked up
by the nose and imprisoned in the cold and
moist brains, is, by their cold and wet fa-
culty, turned and cast forth again in watery
distillations; and so are you made free and
purged of nothing but that with which you
wilfully burdened yourself; and therefore are
you no wiser in taking Tobacco for purging
you of distillations, than if for preventing the
cholic you would take all kinds of windy
meats and drinks, and for preventing of the
stone you would take all kinds of meats and
drinks that would breed gravel in the kid-
neys; and then when you were forced to
avoid much wind out of your stomach, and
much gravel in your urine, that you should
attribute the thanks thereof to such nourish-
ments as bred these within you, that behoved
*His majesty most signally fails in carrying out this argu-
ment, in which he attempts to prove the deceivable appear-
ance of reason. His late preceding description of the meteors
will hardly persuade any smoker that the saliva which he
ejects is no more than stinking smoke, which being "impri-
soned in the cold and moist brains, is, by their cold and wet
faculty, turned and cast forth again in watery distillations."
*
C 2
12
A COUNTERBLAST TO TOBACCO.
you either to be expelled by the force of na-
ture, or you to have burst at the broadside, as
the proverb is.
As for the other two reasons founded upon
experience the first of which is, that the
whole people would not have taken so general
a good liking thereof, if they had not by ex-
perience found it very sovereign and good for
them for answer thereunto, how easily the
minds of all people with which God hath re-
plenished the earth may be drawn by the
foolish affectation of any novelty, I leave it to
the discreet judgment of any man that is rea-
sonable.
Do we not daily see that a man can no
sooner bring over from beyond the seas any
new form of apparel, but that he cannot be
thought a man of spirit that would not pre-
sently imitate the same, and so from hand to
hand it spreads till it is practised by all-not
for any commodity that is in it, but because
it is come to be the fashion? For such is the
force of that natural self-love in every one of
us, and such is the corruption of envy bred in
the breast of every one, as we cannot be con-
tent unless we imitate every thing that our
fellows do, and so prove ourselves capable of
every thing whereof they are capable, like
apes counterfeiting the manners of others to their
A COUNTERBLAST TO TOBACCO.
13
own destruction. For let one or two of the
greatest masters of mathematics, in any of the
two famous universities, but constantly affirm,
any clear day, that they see some strange ap-
parition in the skies, they will, I warrant you,
be seconded by the greatest part of the stu-
dents in that profession, so loath will they be
to be thought inferior to their fellows, either
in depth of knowledge or sharpness of sight;
and therefore the general good liking and em-
bracing of this foolish custom doth but only
proceed from that affectation of novelty and
popular error, whereof I have already spoken.
[How applicable is this reproof to the majo-
rity of persons in the present day.]
And the other argument drawn from a mis-
taken experience is but the more particular
probation of this general, because it is alleged
to be found true, by proof, that by the taking
of Tobacco divers and very many do find
themselves cured of divers diseases, as, on the
other part, no man ever received harm through
it. In this argument there is first a great
mistaking, and next a monstrous absurdity;
for is it not a very great mistake to take non
causam pro causa, as they say in the Logics?
Because peradventure when a sick man hath
had his disease at the heat, he hath at that in-
stant taken Tobacco, and afterwards his dis-
14
A COUNTERBLAST TO TOBACCO.
I
ease taking the natural course of declining,
and consequently the patient of recovering
his health,-oh! then the Tobacco, forsooth,
was the worker of that miracle. Besides, that
it is a thing well known by all physicians, that
the apprehension and conceit of the patient
hath, by wakening and uniting the vital spi-
rits, and so strengthening nature, a great
power and virtue to cure divers diseases. For
an evident proof of mistaking in the like case,
pray what foolish, to wit silly wench, what
old doting wife, or ignorant country clown, is
not physician for the tooth ache, for the cholic,
and divers such common diseases? Yea, will
not every man you meet withal teach you a
sundry cure for the same, and swear too that
many, either himself or some of his nearest
kinsmen and friends, were cured? and yet, I
hope, no man is so foolish as to believe them.
And all these toys do only proceed from the
mistaking causum pro causa, as I have already
said; and so if a man chance to recover out of
any disease after he hath taken Tobacco, that
must have the thanks of all; but, by the con-
trary, if a man smoke himself to death (as
many have done), oh! then some other disease
must bear the blame for that fault. So do old
harlots thank their harlotry for their very
livers, that custom being healthful (say they)
A COUNTERBLAST TO TOBACCO.
15
ad purgandos reres, but never have mind how
many die of the Pox in the flower of their
youth. And so do old drunkards think they
prolong their days by their swine-like diet,
but never remember how many die drunk in
drink before they be half old.
And what greater absurdity can there be
than to say that one cure shall serve for divers,
nay, contrarious sorts of diseases? It is an
undoubted ground among the physicians, that
there is almost no sort, either of nourishment v
or of medicine, that hath not something in it
disagreeable to some part of man's body; be-
cause, as I have already said, the nature of the
temperature of every part is so different from
another, that, according to the old proverb,
that which is good for the head is evil for the
neck and the shoulders. For even as a strong
enemy that invades a town or fortress, al-
though in his siege thereof he do belay and
compass it round about, yet he makes his
breach and entry at some one or few special
parts thereof, which he hath tried and found
to be weakest and least able to resist—so sick-
ness doth make her particular assault upon
such part or parts of our body as are weakest,
and easiest to be overcome by that sort of dis-
ease which then doth assail us, although all
the rest of the body by sympathy feels itself
16
A COUNTERBLAST TO TOBACCO.
to be, as it were, belaid and besieged by the
affliction of that special part, the grief and
smart thereof being, by the sense of feeling,
dispersed through all the rest of the members;
and therefore the skilful physician presses to
such cures, to purge and strengthen that part
which is afflicted, as are only fit for that kind
of disease, and do best agree with the nature
of that infirm part, which, being abused to a
disease of another name, would prove as hurt-
ful to the one as helpful to the other. Yea,
not only will a skilful and wary physician be
careful to use no cure but that which is fit for
that sort of disease, but he will also consider
all other circumstances, and make the remedy
suitable thereunto; as the temperature of the
clime where the patient is, the constitution of
the planet, the time of the moon, the season
of the year, the age and complexion of the
patient, the present state of his body in
strength or weakness; for one cure must not
ever be used for the self same disease, but,
according to the varying of any of the afore-
said circumstances, that sort of remedy must
be used which is fittest for the same; where,
by the contrary in this case, such is the mira-
culous omnipotency of our strong tasted To-
bacco, as it cures all sorts of diseases (which
never any drug could do before) in all persons
A COUNTERBLAST TO TOBACCO.
17
!
and at all times. It cures all kinds of distilla-
tions either in head or stomach (if you believe
their axioms); although, in very deed, it do
both corrupt the brain, and, by causing over
quick digestion, fill the stomach full of crudi-
ties. It cures the gout in a fit; and, what is
miraculous, in that very instant when the
smoke thereof, as light, flies up into the head,
the virtue thereof, as heavy, runs down to the
little toe. It helps all sorts of agues-it
makes a man sober that was drunk-it re-
freshes a weary man, and yet makes a man
hungry, being taken when they go to bed—it
makes one sleep soundly; and yet, being
taken when a man is sleepy and drowsy, it
will, as they say, awaken his brain, and
quicken his understanding. As for curing of
the Pox, it serves for that use among the
Pocky Indian slaves. Here in England it is
refined, and will not deign to cure here any
other than cleanly and gentlemanly diseases.
Oh! omnipotent power of Tobacco! And if
it could, by the smoke thereof, chase out de-
vils, as the smoke of Tobias' fish did (which I
am sure could smell no stronger), it would
serve for a precious relict, both for the super-
stitious priests and the insolent Puritans, to
cast out devils withal.*
* This quaint satire is founded upon another, from the pen
of Jonson, which we meet with in " Every Man in his Hu-
D
18
A COUNTERBLAST TO TOBACCO.
Admitting, then, and not confessing, that
the use thereof were healthful for some sorts
of diseases, should it be used for all sicknesses?
Should it be used by all men? Should it be
used at all times? Yea, should it be used by
able, young, strong, healthful men? Medicine
hath that virtue that it never leaves a man in
mour," first acted in 1598. "I have been in the Indies," he
says, (where this herb grows), when neither myself nor a
dozen gentlemen more, of my knowledge, have received the
taste of any other nutriment in the world, for the space of
one and twenty weeks, but the fume of this simple only;
therefore it cannot be but 'tis most divine. Further, take it
in the nature, in the true kind, so it makes an antidote that,
had you taken the most deadly poisonous plant in all Italy,
it should expel it and clarify you with as much ease as I
speak. And for your green wound, your Balsamum and
your St. John's wort are all mere gulleries and trash to it,
especially your Trinidado. Your Nicotian is good too. I
could say I know of the virtue of it for the expulsion of
rheums, raw humours, crudities, obstructions, with a thou-
sand of this kind; but I profess myself no quacksalver.
Only thus much by Hercules, I do hold it, and will affirm
it before any prince in Europe, to be the most sovereign and
precious weed that ever the earth tendered to the use of man.”
The product of Trinidado was at this time much in request:
one old cosmographer, no incompetent judge perhaps of this
matter, tells us it abounds with the best kind of Tobacco,
much celebrated formerly by the name of a PIPE OF TRINI-
DADO.-Heylin's Cosmog., lib. iv., p. 114.
The Nicotian took its name from Mons. Nicot, the French
introducer.
A COUNTERBLAST TO TOBACCO.
19
that state wherein it finds him. It makes a
sick man whole, but a whole man sick; and as
medicine helps nature, being taken at times of
necessity, so, being ever and constantly used,
it doth but weaken, weary, and wear nature.
What speak I of medicine? Nay, let a man,
every hour of the day, I say, but take as oft
the best sorts of nourishments in meat and
drink that can be devised, he shall, with the
continual use thereof, weaken both his head
and his stomach: all his members shall grow
feeble, his spirits dull, and in the end, as a
drowsy, lassie belly god, he shall evanish in a
lethargy.
And from this weakness it proceeds that
many in this kingdom have had such a conti-
nual use of taking this unsavory smoke, as
now they are not able to forbear the same, no
more than an old drunkard can abide to be
long sober, without falling into an incurable
weakness and evil constitution; for that con-
tinual custom hath made to them habitum,
alteram, naturam, so to those that from their
birth have been continually nourished upon
poison and things venomous, wholesome meats
are only poisonable.
Thus having, as I trust, sufficiently answered
the most principal arguments that are used in
defence of this vile custom, it rests only to
D 2
20
A COUNTERBLAST TO TOBACCO.
inform you what sins and vanities you commit
in the filthy abuse thereof. First, Are you not
guilty of sinful and shameful lust (for lust
may be as well in any of the senses as in feel-
ing), that although you be troubled with no
disease, but in perfect health, yet can you nei-
ther be merry at an ordinary nor lascivious in
the stews if you lack Tobacco to provoke your
appetite to any of those sorts of recreations,
lusting after it as the children of Israel did in
the wilderness after quails? Secondly, It is,
as you use, or rather abuse it, a branch of the
sin of drunkenness, which is the root of all
sins; for as the only delight that drunkards
love any weak or sweet drink, so are not
those (I mean the strong heat and funie) the
only qualities that make Tobacco so delecta-
ble to all the lovers of it? And as no man
loves strong heavy drinks the first day (be-
cause nemo reparte fit turpissimus), but by
custom is piece and piece allured; while, in
the end, a drunkard will have as great a thirst
to be drunk as a sober man to quench his
thirst with a draught when he hath need of
it; so is not this the true case of all the great
takers of Tobacco, which therefore they them-
selves do attribute to a bewitching quality in
it? Thirdly, Is it not the greatest sin of all
that you, the people of all sorts of this king-
A COUNTERBLAST TO TOBACCO.
21
dom, who are created and ordained by God to
bestow both your persons and goods for the
maintenance both of the honor and safety of
3your king and commonwealth, should disable
yourself in both ?-in your persons, having,
by this continual vile custom, brought your-
self to this shameful imbecility, that you are
not able to ride or walk the journey of a
Jew's Sabbath, but you must have a reeky
coal brought you from the next poor house to
kindle your Tobacco with; whereas he cannot
be thought able for any service in the wars
that cannot endure oftentimes the want of
meat, drink, and sleep; much more then must
he endure the want of Tobacco. In the time
of the many glorious and victorious battles
fought by this nation, there was no word of
Tobacco; but now, if it were time of wars,
and that you were to make some sudden ca-
valcade upon your enemies, if any of you
should seek leisure to stay behind his fellows
for taking of Tobacco, for my part I should
never be sorry for any evil chance that might
befall him.* To take a custom in any thing
*It was a practice with the king, while hunting, to pull
up, if the pace became fast, and to refresh himself from a
bottle of wine; and possibly the idea of a soldier staying be-
hind in a charge to smoke a pipe, may have been suggested
by this fact. Subsequent events have sufficiently proved the
22
A COUNTERBLAST TO TOBACCO.
that cannot be left again, is most hurtful to
the people of any land. Mollities and delicacy
were the rock and overthrow, first of the Per-
sian, and next of the Roman empire; and this
very custom of taking Tobacco (whereof our
present purpose is) is even at this day ac-
counted so effeminate among the Indians
themselves, that, in the market, they will offer
no price for a slave to be sold whom they find
to be a great Tobacco taker.
Now how are you by this custom disabled
in your goods, let the gentry of this land bear
witness, some of whom bestowing £300, some
£400 a year* upon this precious stink, which
fallacy of the king's forebodings. Our soldiers smoked hard
in Flanders; and yet, in the final charge at Ramillies, they
stayed not to light their pipes. In the more recent times of
Wellington, they smoked as hard as in the days of Marlbo-
rough; and yet they drove before them, from the rock of
Lisbon to the walls of Toulouse, the best troops, next to
themselves, that ever gave fire either to Tobacco or gunpow-
der. The "Waterloo charge," as it is called,-a certain ready-
formed loading for a pipe, is, at the present time, in great
request with the Medallists, who burn it on every 18th of
June, in commemoration of the smoking and fighting at
Waterloo.
* This seems hardly credible, and Brand suggests that
Scotch pounds are intended. A work published in 1615
states, that the greatest part of the Indian Tobacco sold in
that year for ten times the value of paper, and the best of it
weight for weight for the finest silver.("An Advice how
A COUNTERBLAST TO TOBACco.
28
I am sure might be bestowed upon many far
better uses. I read, indeed, of a knavish
courtier, who, for abusing the favour of the
Emperor Alexander Severus, his master, by
taking bribes to intercede for sundry persons
in his master's ears (for whom he never once
opened his mouth), was justly choked with
smoke, with this doom, Fumo pereat qui fu-
mum vendidit; but of so many smoke buyers
as are at this present in this kingdom, I never
read nor heard.
And for the vanity committed in this filthy
custom, is it not both great vanity and un-
cleanness that at the table, a place of respect,
of cleanliness, of modesty, men should not be
ashamed to sit, tossing of Tobacco pipes, and
puffing of the smoke of Tobacco one at ano-
ther, making the filthy smoke and stink
thereof to exhale athwart the dishes and infect
to plant Tobacco in England.") And when we remember
that a person had to provide pipes for visitors and guests,
which must have extended his expenses greatly beyond what
his own indulgence of the habit required, as dutiful subjects
in the place of our ancestors, we feel it our bounden duty to
acquiesce in the regal statement. The writer of "A Paper
-of Tobacco," evidently of a contrary opinion, says, "His
majesty must have heard of some inveterate smoker laying in
a large stock for the benefit of himself and his heirs, and have
erroneously concluded that it was only a twelvemonth's
supply."
>
24
A COUNTERBLAST TO TOBACCO.
the air, when very often men who abhor it are
at their repast? Surely smoke becomes a kit-
chen far better than a dining chamber; and yet
it makes a kitchen oftentimes in the inward
parts of man, soiling and infecting them with
an unctuous and oily kind of soot, as hath
been found in some great Tobacco takers that
after their deaths were opened.*And not
only meat time, but no other time nor action
is exempted from the public use of this uncivil
ચૂંટ
* There is a similar notice to this in Every Man in his
Humour." After extolling, in his own peculiar vein, the
sanative virtues ascribed to the plant, which we have given
at length in a previous note,-Cob, the water carrier, with
about equal truth, relates some startling instances of its per-
nicious effects. "By Godme,” says Cob, "I marle what plea-
sure or felicity they have in taking this roguish Tobacco!
It's good for nothing but to choke a man, and fill him full of
smoke and embers: there were four died out of one house
last week with taking of it, and two more the bell went for
yesternight; one of them, they say, will ne'er scape it; HE
VOIDED A BUSHEL OF SOOT yesterday upward and downward.
By the stocks, and there were no wiser men than I, I'd have
it present whipping, man and woman, that should but deal
with a Tobacco pipe. Why, it will stifle them all in the
end, as many as use it. It's little better than ratsbane or
rosaker.” We may easily imagine that tales of this kind
were not uncommon amongst the vulgar when Tobacco first
came into use. Both the king and poet may probably allude
to some recent story which was currently believed by the
people; and the joke is not destitute of humour when we
consider it in this light, and as suited to the character of Cob.
A COUNTERBLAST TO TOBACCO.
25
trick; for as the wives of Dieppe list to con-
test with this nation for good manners, their
worst manners would, in all reason, be found
at least not so dishonest as ours are in this
point, the public use whereof, at all times and
in all places, hath now so far prevailed, as
divers men, very sound in judgment and com-
plexion, have been at last forced to take it,
although without desire, partly because they
were ashamed to seem singular (like the two
philosophers that were forced to duck them-
selves in rain water, and so became fools as
well as the rest of the people), and partly to
be as one that was content to eat garlick
(which he did not love) that he might not be
troubled with the smell of it in the breath of
his fellows. And is it not a great vanity that
a man cannot heartily welcome his friend now,
but straight they must be in hand with To-
bacco? It is become, in place of a cure, a
point of good fellowship; and he that will
refuse to take a pipe of Tobacco among his
fellows (though by his own election he would
rather smell the savour of a sink) is accounted
peevish and no good company, even as they do
with tippling in the cold eastern countries.
Yea, a mistress cannot in a more mannerly
kind entertain her servant, than by giving
him, out of her fair hand, a pipe of Tobacco.
E
26
A COUNTERBLAST TO TOBACCO.
[quite an oriental custom]/But herein is not
only a great vanity, and a great contempt of
God's good gifts, that the sweetness of men's
breath, being a good gift of God, should be
wilfully corrupted by this stinking smoke,
wherein I must confess it hath too strong a
virtue; and so that which is an argument of
nature, and can neither by any artifice be at
the first acquired, nor, once lost, be recovered
again, shall be falsely corrupted with an incu-
rable stink, which vile quality is as directly
contrary to that wrong opinion which is
holden of the unwholesomeness thereof, as
the venom of putrefaction is contrary to the
virtue preservative.
Moreover, which is a great iniquity, and
against all humanity, the husband shall not
be ashamed to reduce thereto his delicate,
wholesome, and clean complexioned wife, to
that extremity, that either she must corrupt
her sweet breath therewith, or else resolve to
live in a perpetual stinking torment.
Have you not reason, then, to be ashamed,
and to forbear this filthy novelty, so basely
grounded, so foolishly received, and so grossly
mistaken in the right use thereof? In your
abuse thereof sinning against God, harming
yourselves both in persons and goods, and
raking also thereby the marks and notes of
A COUNTERBLAST TO TOBACCO.
27
vanity upon you; by the custom thereof
making yourselves to be wondered at by all
foreign civil nations, and by all strangers that
come among you to be scorned and contempt-
ed-a custom loathsome to the eye-hateful
to the nose-harmful to the brain-dangerous
to the lungs and, in the black stinking fumes
thereof, nearest resembling the horrid Stygian
fumes of the pit that is bottomless.
FINIS.
PRINTED BY PATTISON AND ROSS, PILGRIM STREET, NEWCASTLE.

339.84
J23
81-
ら
​
wils
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
339.84 J23
James I, King of England, 1566-1625.
A counterblast to tobacco... / with not
3 1951 002 374 701 K
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5326
7E28
8B3E
032E ▸
1253
223E
3 3EB
4 E25
5 523
6 2E5
17
分
​155自​杂
​14 E2 S
1323S
12E25
11ES2
10523
5836
835E
7832
0723
SBE 9
OEZE
1328
2 E32
3 235
4 538
5 EBS
6 EB
15853
TYWES
16 ELE
14532
13823
12ES2
11285
1053B
SBE6
8235
7523
◄ 2350
5 SER
10 EBS
8532
9538
7863
ROCHESTER INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, ONE LOMB
PRODUCED BY GRAPHIC ARTS RESEARCH CENTER