James had given up poetry-writing, in which he occasionally indulged before coming to England; yet he had poetical tastes; he enjoyed greatly many of Shakespeare’s plays; Ben Jonson, too, was a pet of his, and had easy access to royalty, certainly until his quarrel with the great court architect, Inigo Jones. But, as in all else, the King’s taste in poetry grew coarser as he grew older, and he showed a great liking for a certain John Taylor,[32] called “the Water-Poet,” a rough, coarse creature, who sculled boats across the Thames for hire; who made a foot-trip into Scotland in rivalry of Ben Jonson, and who wrote a _Very merry wherry Voyage from London to York_, and a _Kecksy-Winsey, or a Lerry-cum-twang_, which you will not find in your treasures of literature, but which the leering King loved to laugh over in his cups. Taylor afterward was keeper of a rollicking, Royalist tavern in Oxford, and of another in London, where he died at the age of seventy-four. Tobacco, first introduced in Raleigh’s early voyaging times, came to have a little fund of literature crystallizing about it--what with histories of its introduction and properties, and onslaughts upon it. Bobadil, the braggart, in “Every Man in his Humor,” says: “I have been in the Indies (where this herbe growes), where 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 Tobacco only. Therefore it cannot be, but ’tis most Divine.” There were many curious stories afloat too--taking different shapes--of the great apprehension ignorant ones felt on seeing people walking about, as first happened in these times, with smoke pouring from their mouths and noses. In an old book called _The English Hue and Crie_ (printed about 1610), it takes something like this form: “A certain Welchman, coming newly to London, and beholding one to take Tobacco, never seeing the like before, and not knowing the manner of it, but perceiving him vent smoak so fast, and supposing his inward parts to be on fire, screamed an alarm, and dashed over him a big pot of Beer.” King James’ _Counterblaste to the Use of Tobacco_, had about the same efficacy with the Welshman’s beer-pot. But to show the King’s method of arguing, I give one little whiff of it. Tobacco-lovers of that day alleged that it cleared the head and body of ugly rheums and distillations;