TOBACCO PLANT _frontispiece_ _face p._ SIR WALTER RALEIGH ” 6 DEPARTURE OF COLUMBUS (_from a rare old painter_) ” 22 QUEEN ELIZABETH ” 132 A CHINESE PIPE 112 INDIAN PIPE—Heads found in Mound City, Ohio 113 A JAPANESE PIPE 129 DUC DE SULLY 153 EARLY SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY SMOKERS 173 ST NICOTINE SYMPOSIUM CHAPTER I PART I Let me adore with my thrice happy pen The sweet and sole delight of mortal men; The cornucopia of all earthly pleasure, Where bankrupt nature hath consumed her treasure; A worthy plant springing from Flora’s hand, The blessed offspring of an uncouth land. BEAUMONT. In the early days of her advent in these isles St Nicotine stood high in the land. For she had come bearing credentials from France and Portugal testifying to her many virtues as a healer of the sick as well as a social comfort. And sober-minded folk would sit outside their doors, pipe in hand, placidly inhaling the grateful vapour of the precious herb a kind Providence had sent them to assuage the ills flesh is heir to. But the quick eye and ready wit of the city wags saw the matter in a different light. The Spanish fashion of smoking, namely, of drawing the smoke into the lungs and ejecting it through ‘the organs of the nose,’ afforded them endless amusement, and sportive jests were heard on all sides about the men who made chimneys of their noses. The important part the exotic played in life’s comedy led the youthful aspirant to literary fame, Sir John Beaumont, to think that he could not do better than soar on the wings of the weed to the Parnassus he had already in view. Barely twenty, full of exuberance and lofty ideals, he poured forth his musings in a grand imitation of heroic verse. His work is entitled, ‘The Metamorphosis of Tobacco,’[1] (1602) and is dedicated to his friend ‘Maister Michael Drayton,’ whom he asks to take up the lines, Tobacco like, unto thy brain And that divinely touched, puff out the smoke again. Ambitious to excel and full of noble endeavour he exclaims, Let me the sound of great Tobacco praise A pitch above those love-sick poets raise. He conceives the idea of a parliament of the elements assembled to hear the complaint of Prometheus that his work is imperfect. He calls for help, and the Earth is invoked. But ‘Grandame Ops her grieved head did shake.’ She declares however that,