A distant murmur as of an approaching storm disturbs the stillness of the night, from gathering clouds serpent-tongued lightning flashes across the sky; the furies rage, the curtains of the heavens open and lo! Jupiter appears glowing with unwonted fire. He vows he will suffer no longer the flouting scorn of imperious Juno, and with anger-distended nostrils he sniffs the ethereal air. But what is this that steals over his heated senses? Subduing, soothing, consoling more sweetly than incense from Aphrodite’s favoured altars. It ascends in cloudy wavelets from the abodes of mortals. He determines to hold a council of the gods and summons thereto the heroes of Earth famed throughout Elysium for their knowledge of the odic essence whose spirit has entered his own and quelled the rising of a conjugal storm. Silently there glides into view a host of genial witnesses to St Nicotine’s balmy influence over the troubled spirits of mortals. Leading the spectral throng are Ben Jonson and Drummond, Beaumont and Fletcher, Dekker and Overbury, swathed in clouds of vapour as if comforting themselves with the old delectable pastime. A little to the rear, pale in the majesty of thought, are Shakespeare and Bacon, Spenser and Newton. Leaning to his friend Shakespeare, Bacon whispers, ‘No doubt the weed hath power to lighten the body of mortals and enable them to shake off uneasiness. But where is Raleigh? He paid devotion to his divinity most constantly, and ought to be able to speak of what return he got for all his worship.’ ‘You know, Drummond, as well as I do, that I always did love the weed, in spite of all that King James said against it. Did I not make my prince of swaggerers, Captain Bobadil (who was to me what Falstaff was to Will Shakespeare) descant on the fragrant theme, thus:— ‘“I have been in the Indies where neither myself nor a dozen gentlemen more of my knowledge have received the taste of any other nutriment in the world for over a space of one-and-twenty weeks, but the juice of this simple only. Therefore it cannot be but ’tis divine—especially your Trinadado; your Nicotian is good also. By Hercules! I do hold it before any prince in Europe to be the most sovereign and precious herb that ever the earth tendered for the use of man.”’ ‘But, O worthy Ben, did not the master over-charge his ‘prentice when he allowed the braggart to lay on the tinsel with so heavy a hand?’ ‘Listen to me, my masters, let Ben Jonson read the _Untrussing of the Humorous Poet_ without blenching if he can, for that might advance him in merit; he would acknowledge that Thomas Dekker can kick.’ ‘Hist! feather-brained gossip; proclaim not so loudly thy kinship with the asinine family.’ Advancing with measured step the noble Raleigh appears and is greeted with the cry:— Hail, mighty Raleigh! to whose name we owe The use and knowledge of this sovereign plant.