He lets me have good tobacco, and he does not Sophisticate it with sack-lees or oil; Nor washes it in muscadel and grains, … But keeps it in fine lilly pots, that, opened, Smell like a conserve of roses, or French beans. He has his maple block, his silver tongs, Winchester pipes, and fire of juniper. In _Bartholomew Faire_ he presents us with a picture of one, Ursula, a vendor of roast pig, bidding her servant ‘Look to’t, sirrah, you had best! three pence a pipe full I will ha’ made of all my whole half pound of tobacco, and a quarter of a pound of coltsfoot, mixed with it too, to eke it out.’ That sophisticating practices were growing apace may be gleaned from Dr. Barclay, of Edinburgh, who in his _Nepenthes_ (1614) speaks of ‘tobacco merchants apparelling European plants with Indian coats and enstalling them in shops as righteous and legitimate tobacco.’ (How very conservative we English are!) ‘Some others, indeed, have tobacco from Florida that they sophisticate and farde in sundrie sorts with black spice, galanga, aqua-vitæ, Spanish wine, anise seedes, oyle of spicke, and such like.’ Less expensive materials than these were more commonly used (and perhaps still are), as the leaves of rhubarb, dock, burdock, plantain, oak and elm, also chickory and cabbage leaves steeped in tar-oil. If the manufacturers of these and less innocent ‘mixtures’ really find themselves unable to withstand the pressure from without for a cheap smoke, let them confine their sophisticating ingenuity to simple vegetable products, such, for instance, as satisfied Dame Ursula. Coltsfoot or the leaves of the lettuce, being slightly narcotic, would form a harmless make-belief for the good folk who persuade themselves that they could not sleep a wink were they deprived of their evening comfort. Ages ago both Greeks and Romans, according to Dioscorides and Pliny, found comfort in smoking through a reed or pipe the dried leaves of coltsfoot, which relieved them of old coughs and difficult breathing. We can picture the legionary in Britain’s bleak atmosphere, while pacing the Roman Wall, trying to console himself in his lonely vigil with the vapour from his ‘elphin pipe,’ fragments of which have been found among the ruins of those early memorials to the Scots’ persistent determination to travel southwards. And as to the lettuce, it has been famous since the time of Galen (Claudius Galenus), who asserts that he found relief from sleeplessness by taking it at night. Regardless of these things, the Nicotian epicure of to-day enjoys the inestimable advantage of luxuriating in the delicate aroma of the Cuban leaf, while fancying himself wafted on his upward way to Nirvana. The charming simplicity that leads to this ideal conception of existence is most refreshing; the being so lost to the outer world can hardly be blamed if he says rude things when compelled to touch Mother Earth.