sung the praises of smoking—so obnoxious to the King as to induce him to write a _Counterblaste to Tobacco_—but Wither despised the servility which would have tended to his advancement at Court.’ The original song, the first verse of which is at the head of this chapter, runs as follows:— The earthen pipe so lily white Shows that thou art a mortal wight; Even such—and gone with a small touch: Thus think, and drink tobacco. And when the smoke ascends on high, Think on the worldly vanity Of worldly stuff—’tis gone with a puff; Thus think, and drink tobacco. And when the pipe is foul within Think how the soul’s defiled with sin— To purge with fire it doth require: Thus think, and drink tobacco. Lastly, the ashes left behind May daily shew to move the mind, That to ashes and dust return we must: Thus think, and drink tobacco. As a soother of sorrow in wedded life, the story told by Camden of good Richard Fletcher, Bishop of London, shews how over-indulgence in the weed may carry its votary farther than he wots of. For his sins, people would say, the Bishop had to endure the plague of a scolding wife. The burden became greater than he could bear; he sighed for the peace that failed him, and in his distress he fell to smoking so immoderately that at last his weary spirit took flight on the wings of the weed to the realms of rest he longed for. There is a pathos in the story that awakens a kindred feeling; one can see the peace-loving prelate quietly slipping away from the domestic storm, and, finding sanctuary in his attic, yielding himself a willing martyr to the solace of St Nicotine. Indeed, if the truth must be told, the clergy, ever since her advent in these islands, have been noted votaries at her shrine. Instances crowd upon us. A curious example is found in the pages of the astrologer Lilly’s _Memoires_ published in 1715, thirty-four years after his death. We are told of one, William Bredon, vicar of Thornton, in Buckinghamshire, who was so far given over to the taking of tobacco in a pipe that when his supply was run out he would cut off the ends of the bell-ropes and smoke the bits. But this unworthy lover of his pipe was profoundly learned in Eastern lore, particularly that which related to judicial astrology. It may well be, that, along with his learning, he derived from the same source his knowledge of hashish. The practice of inhaling the fumes of burning hemp, was, as we have already seen, common in the near East, before tobacco had reached the Moslem. It is next to impossible to dip into the pages of the early playwrights and pamphleteers without coming upon mirthful allusions to the new indulgence. Ben Jonson, Thomas Dekker, Samuel Rowlands, and a host of other writers in those jubilant days, found in the weed and the habits of smokers a never-failing source for good-natured raillery.