"The cigar appeared about 1812; it received the countenance of the Regent, who had hitherto confined himself to macobau snuff, scented with lavender and the tonquin bean. Porson smoked many bundles of cheroots, which nabobs began to import. After 1815 the continental visits were resumed, and the practice of smoking began steadily to increase. The German china bowl with globular receiver of the essential oil, the absorbent meerschaum, the red Turkish bell-shaped clay, the elaborate hookah,--a really elegant ornament, and perhaps the most healthful and rational form of smoking,--pipes of all shapes, began to fill the shops of London. Coleridge, when cured of opium, took to snuff. Byron wrote dashingly about 'sublime Tobacco,' but I do not think he carried the practice to excess. Shelley never smoked, nor Wordsworth, nor Keats. Campbell loved a pipe. John Gibson Lockhart was seldom without a cigar. Sir Walter Scott smoked in his carriage, and regularly after dinner, loving both pipes and cigars. Professor Wilson smoked steadily, as did Charles Lamb. Carlyle, now somewhat past seventy, has been a sturdy smoker for years. Goethe did not smoke, neither did Shakespeare. I cannot recall a single allusion to Tobacco in all his plays; even Sir Toby Belch does not add the pipe to his burnt sack. But Shakespeare hated every form of debauchery. The penitence of Cassio is more prominent than was his fun. 'What! drunk? and talk fustian and speak parrot, and discourse with one's shadow?' Shakespeare held drunkenness in disgust. Even Falstaff is more an intellectual man than a sot. What actor could play Falstaff after riding forty miles and being well thrashed? Yet, when Falstaff sustains the evening at the Boar's Head, he has ridden to Gadshill and back, forty-four miles! No palsied sot, he. Hamlet's disgust at his countrymen is well known. 'Grim death, how foul and loathsome is thine image!' is the comment on the drunken Kit Sly. In short, when you look at the smooth, happy, half-feminine face of Shakespeare, you see one to whom all forms of debauchery were ungenial. A courtier certainly, and a lover of money. The king had written against Tobacco, and Will Shakespeare set his watch to the time. Raleigh and Coliban Jonson might smoke at the Mermaid--Will kept his head clear and his doublet sweet. [Illustration: Tennyson, smoking.]