"About the latter end of the sixteenth century, tobacco was in great vogue in London, with wits and 'gallants,' as the dandies of that age were called. To wear a pair of velvet breeches, with panes or slashes of silk, an enormous starched ruff, a gilt handled sword, and a Spanish dagger; to play at cards or dice in the chambers of the groom-porter, and smoke tobacco in the tilt-yard or at the play-house, were then the grand characteristics of a man of fashion. Tobacconists' shops were then common; and as the article, which appears to have been sold at a high price, was indispensable to the gay 'man about town,' he generally endeavored to keep his credit good with his tobacco-merchant. Poets and pamphleteers laughed at the custom, though generally they seem to have no particular aversion to an occasional treat to a sober pipe and a poute of sack. Your men of war, who had served in the Low Countries, and who taught young gallants the noble art of fencing, were particularly fond of tobacco; and your gentlemen adventurers, who had served in a buccaneering expedition against the Spaniards, were no less partial to it. Sailors--from the captain to the ship-boy--all affected to smoke, as if the practice was necessary to their character; and to 'take tobacco' and wear a silver whistle, like a modern boatswain's mate, was the pride of a man-of-war's man. "Ben Jonson, of all our early dramatic writers, most frequently alludes to the practice of smoking. In his play of 'Every Man in his Humour,' first acted in 1598, Captain Bobadil thus extols in his own peculiar vein the virtues of tobacco; while Cob, the water carrier, with about equal truth, relates some startling instances of its pernicious effects. "'_Bobadil._ Body o' me, here's the remainder of seven pound since yesterday was seven-night! 'Tis your right Trinadado! Did you never take any, Master Stephen? "'_Stephen._ No, truly, Sir; but I'll learn to take it since you commend it so.