THE LITERATURE OF SMOKING. (Globe )

Waikato Times, Volume IV, Issue 249, 13 December 1873, Page 2

THE LITERATURE OF SMOKING. (Globe )

N iTnrNO lias been more bdimdi'd, nothing more abused than smoking. At one time it lius been all the faihion, at another it lin* been altogether tsbooed ; ignored as completely as it in ignored in the pijca of Shakespeare ; idolised as completely a** it wn« idolised by Dr Parr; cast o/Fas ruthlessly as Blackstono cast off tlie if uses he had wooed. Poetn, divines, orator?, nn<l luslOi-ians have waxed eloquent in il» prni--c«, and n6t Ipss eloquent have been the furious invectives liurlpd agni ist it. Lt has beon one of those tilings — there are not many yon which every one ha* had definito opinions. Those who hare written or spoken lor or against it have been equally unmeasured in tlio phraseology they employ. King James the First thundered the first volley in his famous ' Counterblast toTola^co,' and this was followed by a ' Volley from Parnasus,' by nn anonymous writer, whose wrath seems to have outstripped his power of expression. An undorione of grumbling m the shape of epigrams, occasional pimphlots, sarcastic notes, &c, is sometimes discernible to the curious in such things all through our literature, but these- grumblers are mostly of the subterranean order, mere croakers in the nethermost mud. One renegade, however, we must notice — n man who ouyht to hayo known better — Charles Ltimb. His ' Farewell to Tobacco ' is the expression of the only piece of ingratitude that gentle nature win guilty of — if ingratitude it was. Catullus, we Lnow, always discovered when Lpsbia was fondest of him by tho heartless way in which she abused him. Perhaps the same paradoxical sentiment was guiding the infatuated Lamb when he penned the line ' Filth o1o 1 the mouth, and fog o' tho mind' — a plagiarism, by the way, from a great smoker, who calls silence ' Frost o' the mouth, aud thaw o' tho mind.' One of the greatest of modern poet?, to.'erant of every thii q beside, bas the bud taste to be intolerant en this one subject, and hates a pipe or cigar as he would be ashamed to hate anything or anybody else in the world. But smokers cm afford to smile at these blaok swans, as they glance over the goodly list of those who have been guilty of the same weakness as themselvrs. The great Dr Isaac Barrow called hi* pipe his Panphnrmacm, or cure for everything. -Bishop Hall and Dr Hooker were by no means proof against a quiet clay. We can see Ben Jonson and Drummond with the white vapour wreathing itself around them, and are by no means certain that my Lord Bacon did not know from experier.Cs the truth of his own words, ' Tobacco comforteth the spirits and dischargeth weariness, which it worketh partly by opening, but chieflj by the opiate virtue which comlenseth the spirits ' Fletcher ha<l many a quiet pipe with Beaumont, nnd Sir Thomas Overbury often soothed himself in a pause of his troubled life with ' that delectable pastime.' Scholars and stutents of every kind have been faithful votaries of the weed. Boxbore, the great Dutch scholar, was such a slave to it that he wore a very broad-brimmed hat, pierced a hole through it, and so supported his pipe while his hands weie free, and smoked unimpeded day and night. Bentley could never sufficiently thank Cumberland for initiating him into the delightful mystery of enjoying a pipe, and only regretted he had not begun earlier to learn it ; he was over seventy when he had his first lesson, Porson used to dogmatically assert that when smoking went out of fashion, learning did so too, and old Dr Parr insisted on taking bis pipe with him wherever he went. 'No pipe, no Parr,' was his snappish and ungallant speech to a lady who objected to the fumigation of her drawing-room. The only rest poor old Hobbes got in that stormy contentious existence of bis ■was when he coulit light his pipe in comfort, and forget all about" Dr Eachard or Wallis Who cannot see in imagina- | tion John Milton smoking Ins regular evening pipe, and talking between whiffs to guitle El wood ; or step over to the ' Rose ' and survey the authoi of ' Hudibras,' silent, absent, and reserved, with a history in eveiy line of that hard, coarse face, now lit up with the Hate of the Jive coal he has put into the bowl of his pipe? Fielding was a great smoker, and many a scene of those harum-scarum comedies of his were dashed off on his tobacco paper. Tillotson was not a little attached to his evening pipe, and Jeremy Taylor meditated not a few of his golden pages through the wreaths of a curling mist which was bom not of the meadows. Old Burton, the author of the immortal ' Anatomy of Melancholy,' has a curious passage on the divine plant. He knows not what to conclude of it : — 'Tobacco, divine, rare, super-excellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all their panaceas, potable gold, and philosopher's stones, a sovereign remedy to all diseases ; but as it is commonly abused by most men, which take it as tinkers do ale, 'tis a plagnp, a mischief, a violent purger of goods, lands, health.' One may lead in this the experience of many ' merrie, facete, and juvenile' houis with old John Rouse, of the Bodleian, in the back quad of Christ Church, for he, like Burton, was a hero of the weed. Mathematicians have generally been great smokers, though we hope for the honour of the name they did not, like Sir Isaac Newton, use the fngers of their lady loves for stoppers. All the wits of Queen Anne'B time were nothing without their pipes. Steele wjote with a pipe in his mouth, and it was when wreathed in smoke that Addison shone most Dryden, after his snuflbox, loved a whiff, and the great Mr Congreve scorned not a f churchwarden ;' Ambrose Philips was eloquentj|in its praise, and his namesake John has written a delighttul alcaic ode in its praise. Who can forget honest Dr Brown's ' Little pipe of mighty power,' ami think of Daniel Defoe without his pipe ? The ' Spectator' always devoted an hour in the evening to absorbing a clay, and if ever his equanimity was disturbed it was when the dancing Frenchmen broke Ins pipes. In later times tobacco has not been so popular wifh literary men ; Shelly could not endure a pipe, nor could Edgar Poe nor Moore Neither llacaulay nor De Quincey were smokers. If repoit speaks correctly, however, a good many distinguished writers of our own day keep up the traditions of old times. The novels of Dickens did not suffer, nor perhaps do the poems of Mr Tennyson, from i their devotion to the ' sweete habit.'