Nobody shall frequent where the Herb Nicotiana is sold.
"The next Statute that says nobody must frequent the houses of the townspeople and the workshops of artificers, without reasonable cause, I pass over with the simple remark, that it would have been better to have avoided the gratuitous insult that places respectable houses in the same clause with others that are both shameless and nameless; and I come to the next Statute, which says that Nobody shall frequent the taverns, wine-shops, or places within the city and University precincts, where wine, or any other liquor, or the herb Nicotiana or 'Tobacco,' is commonly sold. ('Cauponis, Ænopoliis ac domibus * * * in quibus vinum, aut quivis alius potus, aut herba Nicotiana sive Tobacco, ordinarie venditur, abstineant), and that the townspeople who admit the students to such houses shall be heavily fined, or punished with loss of custom for a certain time.
"Bless me, Mr. Punch! to think that I have smoked tobacco all my life, and called it by its wrong name! But, as Sam Slick observes of the Frenchman, 'Blow'd if he didn't call a hat a shappo! This comes of his not speaking English!' so, I suppose, I fell into the mistake of calling the herb Nicotiana by its vulgar name of Tobacco, from not having had the advantage of an Oxford education. The Statute speaks for itself. It entirely sets at rest those absurd reports that we hear and read of the great consumption in Oxford of wines and spirituous liquors, pale ale, and the herb Nicotiana; and when my neighbour's son, Bellingham Grey, of Christchurch, has the politeness to offer me a 'weed' (he does not call it a 'herb,' I observe, so I suppose the plant has degenerated,) which he says he purchased at Castle's, or some other great stronghold for Oxford smokers; and when he further entertains me with accounts of snug little undergraduate dinners at the Star, or Mitre, and how from the effects of an injudicious mixture of liquors the waiter's face came to be artistically corked and otherwise taken liberties with; and when he narrates other anecdotes of a like pleasant nature, I must suppose that he takes me for a Marine, and tells his tales accordingly. For it is very evident to all sensible persons, that when the authorities require the students to swear not to do these things, and to receive certain punishments if they do them, that they would be strict in enforcing the Statute, and would not tamely suffer either thoughtless undergraduates to break their oaths, or the unfortunate tavern and shop-keepers, and vendors of the herb Nicotiana, to run a risk of fines and loss of custom. Would they, Mr. Punch? I should rayther think not, says
"Your Constant Reader,
Peterloo Brown."
A Bare Possibility.—The Russian Bear keeping the peace in Europe for long.