Newton and his Pipe.
"We next find Tobacco rearing its head under the auspices of Paley and Parr. Paley had one of the most orderly minds ever given to man. A vein of shrewd and humorous sarcasm, together with an under-current of quiet selfishness, made him a very pleasant companion. 'I cannot afford to keep a conscience any more than a carriage,' was worthy of Erasmus, perhaps of Robelais. 'Our delight was,' said an old Jonsonian to the writer, 'to get old Paley, on a cold winter's night, to put up his legs, wrap them well up, stir the fire, and fill him a long Dutch pipe; he would talk away, sir, like a being of a higher sphere. He declined any punch, but drank it up as fast as we replenished his glass. He would smoke any given quantity of Tobacco, and drink any given quantity of punch.'
"Parr smoked ostentatiously and vainly, as he did everything. He used only the finest Tobacco, half-filling his pipe with salt. He wrote and read, and smoked and wrote, rising early, and talking fustian. He was a sort of miniature Brummagem Johnson. Except his preface to Bellendenus, you might burn all he has written. His 'Life of Fox' is beneath contempt. His letters are simply laughable, especially his characters of contemporaries. He, however, was an amiable and good-natured man, and had sufficient humanity to regard dissent as an impediment to his recognition of intellectual or moral worth. Parr was an arrogant old coxcomb, who abused the respectful kindness he received, and took his pipe into drawing-rooms. I pass over the Duke of Bridgewater, because he was early crossed in love by a most beautiful girl, could not bear the sight of a flower even growing, and passed life in a pot-house with a pipe, listening to Brindley, whose intellect and dialect must have been alike incomprehensible to him.
"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.
Tennyson, Smoking.
"Alfred Tennyson is a persistent smoker of some forty years. Dickens, Jerrold and Thackeray all puffed. Lord Lytton loves a long pipe at night and cigars by day. Lord Houghton smokes moderately. The late J. M. Kemble, author of 'The Seasons in England,' was a tremendous smoker. Moore cared not for it; indeed, I think that Irish gentlemen smoke much less than English. Wellington shunned it; so did Peel. D'Israeli loved the long pipe in his youth, but in middle age pronounced it 'the tomb of love.' While I am writing, it is not too much to aver that 99 persons out of 100, taken at random, under forty years of age, smoke habitually every day of their lives. How many in Melbourne injure wealth and brain, I leave to more skilled and morose critics. But my mind misgives me. Paralysis is becoming very frequent.