"A comfort which they can't forsake,
What is it some would rather take,
Than good roast beef, or rich plum cake?
A pinch of snuff!
"Should two old gossips chance to sit,
And sip their slop, and talk of it,
What gives a sharpness to their wit?
A pinch of snuff!
"What introduces Whig or Tory,
And reconciles them in their story,
When each is boasting in his glory?
A pinch of snuff!
"What warms without a conflagration
Excites without intoxication,
And rouses without irritation?
A pinch of snuff!
"When friendship fades, and fortune's spent,
And hope seems gone the way they went,
One cheering ray of joy is sent—
A pinch of snuff!
"Then let us sing in praise of snuff!
And call it not such 'horrid stuff,'
At which some frown, and others puff,
And seem to flinch.
"But when a friend presents a box,
Avoid the scruples and the shocks
Of him who laughs and he who mocks,
And take a pinch!"
From "Pandora's Box" from which we have already quoted, we extract the following in which the use of snuff is deprecated by the author:
—"now, 'tis by every sort
And sex adored, from Billingsgate to court.
But ask a dame 'how oysters sell?' if nice,
She begs a pinch before she sets a price.
Go thence to 'Change, inquire the price of Stocks;
Before they ope their lips they open first the box.
Next pay a visit to the Temple, where
The lawyers live, who gold to Heaven prefer;
You'll find them stupify'd to that degree,
They'll take a pinch before they'll take their fee.
Then make a step and view the splendid court,
Where all the gay, the great, the good resort;
E'en they, whose pregnant skulls, though large and thick,
Can scarce secure their native sense and wit,
Are feeding of their hungry souls with pure
Ambrosial snuff. * * * *
But to conclude: the gaudy court resign,
T' observe, for once, a place much more divine,
When the same folly's acted by the good,
And is the sole devotion of the lewd;
The church, more sacred once, is what we mean,
Where now they flock to see and to be seen;
The box is used, the book laid by, as dead,
With snuff, not Scripture, there the soul is fed;
For where to heaven the hands by one of those,
Are lifted, twenty have them at the nose;
And while some pray, to be from sudden death
Deliver'd, others snuff to stop their breath."
Paolo Mantegazza, one of the most brilliant and witty of Italian writers on tobacco, says of its use and "some of the delights that may be imagined through the sense of smell:"—