‘“I have been in the Indies where neither myself nor a dozen gentlemen more of my knowledge have received the taste of any other nutriment in the world for over a space of one-and-twenty weeks, but the juice of this simple only. Therefore it cannot be but ’tis divine—especially your Trinadado; your Nicotian is good also. By Hercules! I do hold it before any prince in Europe to be the most sovereign and precious herb that ever the earth tendered for the use of man.”’
‘But, O worthy Ben, did not the master over-charge his ‘prentice when he allowed the braggart to lay on the tinsel with so heavy a hand?’
‘Listen to me, my masters, let Ben Jonson read the Untrussing of the Humorous Poet without blenching if he can, for that might advance him in merit; he would acknowledge that Thomas Dekker can kick.’
‘Hist! feather-brained gossip; proclaim not so loudly thy kinship with the asinine family.’
Advancing with measured step the noble Raleigh appears and is greeted with the cry:—
Hail, mighty Raleigh! to whose name we owe
The use and knowledge of this sovereign plant.
To which the illustrious knight made answer, ‘Not so, gentle spirits of the past; to me it was not given to be the discoverer, or the first to bring to my countrymen a knowledge of the blessed herb whose sobering and soothing virtues lend man strength to bear with tranquility the injustice of the powerful. The honour you would do unto me belongs of right to others who were before me in the fray of battle and adventure. Humble service have I rendered at her shrine, receiving thereby sweet refreshment unstinted, even when on the threshold of thy domain, O mighty Jupiter.
‘Yet, by your leave, I will relate something of the wonderful tales told of this weed by the adventurers who first brought tidings of it to Europe, and of the New World and its people they had discovered in the far-off western seas.