Grocott & Ward, comps. Grocott’s Familiar Quotations, 6th ed. 189-?.
Tobacco
What a glorious creature was he who first discovered the use of tobacco!—the industrious retires from business—the voluptuous from pleasure—the lover from a cruel mistress—the husband from a cursed wife—and I from all the world to my pipe.
Fielding.—The Grub Street Opera, Act III. Scene 1.
As bland he puff’d the pipe o’er weekly news,
His bosom kindles with sublimer views.
T. Wharton.—Newmarket, Line 87.
The child of tobacco, his pipes, and his papers.
Ben Jonson.—The Fortunate Isles.
Divine tobacco!
Spenser.—Fairy Queen, Book III. Canto V. Verse 32.
Sublime tobacco! which, from east to west,
Cheers the tar’s labour or the Turkman’s rest;
Which on the Moslem’s ottoman divides
His hours, and rivals opium and his brides;
Magnificent in Stamboul, but less grand,
Though not less loved, in Wapping or the Strand:
Divine in hookas, glorious in a pipe
When tipp’d with amber, mellow, rich and ripe;
Like other charmers, wooing the caress,
More dazzlingly when daring in full dress;
Yet thy true lovers more admire by far
Thy naked beauties—give me a cigar!
Byron.—The Island, Canto II. Stanza 19.
The pipe with solemn interposing puff,
Makes half a sentence at a time enough;
The dozing sages drop the drowsy strain,
Then pause, and puff—and speak, and pause again.
Cowper.—Conversation, Line 245.
A good vomit, I confess, a virtuous herb if it be well qualified, opportunely taken, and medicinally used; but as it is commonly abused by most men, which take it as tinkers do ale, ’tis a plague, a mischief, a violent purger of goods, lands, health, hellish, devilish and damned tobacco, the ruin and overthrow of body and soul.
Burton.—Anat. of Melancholy, Part II. Sect. IV. Memb. 2. Subs. 1.
Pernicious weed! whose scent the fair annoys,
Unfriendly to society’s chief joys;
Thy worst effect is banishing for hours
The sex whose presence civilizes ours.
Cowper.—Conversation, Line 251.
Among other regulations it would be very convenient to prevent the excess of drinking; with that scurvy custom among the lads, and parent of the former vice, the taking of tobacco where it is not absolutely necessary in point of health.
Swift.—On the advancement of Religion. (Roscoe’s Ed. of his Life, Page 277.)