Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/198

182 Sav. Not altogether so, sir ; but, as it were fatal to their follies that think to grace themselves with taking tobacco, when they want better entertainment, you see your pipe bears the true form of a woodcock's head. Fast. O admirable simile I Sav, 'Tis best leaving of you in admiration, sir. [Exit.] " Thus are idols insensible to the sweetest incense burnt to them ! Woodcock was a cant term for a fool. Gifford gives a drawing of an ancient pipe, in which he discerns pretty nearly the true form of a woodcock's head. Tobacco is mentioned on other occasions in " Every Man out of His Humour," but the allusions are scarcely of sufficient importance to be noted here. One remark must be made in closing. The objects of ridicule in this play are not things or customs themselves, but the affectations or exaggerations of them. Courtliness or courtesy, wit, learning, swords- manship, and tobacco are all good, though the mere pretension to them, or the fantastic abuse of them, is comically contemptible. X " Cynthia's Revels ; or, the Fountain of Self- Love " (1600) has but two or three allusions to tobacco in addition to those cited from the Induction in the preceding section. The first scene opens with a dialogue between Cupid and Mercury. To the un- equalled virtues and endowments of the precocious son of Maia and Zeus, the most frank and liberal tribute is paid in the Homeric Hymn translated by Shelley, from which I have already quoted : —