Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/205

 BEN JONSON 189 it observed, which it long kept, and still maintains to a considerable degree in many lands, and to which (bating the old uncritical extravagances) it has far more serious and solid claims than are generally admitted in our time and country. In "Epiccene; or, The Silent Woman" (1609), I have already referred to Act iv., Sc. i : "As he lies on his back droning a tobacco-pipe." There is another phrase worth mention ; not in itself, for it is very trivial and common in the writers of the time, but on account of Gifford's note : — '■'■He went away in snuff {hcX iv., Sc. 2), i.e., in anger: alluding, I presume, to the offensive manner in which a candle goes out. The word is frequent in our old writers, and furnishes Shakespeare with many playful opportunities of confounding it with the dust of tobacco." Now, in Section viii., I wrote : " It has, too, been often remarked that Shakespeare never mentions or alludes to tobacco, though he may have smoked many a good pipe with Raleigh himself at the ' Mer- maid.' It is to be feared that the remark is deplorably well founded. . . . Many of the per- sonages are continually taking snuff, but this does not appear to have been supplied by the tobacconist." Gifford was so well-read, painstaking, and accurate, that I withdraw the above and suspend my judgment on this important matter until I am able to investi- gate it again. In the meanwhile, as affording some presumption in my favour and against Gifford, it may be remarked, on the authority of " the once celebrated Charles Lillie," perfumer, London, 1740, as stated in a little book called " Nicotiana ; or the Smoker's