Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/215

 BEN JONSON 199 and surmised?]" &c. &c. This is how the modern Solomon dealt with a precious and wholesome luxury, rapidly growing into an almost universal necessary of really civilised life, and the duty on which in 1875, just 250 years after his death, con- tributed ;^7,72o,558 to the national revenue, being 38f per cent, of all the Customs, 5 per cent, more than spirits, and over twice as much as tea ! And, even in his own time, he was so far foiled in his demented war a outrance against the "weed of glorious feature " (Wordsworth !) that, as I read in Dr. Carrick Murray's little work on Smoking (p. 70) : " From ' The Honesty of the Age,' by Barnaby Rych, published in 16 14, two years before the celebrated 'Counterblast,' we learn there were 'upwards of 7000 houses that doeth live by that trade in London, and near about London.' " And now we must postpone to another section the further consideration of honest Abel Drugger, who, unsophisticated himself, supplied unsophisti- cated tobacco. XII The second Act introduces Sir Epicure Mammon, who has been promised by Subtle that the magisterium, the great work, both philosopher's stone and elixir, will be perfected for him this day. Mammon is ac- companied by his unbelieving friend, Pertinax Surly, a gamester, whose incredulity he overwhelms, if he cannot drown it, with torrents of eloquence, swelling into boundless floods of dithyrambic rapture when he catalogues to Face, disguised as Lungs, some of the