Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/232

216 XIII In "Bartholomew Fair" (1614) we have a good deal of tobacco in decidedly queer company. Tom Quarlous, the gamester, declares that, rather than marry a rich old Puritanical widow for the sake of her fortune, he would submit to the most terrible tortures and privations ; among others : "I would e'en desire of fate, I might dwell in a drum and take in my sustenance with an old broken tobacco-pipe and a straw." Humphrey Waspe, telling of the trouble he has had with his young, rattle-brained master, Bartholomew Cokes, an esquire of Harrow, who has been but a day and a half in town, and is fascinated by every novelty he comes across, gives as the climax : " I thought he would have run mad o' the black boy in Bucklersbury, that takes the scurvy, roguy tobacco there." Entering the Fair, we soon meet, among other estimable characters, Ursla the pig-woman. Mooncalf the tapster, and Nightingale the ballad-monger : — '* Urs. Fie upon't : who would wear out their youth and prime thus, in roasting of pigs, that had any cooler vocation? hell's a kind of cold cellar to't, a very fine vault o' my con- science ! — What, Mooncalf I Moon. [ Within the booth,"] Here, mistress. Urs. My chair, you false faucet you ; and my morning's draught, quickly, a bottle of ale, to quench me, rascal. I am all fire and fat, Nightingale, I shall e'en melt away to the first woman, a rib again, I am afraid. . . . Fill again, you unlucky vermin ! . . . a poor vexed thing I am, I feel myself dropping already as fast as I can ; two stone of suet a day is my propor- tion. I can but hold life and soul together with this (here's to you, Nightingale), and a whiff of tobacco at most. Where's my pipe now ? not filled I thou arrant incubee.