Page:Elizabethan People.djvu/113

 that 'a coal of juniper, if covered with its own ashes, will retain its fire a whole year.'"

It is hard to understand how a habit in such general disrepute as "tobacco taking" could have grown so rapidly among the people. To be sure, John Davies wrote the following praise, though doubtless ironically:—

Though there are many serious allusions to the virtues of the new drug, a greater number express the contrary opinion. King James in his Counterblast calls it a "custom loathsome to the eye, hatefull to the nose, harmfull to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fumes thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomless."

Above all, the plays abound in allusions expressive of contempt. Jonson in Bartholomew Fair makes Overdo exclaim "Hence it is that