Page:Notes and Queries - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/268

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

[24 S. K 13., MAR. 29. '56.

I find five stanzas of tlie verses quoted in Rob Roy. The reading is different from the above, and, judging from the deficiency of a syllable in line 1st, I should think not correct. Take one stanza :

" The Indian weed, withered quite, Green at noon, cut down at night, Shews thy decay all flesh is hay : Thus think, then drink tobacco."

I have no doubt but that drink is the true reading. The intoxicating qualities of the weed may have led to a confusion of ideas between smoking and drinking, on its first introduction, and thus to the application of one term to the use of both.

In a note Mr. Chatto says,

" These verses are printed in a collection of pieces en- titled ' Two Broadsides against Tobacco : the first given by King James of famous memory, his Counterblast to Tobacco ; the second transcribed out of that learned phy- sician, Dr. Edward Maynewaringe, his Treatise of the Scurvy. To which is added Sundry Cautions, &c.,' 4to., Lond. 1672. The verses here given had undoubtedly been printed before, as it is mentioned that they were answered by George Wither, and that the burden" of his reply was,

" Thus think, drink no tobacco."

Some correspondent of " N. & Q." may favour us with a copy of these lines of Wither.

As a further illustration of the precedence which our countrymen took of foreigners in their propensity for smoking, Mons. Misson, in his Me- moirs of his Travels over England, written in 1697, notices the very general use of tobacco : and in Devon (the native county of Sir Walter Ralegh) and in Cornwall, even among the women ; as in the present day the pipe is very extensively taken by the sex, at a certain age, in Northumber- land and on the Scottish border.

Misson attributes to their much smoking not only the thoughtfulness, taciturnity, and melan- choly of the English, but also their excellence as theologians ; for, he says,

" Tobacco not only breeds profound theologists, but also begets moral philosophers; witness the following sonnet to a pipe :

tt 'Doux charme de ma solitude, Brulante pipe, ardent fourneau ! Qui purges d'humeur mon cerveau, Et mon esprit d'inquietude. Tabac ! dont mon ame est ravie, Lorsque je te vois te perdre en 1'air, Aussi promptement q'un eclair, Je vois 1'image de ma vie : Tu remets dans mon souvenir, Ce qu'un jonr je dois devenir, N'etant qu'une cendre anime'e ; Et tout d'un coup je m'ape^oi, Que courant apres ta fume'e, Je passe de meme que toi.' "

Mr. Ozell, who did Misson's Travels into En-

glish, has somewhat shorn the sonnet of its just proportions, thus :

" Sweet-smoking pipe, bright glowing stove,

Companion still of my retreat, Thou dost my gloomy thoughts remove, And purge my brain with gentle heat.

" Tobacco, charmer of my mind,

When, like the meteor's transient gleam, Thy substance gone to air I find, I think, alas ! my life's the same.

" What else but lighted dust am I ?

Thou show'st me what my fate will be ; And when thy sinking ashes die, I learn that I must end like thee."

One of the questions discussed at Oxford before James I.; in 1605, was Utrum frequena suffitus NicotiancB exotica sit sanis salularis ? The con- clusion was in the negative ; doubtless to the king's great delight. Warton's Observations on Spencer s Faery Queen, vol. ii.

The Pinch of Snuff has been already mentioned in "K & Q." (1 st S. vii. 268.), as by Benson Earle Hill, and the Paper of Tobacco, as by W. A. Chatto (ix. 408.).

Having named Dean Aldrich, I would express my wish to have an authentic copy of the song (of which I believe he was author), " Hark, the merry Christ Church Bells." Some of your cor- respondents may be good enough to furnish one.

Y. B. N. J.

[We subjoin a copy of the Dean's song :

" Hark! the bonny Christ-church bells, One, two, three, four, five, six ; They sound so woundy great, So wond'rous sweet, And they troul so merrily.

" Hark ! the first and second bell, That ev'ry day, at four and ten, Cries come, come, come, come, come to pray'rs, And the verger troops before the Dean.

" Tingle, tingle, ting, goes the small bell at nine, To call the beerers home ; But there's ne'er* a man will leave his can, 'Till he hears the mighty Tom." f]

PHOTOGRAPHIC CORRESPONDENCE.

Method of lightening Waxed Paper Negatives that have been too much developed. La Lumivre of the 2nd of Fe- bruary contains a letter from M. de la Blanchere on this subject. He says : " It has, I think, frequently happened to every photographer using waxed paper, that the ne- gative has become so much blackened in the gallic acid, that the picture is nearly, if not quite, obscured. This obscuration resists the a'ction of hyposulphite of soda however concentrated ; and after waxing, a print is ob- tained from such a negative, only after long exposure to the sun, and cannot be produced in the shade. These

f Great Tom of Oxford, over the Christ Church gate- way, which tolls every night at nine o'clock.
 * Sometimes sung, " But the de'il a man."