Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/527

 s. viii. DEC. 28, loci.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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plates were inserted, twelve being given in the volume. In 1864 the subjects include Tour Years in the Prisons of .Rome,' by one who had been a judge in Venice, 'African Exploration,' and 'The War in New Zea- land,' the criticism on which is very severe. In 1866 Mr. Edward Whyrnper relates his ascent of the Aiguille Verte ; and in 1868 the Abyssinian war is described in a series of articles by one of the captives at Magdala.

The contents of the volume for the present year include 'Queen Victoria,' by the Dean of Canterbury, and 'The Inauguration of the Australian Commonwealth,' by " Our Australian Correspondent."

JOHN C. FKANCIS. ( To be continued. )

SNUFF-TAKING.

IN Mr. Arber's notes to his reprint of King James's ' Counterblaste of Tobacco ' there is very little information regarding the custom of snuff-taking so far as Great Britain is con- cerned. He quotes from only a single old writer, Henry Buttes, who in his ' Diets Dry Dinner,' speaking of tobacco, says : " Dried in the shade, and compiled very close : of a tawny colour, somewhat inclining to red : most perspicuous and cleare : which the Nose soonest taketh in snuffe." I think it very doubtful whether the last expression refers to the habit under discussion ; even if the words could be so understood, they would only show that snuff- taking was of the rarest occurrence ; otherwise we should meet with more frequent mention of it. Henry Buttes, it may be added, wrote in the year 1599. Neither Thomas Nash, Ben Jonson, James L, Robert Burton, nor any of the writers quoted by Mr. Arber, so far as I can find, have the slightest allusion to this the most harmless way of using the herb.

After the lapse of more than a century viz., in the .year 1708 a correspondent wrote to the British Apollo, as we learn from Mr. Arber, and inquired how long it was since "the taking of Snuff hath been in Use in England." To this query he received the following reply : " Snuff, tho' the Use of it has been long known to such, as were bv merchandizing or other means, familiar with the Spanish Customes, has been till lately a perfect Stranger to the Practice of the British Nation, and like our other Fashions came to us from France." The habit must have soon become common, for Pope, in his 'Rape of the Lock,' just four years later, has the fol- lowing lines :

But this bold lord, with manly strength endued, She with one finger and a thumb subdued : Just where the breath of life his nostrils drew, A charge of snuff the wily virgin threw ; The Gnomes direct, to every atom just, The pungent grains of titillating dust. Sudden, with starting tears each eye o'erflows, And the high dome re-echoes to his nose.

In this manner did Belinda overcome the baron.

But the reply given by the editor is inaccu- rate. In the first place, the French did not start the fashion of snuff - taking. The Spaniards had led the way long before, and carried the habit to such an excess that, according to Vigneul - Marville ('Melanges d'Histoire et de Litterature,' vol. i. p. 10, Rotterdam, 1702), Pope Urban VIII. (1623-44), in compliance with trie just complaints of the dean and chapter of the cathedral of Seville, issued a bull in which he excommunicated those who took tobacco in churches. The writer, whose real name was Argonne, adds : "The priests in Spain took it at the very altar ; and that is perhaps what made the Abbe Nisseno say it was the devil himself who brought this accursed herb from the Indies into Spain and the rest of the world." The author is not very clear, as he employs the word " tabac " without any qualification ; but I take it that the bull was directed not only against smoking by the laity, and more especially by the clergy, in church, but also against snuff-taking by the latter when en- gaged in their sacred functions. I have not had the opportunity of consulting the docu- ment, which may be read, says the writer, " dans le grand Bullaire des Seraphins," which must contain some very wonderful things, one is inclined to think. But where is it, and who were the " Se'raphins " ? The only refer- ence to them that I can find is in Bouillet's ' Dictionnaire Universel d'Histoire,'&c.. where I read : " Seraphins (ordre des), ordre de che valerie etabli en Suede, en 1334, par le roi Magnus II., et renouvele en 1748 par Frederic." Why these knights should have made a col- lection of Papal bulls is a subject for wonder. Had they been of the character of those called " Irish " it would have appeared natural enough. But I pass on, and say that it is not to France nor to Spain, but to an island not far distant from our shore, that we are in- debted for the introduction of the titillating mixture, if we believe the authority I now bring forward. In the twelfth volume of the 4 Harleian Miscellany ' there is a reprint of a long and interesting treatise, first published in 1682, with this title : ' The Natural History of Coffee, Thee, Chocolate, and Tobacco. The writer does not give his name, but his