Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 3:

Musicke, tobacco, sacke and sleepe,
The tide of sorrow backward keep.

An ingenious lover of his pipe declared ironically in the same year that he had found three bad qualities in tobacco, for it made a man a thief (which meant danger), a good fellow (which meant cost), and a niggard ("the name of which is hateful"). "It makes him a theefe," he continued "for he will steale it from his father; a good fellow, for he will give the smoake to a beggar; a niggard, for he will not part with his box to an Emperor!" A character in one of Chapman's plays, 1606, calls tobacco "the gentleman's saint and the soldier's idol." A little-known bard of 1630—Barten Holiday—wrote a poem of eight stanzas with chorus to each in praise of tobacco, in which he showed with a touch of burlesque that the herb was a musician, a lawyer, a physician, a traveller, a critic, an ignis fatuus, and a whiffler, i.e. a braggart. The first verse may suffice as a specimen:

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 15:

The older tobacconists were wont to assert, says Larwood, that the man in the moon could enjoy his pipe, hence "the 'Man in the Moon' is represented on some of the tobacconists' papers in the Banks Collection puffing like a steam engine, and underneath the words, 'Who'll smoake with ye Man in ye Moone?'" The Dutch, as every one knows, are great smokers, so a Dutchman has been a common figure on tobacconists' signs. In the eighteenth century a common device was three figures representing a Dutchman, a Scotchman and a sailor, explained by the accompanying rhyme:

The bill bearing this sign is in Banks's Collection, 1750. Another in the same collection, with a similar meaning but of more elaborate design, shows the three men, the central figure having his hands in his pockets and in his mouth a pipe from which smoke is rolling. The man on the left advances towards this central figure holding out a pipe, above which is the legend "Voule vous de Rape." Above the middle man is "No dis been better." The third man, on the right, holds out, also towards the central figure, a tobacco-box, above which is the legend "Will you have a quid."

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