Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 8:

More than one writer of recent days has absurdly misrepresented Johnson as a smoker. The author of a book on tobacco published a few years ago wrote—"Dr. Johnson smoked like a furnace"—a grotesquely untrue statement—and "all his friends, Goldsmith, Reynolds, Garrick, were his companions in tobacco-worship." Reynolds, we know—

When they talk'd of their Raphaels, Corregios, and stuff,
He shifted his trumpet, and only took snuff.

Johnson and all his company took snuff, as every one in the fashionable world, and a great many others outside that charmed circle, did; but Johnson did not smoke, and I doubt whether any of the others did.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 2:

Ben Jonson has given us an amusing picture of the behaviour of gallants on the Elizabethan stage, in his "Cynthia's Revels." In this scene a child thus mimics the obtrusive beau: "Now, sir, suppose I am one of your genteel auditors, that am come in (having paid my money at the door, with much ado), and here I take my place, and sit downe. I have my three sorts of tobacco in my pocket, my light by me, and thus I begin. 'By this light, I wonder that any man is so mad, to come to see these rascally tits play here—they do act like so many wrens—not the fifth part of a good face amongst them all—and then their musick is abominable—able to stretch a man's ears worse than ten—pillories, and their ditties—most lamentable things, like the pitiful fellows that make them—poets. By this vapour—an't were not for tobacco—I think—the very smell of them would poison me, I should not dare to come in at their gates. A man were better visit fifteen jails—or a dozen or two hospitals—than once adventure to come near them.'" And the young rascal, who at each pause marked by a dash had puffed his pipe, no doubt blowing an extra large "cloud" when he swore "by this vapour," turns to his companions and says: "How is't? Well?" and they pronounce his mimicry "Excellent!"

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