Tobacco

: NATURE SONGS
: Popular Rhymes And Nursery Tales

Tobacco hic,

Will make you well

If you be sick.



Tobacco was formerly held in great esteem as a medicine. Sickness was

the old term for illness of any kind, and is no doubt the more correct

expression.



It may just be worth a passing notice to observe, that Shakespeare never

mentions tobacco, nor alludes to it even indirectly. What a brilliant

subject for a critic! A treatise might be written to prove from this

circumstance that the great poet was not in the habit of smoking; or, on

the contrary, that he was so great an admirer of the pernicious weed,

that, being unable to allude to it without a panegyric, he very wisely

eschewed the subject for fear of giving offence to his royal master, the

author of the 'Counterblast.' The discussion, at all events, would be

productive of as much utility as the disputes which have occasioned so

many learned letters respecting the orthography of the poet's name.



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