Saturday, April the 8th, 2006

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Quote of the Day

“It is a little curious, considering the devotion of latter-day men of letters to tobacco, that in their early days so many of the men who wrote on the subject attacked the social use of tobacco with violence and virulence. Their titles are characteristic of their style. A writer named Deacon published in 1616 a quarto entitled ‘Tobacco tortured in the filthy Fumes of Tobacco refined’; but Joshua Sylvester had easily surpassed this when he wrote his ‘Tobacco Battered and the Pipes Shattered about their Eares, that idely Idolize so base and barbarous a Weed, or at least overlove so loathsome a Vanity, by a Volley of Holy Shot Thundered from Mount Helicon’, 1615. Controversialists of that period rejoiced in full-worded titles and in full-blooded praise or abuse.” — G L Apperson, The Social History Of Smoking