"A Tobacco-Seller," says Earle, "is the onely man that findes good in
it which others brag of, but do not; for it is meate, drinke, and
clothes to him. No man opens his ware with greater seriousnesse, or
challenges your judgement more in the approbation. His shop is the
Randevous of spitting, where men dialogue with their noses, and their
communication is smoake. It is the place onely where Spaine is
commended, and prefer'd before England itselfe. He should be well
experienc'd in the world: for he ha's daily tryall of mens nostrils,
and none is better acquainted with humors. Hee is the piecing commonly
of some other trade which is bawde to his Tobacco, and that to his
wife, which is the flame that follows this smoke."

This brief "Character" is hardly so pointed or so effective as some of
the others in the "Micro-Cosmographie," but it would seem that the
Bishop was not very friendly to tobacco. In the character of "A
Drunkard" he says: "Tobacco serves to aire him after a washing [_i.e._
a drinking-bout], and is his onely breath, and breathing while." In
another, a tavern "is the common consumption of the Afternoone, and
the murderer, or maker away of a rainy day. It is the Torrid Zone that
scorches the face, and Tobacco the gunpowder that blows it up."

The druggist-tobacconists were well stocked with abundance of
pipes--those known as Winchester pipes were highly popular--with maple
blocks for cutting or shredding the tobacco upon, juniper wood
charcoal fires, and silver tongs with which the hot charcoal could be
lifted to light the customer's pipe. The maple block was in constant
use in those days, when the many present forms of prepared tobacco and
varied mixtures were unknown. In Middleton and Dekker's "Roaring
Girl," 1611, the "mincing and shredding of tobacco" is mentioned; and