From Chapter 3: Thomas Dekker, to whose pictures of London social life at the opening of the seventeenth century we are so much indebted for information both with regard to
smoking and in respect of many other matters of interest, was himself an enemy
of tobacco. He politely refers to "that great Tobacconist, the Prince of Smoake and Darkness, Don Pluto"; and in another place addresses tobacco as "thou beggarly Monarche of Indians, and setter up of rotten-lungd chimney-sweepers," and proceeds in a like strain of abuse.
From Chapter Chapter 8: He describes the box and its contents in lines which show not only tolerance but appreciation
of tobacco, from which it is not unreasonable to infer that Cowper's first view of his friend's
smoking-habit as a drawback—as shown in his letter to Unwin, quoted above—had been modified by neighbourhood and custom. It might have been well for the poet himself if he had learned to smoke a social pipe with his friend Bull. The appreciative lines run thus:
This oval box well filled
With best tobacco, finely milled,
Beats all Anticyra's pretences
To disengage the encumbered senses.
O Nymph of transatlantic fame,
Where'er thine haunt, whate'er thy name,
Whether reposing on the side
Of Oronoco's spacious tide,
Or listening with delight not small
To Niagara's distant fall,
'Tis thine to cherish and to feed
The pungent nose-refreshing weed,
Which, whether pulverized it gain
A speedy passage to the brain,
Or whether, touched with fire, it rise
In circling eddies to the skies,
Does thought more quicken and refine
Than all the breath of all the Nine—
Forgive the bard, if bard he be,
Who once too wantonly made free,
To touch with a satiric wipe
That symbol of thy power, the pipe;
* * * * * * *
And so may smoke-inhaling Bull
Be always filling, never full.