Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/178

l62 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES universal rules ; logic, or the art of transforming words into things ; theology, or the art of dogma- tising on matters whereof nobody can know anything whatever; rhetoric, or the art of saying nothings gracefully ; politics, or the art of embroiling embroil- ment; science, or the art of rendering a grain of knowledge more conspicuous than a desert of ne- science. But if to these and the like trivial matters, why not to the most important and transcendent of all ? Wherefore I proceed to consider the works of our poet in relation to sublime and divine tobacco — a thrilling theme ! It has been often remarked that the introduction of the weed (so we lovingly vilipend the sweetest and dearest of flowers) was synchronous with the wonderful outburst of genius irradiating the close of the sixteenth and opening of the seventeenth century ; whence it has been plausibly urged that the latter was in large measure due to the former, that those fires of unequalled fervour and splendour were kindled at the altar of Diva Nicotina. Against this theory it has been contended by the profane, that if tobacco at the very beginning wrought such mar- vellous effects, we ought to be by this time, through continual and ever-increasing inspiration of pipe and cigar (for truly to in-spiration these are ever devoted), a people half-composed of Raleighs, and Bacons, and Shakespeares ; but the objection shows a lack of historical insight, due, it may be, to a lack of his- torical knowledge. The world is a perpetual flux ; the centuries are differently dominated ; the heavenly dynasties change even as the dynasties of earth ; the god must have successive avatars, nor can he continue in one form, even though it be the most beautiful-