Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/200

184 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES "the herds in litigation"), Apollo himself thus praised him : — " This glory and power thou dost from Jove inherit, To teach all craft upon the earth below ; Thieves love and worship thee — it is thy merit To make all mortal business ebb and flow By roguery." In this last matter we are, perhaps, entitled to felicitate ourselves on being somewhat ahead of even the old Greeks ! In our dramatic " Comical Satire," Cupid, addressing Mercury, is no less candid than the hymn. Thus : — "... my mother Venus . . . but stoop'd to embrace you, and (to speak by metaphor) you borrow'd a girdle of hers, as you did Jove's sceptre (while he was laughing) and would have done his thunder too, but that 'twas too hot for your itching fingers. ... I heard, you but looked in at Vulcan's forge the other day, and entreated a pair of his new tongs along with you for company : 'tis joy on you i' faith, that you will keep your hooked talons in practice with anything. 'Slight, now you are on earth, we shall have you filch spoons and candlesticks rather than fail : pray Jove the perfumed courtiers keep their casting-bottles, pick-tooths and shittlc-cocks from you, or our more ordinary gallants their tobacco-boxes ; for I am strangely jealous of your nails." From which it appears that the use of tobacco was already almost universal among gentlemen of the court; the abstainers being principally such per- fumed, finical, effeminate, queasy dandies as had been probably turned inside out by their first and last attempt at a pipe. In Act ii., Sc. 2, we have the character of Anaides, who is the caricature of Eutolmos or good Audacity.