BEN JONSON 185 Cupid asks : "Is that a courtier too ? " and Mercury replies (I perforce condense) : — "Troth no; he has two essential parts of the courtier, pride and ignorance ; marry, the rest come somewhat after the ordinary gallant. 'Tis impudence itself, Anaides ; one that speaks all that comes in his cheeks, and will blush no more than a sackbut. . . . He will censure or discourse of any thing, but as absurdly as you would wish. His fashion is not to take knowledge of him that is beneath him in clothes. He never drinks [/o atiy] below the salt. He does naturally admire his wit that wears gold lace or tissue. Stabs any man that speaks more contemptibly [contemptuously] of the scholar than he. He is a great proficient in all the illiberal sciences, as cheating, drinking, swaggering, whoring, and such like : never kneels but to pledge healths, nor prays but for a pipe of pudding- tobacco. The oaths which he vomits at one supper would main- tain a town of garrison in good swearing a twelve-month. " On the pipe of pudding-tobacco Gifford notes : " It appears from the Induction that there were 'three sorts of tobacco' then in vogue; which, from the names scattered over our old plays, seem to be the leaf, pudding, and cane-tobacco. I can give the reader no other information respecting them, than that cane-tobacco appears to have been the most expensive of the whole : —
- ' The nostrils of his chimnies are still stuffed
With smoak more chargeable than cane tobacco.' — Merry Devil of Edmonton." At the end of the piece the nymphs and gallants who have drunk at the Fountain of Self-Love, and been but apes and counterfeits of truly noble and gentle courtiers, are adjudged to perform penance at Niobe's stone or Weeping-cross, and then to purge themselves at "the Well of Knowledge, Helicon"
