The Anatomy of Tobacco
oration which hath taken two hours to deliver make a something which taketh up six lines or less of print, and all con fess that it is well done. Some rash and daring spirits, indeed, would persuade us that, though it is well done to compress so far, it would be better done to omit the whole oration; but these be atheistical and blasphemous doctrines, to which I do in no wise assent. So, observing the golden mediocrity that the Venusian commends, I have touched the matter—I will not say with a needle, but with a pipe-stopper, which, be it remarked, is an image much to the purpose. For as when a man, the smoke coming with diffidence and uncertainty from his pipe, doth gently and carefully compress with a pipe-stopper the tobacco within, and lo! it burneth to admiration; so have I, in considering the contentions of these two Schools, applied the pipe-stopper of my understanding unto them. And I dare swear that as one hath said of the book writ by Immanuel Kant (I would say the Kritik der Reinen Vernunft), "to
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