THE BLACKMORE CENTENARY
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I do not suppose there is a single one of your readers who has not read Lorna Doone, yet the centenary of the forceful Englishman who wrote it, Richard Dodderidge Blackmore, is being celebrated without very much popular enthusiasm. I may be getting old-fashioned, but I fancy that only few products of the " modern " school of authors leave such romantic memories behind as that first reading of Lorna Doone which has been a common experience of us all.
Blackmore was a great stickler for historical accuracy, but I have long wondered whether anyone else had noticed that he alludes to cigars as having been smoked in 1660. It was, of course, 130 years later that the delightful weed, the Havana, whose form then was identical with to-day's cigar, was first introduced to England to meet the demand of the English aristocracy. But Richard Blackmore is in good company, for Charles Kingsley makes Amyas Leigh smoke cigars in
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