SMOKE RINGS AND ROUNDELAYS. Edited by Wilfred Partington. (John Castle.
7s. net.) Tobacco has never inspired love-or hatred to the point of downright, utterly convincing eris du coeur ; but there is quite a considerable number of small, not-too serious master- pieces. There is, best of all, Charles Lamb's " Farewell to Tobacco " (a farewell as premature as a prima donna's). There is the quaint and intricate ode which Mr. Partington attributes to George Wither :- " Why should we so much despise So wholesome and good exercise As, early and late, to meditate ? Thus think, and drink tobacco.
The earthen pipe so lily-white, Shows that thou art a mortal wight ; Even such—and gone with a small touch : Thus think, and drink tobacco.
And when the pipe is foul within, Think how the soul's defiled with sin— To purge with fire it doth require : Thus think, and drink tobacco."
There ate-the immortal parodies of Isaac Hawkins Browne, too. All these are well known, and all are included in Mr. Partington's anthology. But he has wandered among the tributes of smaller writers, and • has -chosen" a very pleasing, very inclusive volume of poems and prose extracts. There are side-glances at other things in the literature of tobacco ; and perhaps readers will delight equally in the extraneous sentences that creep in. There is Lamb's sentence in a letter to Coleridge, for example : " Bless you, old sophist, who next to human' nature taught me all the 'corruption I was capable of knowing 1 "
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