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OF TOBACCO. XXXVI. - Christopher Marlowe, The Works of Christopher Marlowe, vol. 3 (Poems) [1598]

Edition used:

The Works of Christopher Marlowe, ed. A.H. Bullen (London: John C. Nimmo, 1885). Vol. 3.

Part of: The Works of Christopher Marlowe, 3 vols.

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OF TOBACCO. XXXVI.

  • Homer of Moly and Nepenthe sings;
  • Moly, the gods' most sovereign herb divine,
  • Nepenthe, Helen's3 drink, which gladness brings,
  • Heart's grief expels, and doth the wit refine.
  • But this our age another world hath found,
  • From whence an herb of heavenly power is brought;
  • Moly is not so sovereign for a wound,
  • Nor hath nepenthe so great wonders wrought.
  • It is tobacco, whose sweet subtle4 fume
  • The hellish torment of the teeth doth ease,

    10

  • By drawing down and drying up the rheum,
  • The mother and the nurse of each disease;
  • It is tobacco, which doth cold expel,
  • And clears th' obstructions of the arteries,
  • And surfeits threatening death digesteth well,
  • Decocting all the stomach's crudities;1
  • It is tobacco, which hath power to clarify
  • The cloudy mists before dim eyes appearing;
  • It is tobacco, which hath power to rarify
  • The thick gross humour which doth stop the hearing;

    20

  • The wasting hectic, and the quartan fever,
  • Which doth of physic make a mockery,
  • The gout it cures, and helps ill breaths for ever,
  • Whether the cause in teeth or stomach be;
  • And though ill breaths were by it but confounded,
  • Yet that vild2 medicine it doth far excel,
  • Which by Sir Thomas More3 hath been propounded,
  • For this is thought a gentleman—like smell.
  • O, that I were one of these mountebanks
  • Which praise their oils and powders which they sell'

    30

  • My customers would give me coin with thanks;
  • I for this ware, forsooth,4 a tale would tell:
  • Yet would I use none of these terms before;
  • I would but say, that it the pox will cure;
  • This were enough, without discoursing more,
  • All our brave gallants in the town t'allure.

[3]Isham copy, “Heuens;” and eds. B, C “Heauens.”—MS “helevs.”—Davies alludes to Odyssey iv., 219, &c.

[4]So MS.-Old eds. “substantiall.”

[1]We are reminded of Bobadil's encomium of tobacco.-“I could say what I know of the virtue of it, for the expulsion of rheums, raw humours, crudities, obstructions, with a thousand of this kind; but I profess myself no quacksalver. Only this much. by Hercules I do hold it and will affirm it before any prince in Europe to be the most sovereign and precious weed that ever the earth tendered to the use of man.”

[2]So MS.-Not in old eds.

[3]Dyce quotes from More's Lucubratioms (ed. 1563, p, 261). an epigram headed “Medicinæ ad tollendos fuetores anbelitus, provenientes a cibis quibusdam.”

[4]So eds. A, B, C-Isham copy “so smooth”MS. “so faire “