ISAAC HAWKINS BROWNE was born at Burton upon Trent, educated at Westminster and Cambridge, and studied the law at Lincoln's Inn; but his fortune enabled him to decline the pursuit of business long before his death. He sat in two parliaments for Wenlocke, in Shropshire.
OLD Battle-array, big with horror, is fled,
And olive-rob'd Peace again lifts up her head. Sing, ye Muses, Tobacco, the blessing of peace; Was ever a nation so blessed as this?
When summer suns grow red with heat,
Tobacco tempers Phoebus' ire;
When wintry storms around us beat,
Tobacco cheers with gentle fire.
Yellow autumn, youthful spring,
In thy praises jointly sing.
Like Neptune, Cæsar guards Virginian fleets,
Fraught with Tobacco's balmy sweets;
Old Ocean trembles at Britannia's power,
And Boreas is afraid to roar.
Happy mortal! he who knows
Pleasure which a Pipe bestows;
Curling eddies climb the room,
Wafting round a mild perfume.
Let foreign climes the wine and orange boast,
While wastes of war deform the teeming coast;
Britannia, distant from each hostile sound,
Enjoys a Pipe, with ease and freedom crown'd;
E'en restless faction finds itself most free,
Or if a slave, a slave to liberty.
Smiling years that gaily run
Round the zodiac with the sun,
Charmer of an idle hour,
Object of my warm desire,
Lip of wax and eye of fire:
And thy snowy taper waist,
With my finger gently brac'd;
And thy pretty swelling crest,
With my little stopper prest,
And the sweetest bliss of blisses,
Breathing from thy balmy kisses.
Happy thrice, and thrice agen,
Happiest he of happy men;
Who when agen the night returns,
When agen the taper burns,
When agen the cricket's gay,
(Little cricket, full of play)
Can afford his tube to feed
With the fragrant Indian weed:
Pleasure for a nose divine,
Incense of the god of wine.
Happy thrice, and thrice agen,
Happiest he of happy men.
IMITATION III.-JAMES THOMSON.
-Prorumpit ad æthera nubem
Turbine, fumantem piceo.
O THOU, matur'd by glad Hesperian suns,
Tobacco, fountain pure of limpid truth,
That looks the very soul; whence pouring thought
Swarms all the mind; absorpt is yellow care,
And at each puff imagination burns :
Flash on thy bard, and with exalting fires
Touch the mysterious lip, that chaunts thy praise
In strains to mortal sons of earth unknown.
Behold an engine, wrought from tawny mines
Of ductile clay, with plastic virtue form'd,
And glaz'd magnific o'er, I grasp, I fill.
From Patotheke with pungent pow'rs perfum'd,
Itself one tortoise all, where shines imbibed
Each parent ray; then rudely ramm'd illume,
With the red touch of zeal-enkindling sheet,
Marked with Gibsonian lore; forth issue clouds,
Thought-thrilling, thirst-inciting clouds around,
And many-mining fires; I all the while,
Lolling at ease, inhale the breezy balm.
But chief, when Bacchus wont with thee to join,
In genial strife and orthodoxal ale,
Stream life and joy into the Muse's bowl.
Oh be thou still my great inspirer, thou
My Muse; oh fan me with thy zephyrs boon,
While I, in clouded tabernacle shrin'd,
Burst forth all oracle and mystic song.
Pagina turgescat-dare pondus idonea fumo.
CRITICS avaunt! Tobacco is my theme;
Tremble like hornets at the blasting steam.
And you, court-insects, flutter not too near
Its light, nor buzz within the scorching sphere.
Pollio, with flame like thine my verse inspire,
So shall the Muse from smoke elicit fire.
Coxcombs prefer the tickling sting of snuff;
Yet all their claim to wisdom is- -a puff:
Lord Foplin smokes not-for his teeth afraid:
Sir Tawdry smokes not-for he wears brocade.
Ladies, when pipes are brought, affect to swoon;
They love no smoke, except the smoke of town;
But courtiers hate the puffing tribe,-no matter,
Strange if they love the breath that cannot flatter!
Its foes but shew their ignorance; can he
Who scorns the leaf of knowledge, love the tree?
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