Mansfield Park
    Volume IChapter17

    Note 1: (Do you remember Hawkins Browne's 'Address to Tobacco,' in imitation of Pope?)

    Isaac Hawkins Browne, (1705-1760), is best remembered for two of his works, A Pipe of Tabacco and a poem on the immortality of the soul. A Pipe of Tabacco is written in imitation of a number of other poets.

    The part of the poem used in Mansfield Park is:

    Blest leaf! Whose aromatic gales dispense
    To templars modesty, to parsons sense :
    So raptured priests, at famed Dodona's shrine
    Drank inspiration from the steam divine.
    Poison that cures, a vapour that affords
    Content more solid than the smile of lords :
    Rest to the weary, to the hungry food,
    The last kind refuge of the wise and good.
    Inspired by thee, dull cits adjust the scale
    Of Europe's peace when other statesmen fail.
    By thee protected, and thy sister, beer,
    Poets rejoice, nor think the bailiff near.
    Nor less the critic owns thy genial aid,
    While supperless he plies the piddling trade.
    What though to love and soft delights a foe,
    By ladies hated, hated by the beau,
    Yet social freedom, long to courts unknown,
    Fair health, fair truth and virtue are thy own :
    Come to thy poet, come with healing wings,
    And let me taste thee, unexcised by kings.