"We see, then, that the quaffing of burgundy or the smoking of Herba Santa is not, for Melville, an approach to stupefaction, but an act of cameraderie and a defense against the kinds of over-thinking that are sterile or destructive: Biz on the one hand, Empedoclean despair on the other." --Aaron Kramer in Melville's Poetry: Toward the Enlarged Heart (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1972), page 36.Chapter 17 in Volume 2 of Melville's Mardi; and, a Voyage Thither (1849) features one comic smoking song, sung by Yoomy the poet. Timoleon, Etc has a more ambitious tribute to tobacco, Herba Santa.
Here is an anonymous eighteenth-century favorite, "Tipple and Smoke," transcribed from The Comic Songster: Or Laughing Companion 4th ed. (London, 1789):
TlPPLE AND SMOKE.
WITH a pipe of Virginia how happy am I,
And good liquor to moisten my clay standing by,
I puff up the smoke and it curls round the room,
Like a Phoenix I seem in a nest of perfume.
Delighting,
Inviting,
Is a pipe, and a friend who is fond of a joke,
Then happy together we tipple and smoke.
How pleasant it is thus to puff time away,
And between ev'ry whiff chat the news of the day:
Tobacco, great Raleigh, we owe to thy name,
And ev'ry true smoaker will puff up thy fame!
Delighting,
Inviting,
Is a pipe, and a friend that is fond of a joke,
Then happy together we tipple and smoke.
When buss'ness is over, we puff away care,
Let ev'ry man else say the same if he dare ;
This plant, so delightful's a foe to the spleen,
As it glows in the pipe it enlivens the scene:
Delighting,
Inviting,
Is a pipe, and a friend that is fond of a joke,
Then happy together we tipple and smoke.
While thus in the fumes we're envelop'd around,
Our heads are like hills which with clouds still are crown'd;
Yet soon we emerge, and go cheerful away,
For a pipe of the best makes us bright as the day:
Delighting,
Inviting,
Is a pipe, and a friend who is fond of a joke,
Then happy together we tipple and smoke.
https://books.google.com/books?id=rDRYAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA35&lpg#v=onepage&q&f=falseEarlier collections with "Tipple and Smoke":
The festival of Momus, a collection of comic songs, including the modern and a variety of originals. Printed for W. Lane, Leadenhall-Street, [1780?]. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CW0116179191/GDCS?u=nypl&sid=GDCS&xid=59b38db1. Accessed 30 July 2019.
The universal songster or harmony and innocence: an elegant and polite selection of modern and approved songs. Many of which are not inserted in any other collection. Printed for W. Lane, [1785?]. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CW0116827942/GDCS?u=nypl&sid=GDCS&xid=2e9a0304. Accessed 30 July 2019.
The 1783 Bacchanalian Songster has a different, more spiritous tune that admits the pleasures of female society: "with a pipe and a glass / and a well favor'd lass."
Along with Hopkinson's A Fair Bargain, the British smoking song "Tipple and Smoke" is counted with miscellaneous poems that Livingston descendant Mary S. Van Deusen would ascribe, tentatively and conjecturally, to Henry Livingston, Jr.
