From Chapter 6:
The practice of selling tobacco in small paper packets was common, and moralists naturally had something to say about the fate of an author's work, when the leaves of his books found their ultimate use as wrappers for the weed. "For as no mortal author," says Addison, "in the ordinary fate and vicissitude of things, knows to what use his works may, some time or other, be applied, a man may often meet with very celebrated names in a paper of tobacco. I have lighted my pipe more than once with the writings of a prelate."

From Chapter 3:
Venner goes on to give a terrible catalogue of the ills that will befall the smoker who uses tobacco "contrary to the order and way I have set down." It is a dreadful list which may possibly have frightened a few nervous smokers; but probably it had no greater effect than the terrible curse in the "Jackdaw of Rheims."

From Chapter 9:
A few years earlier, in November 1825, Scott had written in his "Journal" that after dinner he usually smoked a couple of cigars which operated as a sedative—:

Just to drive the cold winter away,
And drown the fatigues of the day.

"I smoked a good deal," he continued, "about twenty years ago when at Ashestiel; but, coming down one morning to the parlour, I found, as the room was small and confined, that the smell was unpleasant, and laid aside the use of the Nicotian weed for many years; but was again led to use it by the example of my son, a hussar officer, and my son-in-law, an Oxford student. I could lay it aside to-morrow; I laugh at the dominion of custom in this and many things.

We make the giants first, and then do not kill them."

Scott's remark that Lockhart smoked when an Oxford student rather discredits Archdeacon's Denison's statement, quoted in the preceding chapter, that smoking was very generally unknown in Oxford in 1823-24. The archdeacon was writing from memory—a very untrustworthy recorder; Scott's remark was that of a contemporary.

From Chapter 15:
Before the end of the seventeenth century, however, the signs were ceasing to have any necessary association with the trade carried on under them, and tobacconists are found with shop-signs which had no reference in any way to tobacco. For instance, to take a few examples from the late Mr. Hilton Price's lists of "Signs of Old London" from Cheapside and adjacent streets, in 1695 John Arundell, tobacconist, was at the "White Horse," Wood Street; in the same year J. Mumford, tobacconist, was at the "Faulcon," Laurence Lane; in 1699 Mr. Brutton, tobacconist, was to be found at the "Three Crowns," under the Royal Exchange; in 1702 Richard Bronas, tobacconist, was at the "Horse Shoe," Bread Street; and in 1766 Mr. Hoppie, of the "Oil Jar: Old Change, Watling Street End," advertised that he "sold a newly invented phosphorus powder for lighting pipes quickly in about half a minute. Ask for a Bottle of Thunder Powder."

Again, in Fleet Street, Mr. Townsend, tobacconist, traded in 1672 at the "Three Golden Balls," near St. Dunstan's Church; while at the end of Fetter Lane, a few years later, John Newland, tobacconist, was to be found at the "King's Head."