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SIR,
Your most humble servant.

T.

[Footnote 1: Charles Lillie, the perfumer, from whose shop at the corner of Beaufort Buildings the original Spectators were distributed, left behind him a book of receipts and observations, The British Perfumer, Snuff Manufacturer, and Colourmans Guide, of which the MS. was sold with his business, but which remained unpublished until 1822. He opens his Part III. on Snuffs with an account of the Origin of Snuff-taking in England, the practice being one that had become fashionable in his day, and only about eight years before the appearance of the Spectator. It dates from Sir George Rooke’s expedition against Cadiz in 1702. Before that time snuff-taking in England was confined to a few luxurious foreigners and English who had travelled abroad. They took their snuff with pipes of the size of quills out of small spring boxes. The pipes let out a very small quantity upon the back of the hand, and this was snuffed up the nostrils with the intention of producing a sneeze which, says Lillie, I need not say forms now no part of the design or rather fashion of snuff-taking; least of all in the ladies who took part in this method of snuffing defiance at the public enemy. When the fleet, after the failure of its enterprize against Cadiz, proceeded to cut off the French ships in Vigobay, on the way it plundered Port St. Mary and adjacent places, where, among other merchandize, seizure was made of several thousand barrels and casks, each containing four tin canisters of snuffs of the best growth and finest Spanish manufacture. At Vigo, among the merchandize taken from the shipping there destroyed, were prodigious quantities of gross snuff, from the Havannah, in bales, bags, and scrows (untanned buffalo hides, used with the hairy-side inwards, for making packages), which were designed for manufacture in different parts of Spain. Altogether fifty tons of snuff were brought home as part of the prize of the officers and sailors of the fleet. Of the coarse snuff, called Vigo snuff, the sailors, among whom it was shared, sold waggon-loads at Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Chatham, for not more than three-pence or four-pence a pound. The greater part of it was bought up by Spanish Jews, to their own very considerable profit. The fine snuffs taken at Port St. Mary, and divided among the officers, were sold by some of them at once for a small price, while others held their stocks and, as the snuff so taken became popular and gave a patriotic impulse to the introduction of a fashion which had hitherto been almost confined to foreigners, they got very high prices for it. This accounts for the fact that the ladies too had added the use of the perfumed snuff-box to their other fashionable accomplishments. ]