As recorded in the PRB Journal, on 19 November 1849, F. G. Stephens mentioned at a PRB meeting that John Tupper was working on "a first rate poem (a kind of chant), available, in case of need, for our first number." This was "Smoke," No. IV of the "Papers of the M.S. Society," which Tupper read at a meeting a few days later. WMR remarked that the work was "exceedingly clever" but "borders, nevertheless, on the ultra-peculiar, and a few allusions altogether unintelligible by such as are not personally acquainted with him will have to be omitted in printing it."