+Source.+--Pamphlet: _The Character of a Coffee-House, with the Symptoms
of a Town Wit_. Printed in the _Harleian Miscellany_. Vol. vi.,
pp. 465-468.
A Coffee-House is a lay-conventicle, good-fellowship turned puritan,
ill-husbandry in masquerade; whither people come after toping all day,
to purchase, at the expense of their last penny, the repute of sober
companions: a rota-room, that, like Noah's ark, receives animals of
every sort, from the precise diminutive band, to the hectoring cravat
and cuffs in folio; a nursery for training up the smaller fry of
virtuosi in confident tattling, or a cabal of kittling criticks that
have only learned to spit and mew; a mint of intelligence, that, to make
each man his pennyworth, draws out into petty parcels, what the merchant
receives in bullion. He, that comes often, saves two-pence a week in
Gazettes, and has his news and his coffee for the same charge, as at a
three-penny ordinary they give in broth to your chop of mutton; it is an
exchange where haberdashers of political small-wares meet, and mutually
abuse each other, and the publick, with bottomless stories, and headless
notions; the rendezvous of idle pamphlets, and persons more idly
employed to read them; a high court of justice, where every little
fellow in a camlet[2] cloke takes upon him to transpose affairs both in
church and state, to shew reasons against acts of parliament, and
condemn the decrees of general councils.
The room stinks of tobacco worse than hell of brimstone, and is as full
of smoke as their heads that frequent it, whose humours are as various
as those of Bedlam, and their discourse often times as heathenish and
dull as their liquor; that liquor which, by its looks and taste, you may
reasonably guess to be Pluto's diet-drink, that witches tipple out of
dead-men's skulls, when they ratify to Belzebub their sacramental vows.
This Stygian puddle-seller was formerly notorious for his ill-favoured
cap, that aped a turbant; and, in conjunction with his antichristian
face, made him appear perfect Turk. But of late his wife being grown
acquainted with gallants, and the provocative virtue of chocolate, he
finds a broad-brimmed hat more necessary. When he comes to fill you a
dish, you may take him for Guy Faux with a dark lanthorn in his hand,
for no sooner can you taste it, but it scalds your throat, as if you had
swallowed the gunpowder-treason. Though he seem never so demure, you
cannot properly call him pharisee, for he never washes either out or
inside of his pots or dishes, till they be as black as an usurer's
conscience; and then only scraping off the contracted soot, makes use of
it, in the way of his trade, instead of coffee-powder: their taste and
virtue being so near of kin, he dares defy the veriest coffee-critic to
distinguish them. Though he be no great traveller, yet he is in
continual motion, but it is only from the fire-side to the table; and
his tongue goes infinitely faster than his feet, his grand study being
readily to echo an answer to that threadbare question, "What news have
you, Master?" Then with a grave whisper, yet such as all the room may
hear it, he discovers some mysterious intrigue of state, told him last
night by one that is barber to the taylor of a mighty great courtier's
man: relating this with no less formality than a young preacher delivers
his first sermon, a sudden hick-up surprises him, and he is forced
twenty times to break the thread of his tale with such necessary
parentheses, "Wife, sweep up those loose corns of tobacco, and see the
liquor boil not over." He holds it as part of his creed, that the great
Turk is a very good christian, and of the reformed church, because he
drinks coffee; and swears that Pointings, for celebrating its virtues in
doggerel, deserves to be poet-laureat: yet is it not only this hot
hell-broth that he sells, for never was mountebank furnished with more
variety of poisonous drugs, than he of liquors; tea and aromatick for
the sweet-toothed gentleman, betony[3] and rosade[4] for the
addle-headed customer, back-recruiting chocolate for the consumptive
gallant, Herefordshire redstreak made of rotten apples at the Three
Cranes, true Brunswick mum brewed at St. Catharine's, and ale in penny
mugs, not so big as a taylor's thimble.
As you have a hodge-podge of drinks, such too is your company; for each
man seems a leveller, and ranks and files himself as he lists, without
regard to degrees or order; so that often you may see a silly fop and a
worshipful justice, a griping rook and a grave citizen, a worthy lawyer
and an errant pickpocket, a reverend nonconformist and a canting
mountebank, all blended together to compose an oglio[5] of impertinence.
If any pragmatic, to shew himself witty or eloquent, begin to talk high,
presently the further tables are abandoned; and all the rest flock
round, like smaller birds, to admire the gravity of the madge-howlet.
They listen to him awhile with their mouths, and let their pipes go out,
and coffee grow cold, for pure zeal of attention; but, on the sudden,
fall all a yelping at once with more noise, but not half so much
harmony, as a pack of beagles on the full cry. To still this bawling, up
starts Capt. All-man-sir, the man of mouth, with a face as blustering as
that of Æolus and his four sons, in painting; and in a voice louder than
the speaking trumpet, he begins you the story of a sea-fight: and
though he never were further, by water, than the Bear-garden, or
Cuckold's-haven, yet, having pirated the names of ships and captains, he
persuades you himself was present, and performed miracles; that he waded
knee-deep in blood on the upper deck, and never thought to serenade his
mistress so pleasant as the bullets whistling; how he stopped a
vice-admiral of the enemy's under full sail, till she was boarded, with
his single arm, instead of grappling-irons; and puffed out, with his
breath, a fire-ship that fell foul on them. All this he relates, sitting
in a cloud of smoke, and belching so many common oaths to vouch it, you
can scarcely guess whether the real engagement, or his romancing account
of it, be the more dreadful. However, he concludes with railing at the
conduct of some eminent officers (that, perhaps, he never saw,) and
protests, had they taken his advice at the council of war, not a sail
had escaped us.
* * * * *
Next, signior Poll takes up the cudgels, that speaks nothing but
designs, projects, intrigues, and experiments.... All the councils of
the German diet, the Romish conclave, and Turkish divan, are well known
to him. He kens all the cabals of the court to a hair's breadth, and
(more than a hundred of us do) which lady is not painted: you would take
his mouth for a lembeck,[6] it distils words so niggardly, as if he was
loth to enrich you with lies, of which he has yet more plenty than Fox,
Stowe, and Hollingshed bound up together. He tells you of a plot to let
the lions loose in the Tower, and then blow it up with white powder; of
five hundred and fifty Jesuits all mounted on dromedaries, seen by
moonshine on Hampstead-heath; and a terrible design hatched by the
College of Doway,[7] to drain the narrow seas, and bring popery over dry
shod: besides, he had a thousand inventions dancing in his brain-pan; an
advice-boat on the stocks, that shall go to the East Indies and come
back again in a fortnight; a trick to march under water, and bore holes
through the Dutch ships' keels with augres, and sink them, as they ride
at anchor; and a most excellent pursuit to catch sun-beams, for making
the ladies new-fashioned towers, that poets may no more be damned for
telling lies about their curls and tresses.
[2] Camlet: a stuff originally made of silk and camel's hair, but later
made of wool and silk.
[3] Betony: a plant noted for its medicinal properties.
[4] Rosade: a drink concocted from roses.
[5] Oglio: a spiced hotch-potch.
[6] Lembeck: apparatus for distilling.
[7] Douai.