Some people used to find fault with Dr. Johnson because, they said, he was greedy in eating and drinking. He would often take twelve or fourteen cups of tea at a meal. This seems a good deal, but we must remember that in his time teacups were small, and the fashion was to hand them round only half-filled. There is a story that one lady, when the Doctor was taking tea in her parlour, rudely refused to pour him out any more after he had had about a dozen cups, and he, quite as rudely, retorted that her tea was really not worth drinking.

This China drink, as it was called at first, did not for some time become the popular beverage it is now, mainly owing to its high price. It seems that at first tea was taken without milk. An old book of 1657 states that the English were encouraged to take tea, because it was recommended by doctors in France, Italy, and other countries of Europe, so that evidently other nations had tea-drinkers before England. In September 1660, Samuel Pepys notes that he had his first cup of tea, or 'dish,' as it was called. Many people called the plant 'tay,' in the eighteenth century, and that name is heard occasionally even now. The early price varied from four sovereigns, to twice the sum, for a single pound; afterwards the price was lowered, and the quantity brought over increased. At the end of the reign of Charles II. only five thousand pounds were imported annually; by 1700, the number had become twenty-one thousand, and in 1721, over a million pounds.