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.