nfluence on the
manners of the people, than that of tea. It seems at first to have been
more universally used, as it still is on the Continent; and its use is
connected with a resort for the idle and the curious: the history of
coffee-houses, ere the invention of clubs, was that of the manners, the
morals, and the politics of a people. Even in its native country, the
government discovered that extraordinary fact, and the use of the
Arabian berry was more than once forbidden where it grows; for Ellis, in
his "History of Coffee," 1774, refers to an Arabian MS., in the King of
France's library, which shows that coffee-houses in Asia were sometimes
suppressed. The same fate happened on its introduction into England.

Among a number of poetical satires against the use of coffee, I find a
curious exhibition, according to the exaggerated notions of that day, in
"A Cup of Coffee, or Coffee in its Colours," 1663. The writer, like
others of his contemporaries, wonders at the odd taste which could make
Coffee a substitute for Canary.

For men and Christians to turn Turks and think
To excuse the crime, because 'tis in their drink!
Pure English apes! ye may, for aught I know,
Would it but mode--learn to eat spiders too.[186]
Should any of your grandsires' ghosts appear
In your wax-candle circles, and but hear
The name of coffee so much called upon,
Then see it drank like scalding Phlegethon;
Would they not startle, think ye, all agreed
'Twas conjuration both in word and deed?
Or Catiline's conspirators, as they stood
Sealing their oaths in draughts of blackest blood,
The merriest ghost of all your sires would say,
Your wine's much worse since his last yesterday.
He'd wonder how the club had given a hop
O'er tavern-bars into a farrier's shop,
Where he'd suppose, both by the smoke and stench,
Each man a horse, and each horse at his drench.--
Sure you're no poets, nor their friends, for now,
Should Jonson's strenuous spirit, or the rare
Beaumont and Fletcher's, in your round appear,
They would not find the air perfumed with one
Castalian drop, nor dew of Helicon;
When they but men would speak as the gods do,
They drank pure nectar as the gods drink too,
Sublim'd with rich Canary--say, shall then
These less than coffee's self, these coffee-men;
These sons of nothing, that can hardly make
Their broth, for laughing