ces into as many
peevish wrinkles as the beaux at the Bow Street Coffee-house, near
Covent Garden, did when the gentleman in masquerade came in amongst
them, with his oyster-barrel muff and turnip-buttons, to ridicule
their foperies.

In _A Brief and Merry History of Great Britain_ we read:

There is a prodigious number of Coffee-Houses in London, after the
manner I have seen some in Constantinople. These Coffee-Houses are
the constant Rendezvous for Men of Business as well as the idle
People. Besides Coffee, there are many other Liquors, which People
cannot well relish at first. They smoak Tobacco, game and read
Papers of Intelligence; here they treat of Matters of State, make
Leagues with Foreign Princes, break them again, and transact
Affairs of the last Consequence to the whole World. They represent
these Coffee-Houses as the most agreeable things in London, and
they are, in my Opinion, very proper Places to find People that a
Man has Business with, or to pass away the Time a little more
agreeably than he can do at home; but in other respects they are
loathsome, full of smoak, like a Guard-Room, and as much crowded. I
believe 'tis these Places that furnish the Inhabitants with
Slander, for there one hears exact Account of everything done in
Town, as if it were but a Village.

At those Coffee-Houses, near the Courts, called White's, St.
James's, Williams's, the Conversation turns chiefly upon the
Equipages, Essence, Horse-Matches, Tupees, Modes and Mortgages; the
Cocoa-Tree upon Bribery and Corruption, Evil ministers, Errors and
Mistakes in Government; the Scotch Coffee-Houses towards Charing
Cross, on Places and Pensions; the Tiltyard and Young Man's on
Affronts, Honour, Satisfaction, Duels and Rencounters. I was
informed that the latter happen so frequently, in this part of the
Town, that a Surgeon and a Sollicitor are kept constantly in
waiting; the one to dress and heal such Wounds as may be given, and
the other in case of Death to bring off the Survivor with a Verdict
of Se Devendendo or Manslaughter. In those Coffee-Houses about the
Temple the Subjects are generally on Causes, Costs, Demurrers,
Rejoinders and Exceptions; Daniel's the Welch Coffee-House in Fleet
Street, on Births, Pedigrees and Descents; Child's and the Chapter
upon