that the neighbouring territories do not suffer under a constant inundation? I answer, that the water that is treasured up in the cells and caverns of the earth, which, it is probable, here are more than ordinary copious, intice and allure back the marine waters, per motum nexus, by a motion of adherence, aggregation, union, and connexion, and so by a continual circulation, reimburse and new-stock the rivers, with additional streams which are daily paid, in so profuse a tribute, to the vast exchequer of their watery sovereign. And thus have I, as compendiously as might be, wound up this essay; yet I am not so confident to believe, but that posterity may by new discoveries and scrutinies, for arts are not yet in their solstice, nor know. ledge in its zenith, improve it to greater advantage of the publick, than could be expected from this faint result of my pen; in the interim I shall desire the reader, to acquiesce in that amicable and ingenuous determination of the poet,- -Si quid novisti rectius istis, candidus im perti: Si non, kis utere mecum. THE CHARACTER OF A COFFEE-HOUSE, WITH THE SYMPTOMS OF A TOWN WIT. With allowance, April 11th, 1673. London: Printed for Jonathan Edwin, at the Three Roses in Ludgate-Street, 1673. Folio, containing eight pages, A is 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 expence of their last penny, the 12pute 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 threepenny 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 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: it is impossible to describe it bet ter than the most ingenious of the Latin poets has done it to our hand, and that so excellently, we cannot but transcribe it: Unde quod est usquam quamvis regionibus absit Thus strictly Englished: Here all that's done, though far remote, appears, And, through the spacious world, enquires for news. 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 oftentimes 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 anti-christian face, made him appear perfect Turk: but of late, his wife being grown acquainted with gallants, and the provocative vertue 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 vertue being so near of kin, he dares defy the veriest coffee-critick 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 eccho 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 hickup surprises him, and he is forced twenty times to break the thread of his tale, with such necessary parenthesises, 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 and rosade 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, with out 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 of imperti nence. If any pragmatick, 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 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 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'shaven, yet, having pirated the names of ships and captains, he persuades you himself was present, and performed miracles; that he waded kneedeep 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 scarce 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. He is no sooner out of breath, but another begins a lecture on the Gazette, where, finding several prizes taken, he gravely observes, if this trade hold, we shall quickly rout the Dutch, horse and foot, by sea: he nicknames the Polish gentlemen wherever he meets them, and enquires, whether Gayland and Taffaletta be Lutherans or Calvinists? stilo novo he interprets a vast new stile, or turnpike, erected by his electoral highness on the borders of Westphalia, to keep Monsieur Turenne's cavalry from falling on his retreating troops; he takes words by the sound, without examining their sense: Morea he believes to be the country of the Moors, and Hungary a place where famine always keeps her court, nor is there any thing more certain, than that he made a whole room full of fops, as wise as himself, spend above two hours in searching the map for Aristocracy and Democracy, not doubting but to have found them there, as well as Dalmatia and Croatia. Next, Signior Poll takes up the cudgels, that speaks nothing but de. signs, projects, intrigues, and experiments; one of those in the old comedian, Plautus, Sciunt id quod in aurem Rex Regina dixerit, quod Juno confabulata est cum Jove, sciunt quæ neque futura neque facta sunt, tamen illi sciunt, &c. All the councils of the German dyet, the Romish conclave, and Turkish divan, are as well known to him as his laundress's smock. He kens all the cabals of the court to a hair's breadth, and (more than an hundred of us do) which lady is not painted; you would take his mouth for a lembeck, it distills his words so niggardly, as if he was loth to inrich you with lyes, of which he has yet more plenty than Fox, Stowe, and Hollingshead bound up together: he tells you of a plot to let the lions loose in the tower, and then blow it up with white pow. der; of five hundred and fifty Jesuits all mounted on dromedaries, seen by moon-shine on Hampstead-heath, and a terrible design hatched by the college of Doway, to drain the narrow seas, and bring Popery over * Vide Justin. Lib. ii, de Cynægiro. dry shod; besides, he has a thousand inventions dancing in his brainpan; 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 lyes about their curls and tresses. But these are puny pugs; the arch devil, wherewith this smoke-hole is haunted, is the town wit, one that plays rer wherever he comes, and makes as much hurry as Robin Goodfellow of old amongst our Granam's milk bowls; he is a kind of a squib on a rope; a meteor, composed of self-conceit and noise, that, by blazing and crackling, engages the wonder of the ignorant, till, on a sudden, he vanishes and leaves a stench, if not infection, behind him; he is too often the stain of a good family, and, by his debauched life, blots the noble coat of his ancestors: a wild unbacked colt, whose brains are not half coddled, indebted for his clothes to his taylor, and for his wit, such as it is, to his company: the school had no sooner endued him with a few superficial sprinklings, but his mother's indulgence posted him to town for genteeler breeding, where three or four wild companions, half a dozen bottles of Burgundy, two leaves of Leviathan, a brisk encounter with his landlord's glass-windows, the charms of a little miss, and the sight of a new play, dubbed him at once both a wit and a hero; ever since, he values himself mainly for understanding the town, and, indeed, knows most things in it that are not worth knowing: the two poles, whereon all his discourses turn, are atheism and bawdy: bar him from being profane or obscene, and you cramp his ingenuity, which forthwith flags and becomes useless, as a mere common lawyer when he has crossed the charmel. He is so refractory to divinity, that morality itself cannot hold him; he affirms human nature knows no such things, as principles of good and evil, and will swear all women are whores, though his mother and sister both stand by: whatever is sacred or serious he seeks to render ridiculous, and thinks government and religion fit objects for his idle and fantastick buffoonry; his humour is proud and assuming, as if he would palliate his ignorance by scoffing at what he understands not; and therefore with a pert and pragmatic scorn depreciates all things of nobler moment, but most passionately affects pretty a-la-mode words; and is as covetous of a new song or air, as an antiquary of Cato's statue with never an arm, and but half a nose; these keep him always employed, and fill up the grotesco's of his conversation, whilst with a stately gallantry, once in every half hour, he combs out his wig, careens his breeches, and new marshals his garniture, to the tune of Methinks the poor town has been troubled too long. His mind used to whistle up and down, in the levities of fancy, and effeminated by the childish toyings of a rampant imagination, finds itself indisposed for all solid employment, especially the serious exercises of piety and virtue, which begets an aversion to those lovely beauties, and that prompts him, on all occasions, to expose them as ridiculous and vain: hence, by degrees, he comes to abuse sacred scripture, makes a mock of eternal flames, jokes on the venerable mysteries of religion, and, in fine, scoffs at that all-glorious and tremendous Majesty, before whom, |