J. A.
TEA.
III.
Pepys and Tea—First English Poem on Tea—Price of Tea temp. Queen Anne—Scandal over the Tea Cup—Jonas Hanway and Dr. Johnson on Tea—Love of the latter for this Beverage—How to make Good Tea.
By Garway’s Advertisement we get at one fact, that the use of tea had not been brought into popular use before 1657: a fact which is borne out by that old quid nunc Pepys, who would surely have noticed it, as, indeed, he did as soon as it was brought under his ken. He mentions it in his diary under date 25th Sept., 1661, as being then a novelty, at all events to him. “I did send for a Cup of Tee, a China Drink of which I never drank before.” And again, 28th June, 1667, “Home, and there find my wife making of Tee, a drink which Mr. Pelling the Potticary tells her is good for her cold and defluxions.” So that even then it was not a common drink with people well to do, as we know Pepys was. The old English custom of drinking beer at breakfast died very hard—nay, it is not yet dead—surviving in farm houses in many places in the country, notably in Somersetshire; and when tea became cheap enough to be drank by the middle classes, those beneath them in the social scale indulged in sage tea, and infusions of other home grown herbs.
As it increased in popularity, the poets got hold of it, and numerous were the laudatory verses in Latin respecting its virtues. But, as far as can be found, the earliest English poem about it was by Waller, as under:—
“OF TEA.
Commended by Her Majesty.[129]