"The Lion's Head," at Button's Coffee-House.
CLUB LIFE OF LONDON.
Coffee-houses.
EARLY COFFEE-HOUSES.
Coffee is thus mentioned by Bacon, in his Sylva Sylvarum:—"They have in Turkey a drink called Coffee, made of a Berry of the same name, as Black as Soot, and of a Strong Sent, but not Aromatical; which they take, beaten into Powder, in Water, as Hot as they can Drink it; and they take it, and sit at it in their Coffee Houses, which are like our Taverns. The Drink comforteth the Brain, and Heart, and helpeth Digestion."
And in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, part i., sec. 2, occurs, "Turks in their coffee-houses, which much resemble our taverns." The date is 1621, several years before coffee-houses were introduced into England.
In 1650, Wood tells us, was opened at Oxford, the first coffee-house, by Jacobs, a Jew, "at the Angel, in the parish of St. Peter in the East; and there it was, by some who delighted in novelty, drank."
There was once an odd notion prevalent that coffee was unwholesome, and would bring its drinkers to an untimely end. Yet, Voltaire, Fontenelle, and Fourcroy, who were great coffee-drinkers, lived to a good old age. Laugh at Madame de Sévigné, who foretold that coffee and Racine would be forgotten together!