The Character of a Coffee-House. Wherein Is contained a Description of the Persons usually frequenting it, with their Discourse and Humors, As also, The Admirable Vertues of Coffee. By an Eye and Ear Witness ([London], n.p., 1665), [2], 10pp.; 4°. BL: 1l626.bb.11. ESTCR32619. Hünersdorff

A quarto pamphlet satire of ten pages of rhymed verse couplets in irregular quatrameter (the form made famous by Butler’s Hudibras, the first two parts of which were published in 1662 and 1663, though dated a year later respectively). In form, the verse also appeals to the genre of the Theophrastan ‘Character’ a satiric sketch of the characteristic speech and behaviour of a specified occupation or place. The poem first describes the typical shop signs that identify coffee-houses, which often employed Turkish iconology, before briefly surveying the virtues of coffee. As the poem argues, the physiological effects of coffee make it particularly congenial to the business of ‘news-mongers’ – a new term signifying men who circulate true and false news. The rest of the poem burlesques several conversations around three separate coffee-house tables, between different kinds of men. The poem’s depiction of coffee-house conversations celebrates two key aspects. The first is that men from radically different interests come together around a coffee table, where they conduct one conversation. The second is that their conversation is intemperate, and each only has a mind for their own interests and topics, so that the discussion is atomistic, unprofitable and collapses in failure. Formally, this description of conversation around the coffee-house table recalls the cena or dinner table scene ofJuvenal’s Satire V.