1892 Drinks of the world

DRINKS.

3o6

feeding on the blossoms and berries of a tree which he had never before noticed. He experimented upon himself by eating them, and soon became as jocund as his goats, so much so, that he was accused of having partaken of the accursed juice of the grape. But he soon convinced his maligners that the source of his high spirits was harmless, and they, tasting, became converts, and the berry became of general use. From Abyssinia, the use of coffee spread to Persia and Arabia, thence to Aden, Mecca, Cairo, Damascus, Aleppo and Constantinople, whence it found its way to Venice in 1615. But it is hard to say exactly when its use was introduced into England. Robert Burton mentions it in his Anatomy of Melancholy, but not in the 1621 edition. He says,^ "The Turks have a drink called Coffee (for they use no wine), so named of a berry, as black as soot, and as bitter (like that black drink which was In use among the Lacedaemonians, and perhaps the same), which they sip still of, and sup as warm as they can suffer; they spend much time fn those coffee houses, which are somewhat like our alehouses or taverns, and there they sit, chatting and drinking, to drive away the time, and to be merry together, because they find by experience that kind of drink, so used, helpeth digestion, and procureth alacrity." Anthony a Wood says that the first coffee-house was kept in 1650 in Oxford, by Jacobs, a Jew; and it seems generally recognised that the first coffee-house in London was opened In St. Michael's Alley, Corn-

— Mem. i, Sub. 5.

Part 2, Section 5.

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