The Scriblerus Club broke up owing to quarrels between Oxford and Bolingbroke. Swift tried the force of humorous expostulation in his fable of the “Fagot,” where the Ministers are called upon to contribute their various badges of office to make the bundle strong and secure, but all was in vain. And at length, tired with this scene of murmuring and discontent, quarrel, misunderstanding, and hatred, the Dean, who was almost the only mutual friend who laboured to compose these differences, made a final effort at reconciliation; but his scheme entirely failed. Button’s Coffee-house was another resort of wits. Here, in the early part of the reign of Queen Anne, Swift first began to come, being known as “the mad parson.” He knew no one; no one knew him. He would lay his hat down on a table, and walk up and down at a brisk pace for half an hour without speaking to anyone, or seeming to pay attention to anything that was going forward. Then he would snatch up his hat, pay his money at the bar, and walk off without having opened his lips. At last he went one evening to a country gentleman, and very abruptly asked him: “Pray, sir, do you know any good weather in the world?” After staring a little at the singularity of Swift’s manner and the oddity of the question, the gentleman answered: “Yes, sir, I thank God I remember a great deal of good weather in my time.” “That is more,” replied Swift, “than I can say. I never remember any weather that was not too hot or too cold, too wet or too dry; but, however God Almighty contrives it, at the end of the year ’tis all very well.” At Tom’s Coffee-house in 1764 was formed a high-class club of about 700 members, paying each a guinea subscription. A card-room was on the first-floor. The club flourished, so that in 1768, “having considerably enlarged itself of late,” Thomas Haines, the then proprietor, took in the front room of the next house westward as a coffee-room. The front room of No. 17 was then appropriated exclusively as a card-room for the subscription club, each member paying one guinea annually, the adjoining apartment being used as a conversation-room. Tom Haines—Lord Chesterfield, as he was called, on account of his good manners—was succeeded by his son. The house ceased to be a coffee-house in 1814. It would be interesting to know what has become of the old snuff-box—a most curious relic. It was a big tortoiseshell box, bearing on the lid, in high relief in silver, the portraits of Charles I and Queen Anne; the Boscobel oak, with Charles II amid its branches; and at the foot of the tree, on a silver plate, was inscribed “Thomas Haines.” At Will’s the small wits grew conceited if they dipped but into Mr. Dryden’s snuff-box, and at Tom’s the box probably received similar veneration. The Bedford Coffee-house, in the north-west corner of the Piazza, was another celebrated Covent Garden resort.