Turning to the literature of the subject, it is interesting to learn that Hartley Coleridge was in his youth fond of tea. In _Blackwood's Magazine_ (vol. 55, 1857) appears "An Unpublished Poem," by Hartley Coleridge, with the following note by the editor: "This early production of the late Hartley Coleridge may not be without interest, as it describes a state of social manners which is already passing away, in a style of composition which belongs in some measure to the past." The poem commences thus:-- "Though all unknown to Greek and Roman song, The paler Hyson and the dark Souchong, Though black, not green, the warbled praises share Of knightly troubadour or gay _trouvère_. Yet deem not thou, an alien quite to numbers, That friend to prattle, and that foe to slumbers, Which Kian-Long, imperial poet praised So high that cent. per cent. its price was raised; Which Pope himself would sometimes condescend To plead commodious at a couplet's end; Which the sweet bard of Olney did not spurn, Who loved the music of the 'hissing urn,' Let her who bade me write, exact the Muse, Inspire my genius and my tea infuse, So shall my verse the hovering sylphs delight, And critic gnomes relinquish half their spite, Clear, warm and flowing as my liquid theme, As sweet as sugar and as smooth as cream." Happy would it have been for the young poet if he had remained a tea-drinker, and had never known the taste of alcohol. But Cowper is the poet of the tea-table. He it is whom the amateur reporters love to quote, or, rather, misquote, when they describe the friends at a tea-party, "partaking of the cup that cheers, but not inebriates." What the poet really said is found in Book the Fourth of the "Task." "Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast, Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn Throws up a steamy column, and the cups That cheer, but not inebriate, wait on each, So let us welcome peaceful evening in." FOOTNOTES: