قراءة كتاب The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany. Part 1
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany. Part 1
class="inset2">Toy, at Hampton-Court, 1708.
D---n Molley H---ns for her Pride,
She'll suffer none but Lords to ride:
But why the Devil should I care,
Since I can find another Mare?
L.M. August.
Another target of the pamphlet was The Spectator in general and Addison in particular. In his dedication, J. Roberts first insists that the graffiti in his collection are notable examples of wit.12
He next goes out of his way to associate the contents of The Merry-Thought with The Spectator:
But I may venture to say, That good Things are not always respected as they ought to be: The People of the World will sometimes overlook a Jewel, to avoid a T‑‑d.... Nay, I have even found some of the Spectator's Works in a Bog-house, Companions with Pocky-Bills and Fortune-telling Advertisements....
In a series of essays in The Spectator (Nos. 58-61; May, 1711), Addison had earlier, of course, been at pains to distinguish between "true wit" and "false wit." Particularly abhorrent to him was the rebus. The first part of The Merry-Thought alone contains seven rebuses from "Drinking-Glasses, at a private Club of Gentlemen" (pp. 12-13), as well as several examples of other kinds of "wit" which Addison would have disdained.
During the twenty-five years that followed the publication of the Merry-Thought series, a few additional pieces of graffiti were published in England and America.13 In 1761 The New Boghouse Miscellany appeared, but the contents of this book had little in common with the Merry-Thought pamphlets. Only the scatological humor of the subtitle:
A Companion for the Close-stool. Consisting of Original Pieces in Prose and Verse by several Modern Authors. Printed on an excellent soft Paper; and absolutely necessary for all those, who read with a View to Convenience, as well as Delight. Revised and corrected by a Gentleman well skilled in the Fundamentals of Literature, near Privy-Garden
and the generally anti-intellectual thrust of its preface were reminiscent of the Merry-Thought pamphlets. Not until the last half of the twentieth century would the graffito in English receive the kind of attention that had been paid it in England in the 1730s.
University of California
Los Angeles
NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION
1. Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders (New York: New American Library, 1964), pp. 71-72.
2. For example, E. A. Humphrey Fenn, "The Writing on the Wall," History Today, 19 (1969), 419-423, and "Graffiti," Contemporary Review, 215 (1969), 156-160; Terrance L. Stocker, Linda W. Dutcher, Stephen M. Hargrove, and Edwin A. Cook, "Social Analysis of Graffiti," Journal of American Folklore, 85 (1972), 356-366; Sylvia Spann, "The Handwriting on the Wall," English Journal, 62 (1973), 1163-1165; Robert Reisner and Lorraine Wechsler, Encyclopedia of Graffiti (New York: Macmillan, 1974); "Graffiti Helps Mental Patients," Science Digest, April, 1974, pp. 47-48; Henry Solomon and Howard Yager, "Authoritarianism and Graffiti," Journal of Social Psychology, 97 (1975), 149-150; Carl A. Bonuso, "Graffiti," Today's Education, 65 (1976), 90-91; Elizabeth Wales and Barbara Brewer, "Graffiti in the 1970's," Journal of Social Psychology, 99 (1976), 115-123; Ernest L. Abel and Barbara E. Buckley, The Handwriting on the Wall: Toward a Sociology and Psychology of Graffiti (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977); and Marina N. Haan and Richard B. Hammerstrom, Graffiti in the Ivy League(New York: Warner Books, 1981).
3. Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (London, 1808), IV, 133.
4. John Donne, The Elegies and the Songs and Sonnets, ed. Helen Gardner (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1966), p. 64.
5. The Spectator, No. 220, November 12, 1711.
6. No. CCCLXXXII, in A Collection of Epigrams. To Which Is Prefix'd, a Critical Dissertation on This Species of Poetry (London, 1727).
7. The Tatler, No. 24, June 4, 1709.
8. The Fifth Part of Miscellany Poems, ed. Jacob Tonson (London, 1716), p. 63.
9. A Bibliography of English Poetical Miscellanies, 1521-1750 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1935), p. 275.
10. Case, p. 276, points out that the second edition was advertised in the November 13, 1731, issue of Fog's Weekly Journal and that the third edition was advertised in the December 11, 1731, issue of the same journal. Three additional parts were also published within a year or so, see Case, pp. 276-277.
11. Although, as the title-page of the third edition advertises, the third edition does contain materials not to be found in the second edition, it does not indicate that the second edition itself contained materials omitted from the third edition. Among the materials not reprinted were the following verses:
Red-Lyon at Stains.
My Dear Nancy P---k---r
I sigh for her, I wish for her,
I pray for her. Alas! it is a Plague
That Cupid will impose, for my Neglect
Of his Almighty, Dreadful, Little Might.
Well, will I love, write, sigh, pray, sue, and groan
Ah! where shall I make my Moan!
T. S. 1709.
