Hughes poked fun at a number of aspiring poets who had recently attempted to create works of art by utilizing what Hughes called "Contractions or Expedients for Wit." One Virtuoso (a mathematician) had, for example, "thrown the Art of Poetry into a short Problem, and contrived Tables by which any one without knowing a Word of Grammar or Sense, may to his great Comfort, be able to compose or rather erect Latin Verses." Equally ridiculous to Hughes, and more relevant to the concerns of this introduction, was the practice of another poet of his acquaintance: "I have known a Gentleman of another Turn of Humour, who, despising the Name of an Author, never printed his Works, but contracted his Talent, and by the help of a very fine Diamond which he wore on his little Finger, was a considerable Poet upon Glass. He had a very good Epigrammatick Wit; and there was not a Parlour or Tavern Window where he visited or dined ... which did not receive some Sketches or Memorials of it. It was his Misfortune at last to lose his Genius and his Ring to a Sharper at Play; and he has not attempted to make a Verse since."5

But "Epigrammatick Wits" of this sort were not universally despised in the eighteenth century. In 1727 in a "critical dissertation prefix'd" to A Collection of Epigrams, the anonymous editor of the work argued that the epigram itself "is a species of Poetry, perhaps, as old as any other whatsoever: it has receiv'd the approbation of almost all ages and nations...." In the book proper, he found room for a number of epigrams which he evidently copied from London window panes. Here is an example:

One of the epigrams in this collection suggests that, unlike Moll's lover and Hughes's poet, some affluent authors had even acquired instruments specifically designed to facilitate the practice of writing poetry on glass:

As the title of this epigram also suggests, window panes were not the only surfaces considered appropriate for such writing. A favorite alternate surface was that of the toasting glass. The practice of toasting the beauty of young ladies had originated at the town of Bath during the reign of Charles II. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the members of some social clubs had developed complex toasting rituals which involved the inscription of the name of the lady to be honored on a drinking glass suitable for that purpose. In 1709 an issue of The Tatler described the process in some detail:

Perhaps the most famous institution practicing this kind of ceremony in the eighteenth century was the Kit-Kat Club. In 1716 Jacob Tonson, a member of that club, published "Verses Written for the Toasting-Glasses of the Kit-Kat Club" in the fifth part of his Miscellany. Space limitations will not permit extensive quotations from this collection, but the toast for Lady Carlisle is alone sufficient to prove that complete epigrams were at times engraved upon the drinking glasses belonging to this club:

Part I of The Merry-Thought: or, The Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany was almost certainly published for the first time in 1731. Arthur E. Case (Bibliography of English Poetical Miscellanies, 1521-1750) notes that this pamphlet was listed in the register of books in the Gentleman's Magazine for October 1731.9 An instant success with the reading public, second and third editions of the pamphlet, the third "with very Large Additions and Alterations," were also published in 1731.10 Because, as its title-page declared, the third and last edition was the fullest of the three, a copy of that edition has been chosen for reproduction here.11

The title-page of Part I of The Merry-Thought states that the contents of the pamphlet had been taken from "Original Manuscripts written in Diamond by Persons of the first Rank and Figure in Great Britain" and that they had been "Faithfully Transcribed from the Drinking-Glasses and Windows in the several noted Taverns, Inns, and other Publick Places in this Nation. Amongst which are intermixed the Lucubrations of the polite Part of the World, written upon Walls in Bog-houses, &c." These statements suggest one of the principal leveling strategies of the pamphlet as a whole: the nobility and the rich, whatever their advantages otherwise, must, like the lowest amongst us, make use of privies; and, in the process, they are just as likely as their brethren of the lower classes to leave their marks on the walls of those conveniences.

A number of the verses included in the pamphlet continue the leveling process. One in particular (p. 20) adopts the principal strategy employed on the title-page:

Others suggest that sexual relations are essentially leveling activities. Here (p. 24) is an example: