Hurlothrumbo

“ One morning he pulls off his diamond ring and writes upon the glass of the sash in my chamber this line:
You I love and you alone.
I read it and asked him to lend me the ring, with which I wrote under it thus:
And so in love says every one.
He takes his ring again and writes another line thus:
Virtue alone is an estate.
I borrowed it again, and I wrote under it:
But money's virtue, gold is fate.1
After a number of additional thrusts and counterthrusts of this sort, Moll and her lover come to terms and are married. ”

“ Bliss unmix’d with any Woe.
The Ambitious when rais’d to the Summit of Power,
In the Midst of their Joy fear that Fortune may lower;
The Miser, who Thousands has heap’d in his Chest,
In the Midst of Riches is never at rest. ”

“ Glass being fragile and diamonds being relatively rare, it is not surprising that few examples of graffiti produced by the method employed by Moll and her lover are known to us today. Interestingly enough, we do, however, have available to us a variety of Renaissance and eighteenth-century written materials suggesting that the practice of using a diamond to write ephemeral statements on window glass was far less rare in those periods than we might expect. ”

“ Though an easy cynicism about women’s availability and about the body’s insistently animal functions predominates, there is enough variety in The Merry-Thought to provide something of a picture of eighteenth-century society were any future anthropologist viii to come upon this volume as the sole remnant of that period. He would see a society engaged rather more in animal functions than in intellectual pursuits--a society rather more concerned with drinking, love, and defecation than the picture presented by the polite and intellectual literature of the time allowed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In an address to the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies at the 1983 annual meeting, Roger Lonsdale suggested that our knowledge of eighteenth-century poetry has depended heavily on what our anthologies have decided to print. For the most part modern anthologies have, in turn, drawn on collections put together at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the next, when the ideal for inclusion was essentially that of “polite taste.” ”

“ 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:
that happy virgin, who is received and drunk to at their meetings, has no more to do in this life but to judge and accept of the first good offer. ”

“ It represented a revolt against all dramatic conventions and shared a number of qualities with graffiti, including the sense of spontaneity.
Had Johnson’s intention been something as relatively uncomplicated as literary parody he would have achieved some minor fame in a century which could boast any number of geniuses who had specialized in deriding the pretentiousness of the more established literary forms, particularly tragedy, the epic, and the pastoral. But Johnson of Cheshire lacked the aesthetic distance required of sustained irony and had a grander purpose in mind. ”

“ Were not Pope and Swift famous for their distinguished miscellanies? What could iv be more amusing than a collection of poems that represented a different poetic ideal--a collection of verse with none of the pretensions to artistic merit claimed by the superstars of the poetic world--the spontaneous productions of nonpoets in moments of idleness or desperation. Apparently some of the inscribers in the bog-houses used excrement as a medium for--as well as a subject of--their inscriptions. ”

“ Using a diamond, the poet, before beginning an extended journey, scratches his name on a window pane in the house of his mistress. Here is the first stanza of the poem:
My name engrav'd herein,
Doth contribute my firmnesse to this glasse,
Which, ever since that charme, hath beene
As hard, as that which grav'd it, was;
Thine eyes will give it price enough, to mock
The diamonds of either rock.4
While he is absent, the characters he has cut in the glass will, the poet hopes, magically defend his mistress against the seductive entreaties of his rivals. ”

“ 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.... ”

“ If Death doth come as soon as Breath departs;
Then he must often die, who often farts:
And if to die be but to lose one’s Breath;
Then Death’s a Fart, and so a Fart for Death.
The Motto upon a Sign of a Gardiner’s Window, who kept a Publick House in the Road to Cambridge ”

“ Polite taste, of course, is meaningful only if it can define itself by what it excludes, and nothing could be in worse taste than a collection of pieces written on windows, carved in tables, or inscribed on the walls of Britain’s loos. ”

“ Aware that the eligible men of her day have little interest in prospective wives with small or nonexistent fortunes, Moll slyly devises a plan to keep her relative poverty a secret from the charming and (as she has every reason to believe) wealthy plantation owner who has fallen in love with her. ”

“ While Fielding might appropriate the title “Scriblerus Secundus” by way of staking out a line of descent for his humor and satire, Hurlothrumbo was so thoroughly connected with Johnson and his play that I can see no reason why he should not be considered the likely editor of such a varied and eccentric collection of verse and prose as The Merry-Thought. That the “Variety” bears no xi resemblance to that of serious art, however, should be as obvious as the difference between a William Blake and a Samuel Johnson of Cheshire. ”

“ For he car'd not a T--d,
Away goes the Dyer,
Caught his Wife with the Frier.
And led the Monk down,
And pickled him soon,
10
In a Dye-Fat of Blue,
Which he ever will rue,
'Twas so lasting a Hue;
And that spoilt his hunting,
A Twelve-month or two, &c.
Daniel Cowper, &c.
On a Tavern Window in Fleet-Street. An Address to our present Petit-Maitres.
No more let each fond foppling court a Brother,
And quit the Girls to dress for one another;
Old maids, in Vengeance to their slighted Beauty,
Shall one Day make you wish you'd done your Duty ”

“ Lonsdale is not the only scholar questioning the basis of the canon; indeed, revisionism is fast becoming one of the more ingenious--and useful--parlor games among academics. Modern readers are no longer so squeamish about obscenity nor so uncomfortable with the purely personal lyric as were the editors at the end of the eighteenth century. And we are hardly likely to find poetry written by women objectionable on that score alone. In short, the anthologies we depend upon are out of date. ”

“ To divert attention from her own financial condition, she repeatedly suggests that he has been courting her only for her money. Again and again he protests his love. Over and over she pretends to doubt his sincerity. ”

“ A Diamond makes Impression there,
Though on the Finger of an Ass.
On a Person of Quality’s Boghouse.
Good Lord! who could think,
That such fine Folks should stink?
26 On a Window at Bushy-Hall, Hertfordshire.
Love is like Blindman’s Buff, where we pursue,
We know not what we catch, we know not who;
And when we grasp our Wish, what Prize is won?
Our Eyes are open’d, and the Play is done.
Some Love Verses being first written on a Window in Brook-Street, and scratched out, occasioned the following:
Good grave Papa, you hope in vain,
By blotting this to mend her ”

“ 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:
CLX. To a Lady, on seeing some Verses in Praise of her, on a Pane of Glass. Let others, brittle beauties of a year,
See their frail names, and lovers vows writ here ”

“ On a Glass at the Devil Tavern, Temple-Bar.
The stubborn Glass no Character receives,
Except the Stamp the piercing Brilliant gives.
A female Heart thus no Impression takes,
But what the Lover tipp’d with Diamond makes.
27 At Launder’s Coffee-House, in the Old Play-House Passage.
Dear Pat, ’tis vain to patch or paint,
Since still a fragrant Breath you want;
For though well furnish’d, yet all Folks
Despise a Room whose Chimney smokes.
White-Hart at Watford. Parody of four Lines of Dryden.
Glass with a Diamond does our Wit betray ”

“ 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 vii 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." ”

“ Graffiti is an irreverent form, with strong popular and anti-establishment elements. As actions common to all classes, eating, drinking, defecation, and fornication find their lowly record in graffiti-like form.
On the most basic level, a writer will observe that the excrement of the rich differs in no way from that of the poor. ”

“ Graffiti may, indeed, tell us something about degrees of literacy. One wit remarked that whatever the ability to read or write may have been at the time, almost everyone seemed to have been literate when presented with a bog-house wall: “Since all who come to Bog-house write” (pt. 2, p. 26) . The traditional connection between defecation and writing was another comparison apparent to the commentators. One wrote:
There’s Nothing foul that we commit,
But what we write, and what we sh - t. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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:
Written on a Glass by a Gentleman, who borrow'd the Earl of CHESTERFIELD's Diamond Pencil. Accept a miracle, instead of wit;
See two dull lines by Stanhope's pencil writ.6
As the title of this epigram also suggests, window panes were not the only surfaces considered appropriate for such writing. ”

“ Johnson called upon “Variety” as his most important artistic principle, and he developed his ideas on this subject in A Vision of Heaven (1738) , a work which bears a striking resemblance to William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.9 Johnson argues that all surface appearances are merely a form of “Hieroglyphic” concealing a true vision of things (6) . ”