rlo Thrumbo." Similarly, the title-page listed Hurlo Thrumbo as
the publisher of the work. In 1729 _Hurlothrumbo: or, The
Super-Natural_, a play by a half-mad dancer and fiddler, Samuel
Johnson of Cheshire (1691-1773), had set all of London talking. The
irrational, amusing speeches and actions of Hurlothrumbo, the play's
title-character, gained instant fame, and two years later Roberts,
by attributing his collection to the labors of that celebrity, had
every reason to expect that the book would attract immediate
attention. For a detailed account of the relationship between
Johnson's play and _The Merry-Thought_, see George R. Guffey,
"Graffiti, Hurlo Thrumbo, and the Other Samuel Johnson," in _Forum:
A Journal of the Humanities and Fine Arts_ (University of Houston),
XVII (1979), 35-47.]

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.

[Footnote 13: See, for example, _The Scarborough Miscellany_
(London, 1732), pp. 34, 35; _The Connoisseur_, April 11, 1754,
p. 87; _The New American Magazine_, No. 12, December, 1758.]

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