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.

[Footnote 4: John Donne, _The Elegies and the Songs and Sonnets_,
ed. Helen Gardner (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1966), p. 64.]

In 1711 in a satiric letter to _The Spectator_, John 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]

[Footnote 5: _The Spectator_, No. 220, November 12, 1711.]

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:

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, a