ntellectual
literature of the time allowed. But he would also find in the satirical
squibs on Corny, the Cambridge bookseller and printer, evidence of
learning and university life (pt. 2, pp. 4-6) as well as a criticism of
opera (pt. 2, pp. 14-16). He would see numerous young men longing for
their mistresses to soften their hearts toward them, and cynical older
men who had lost their illusions about love. But he could also come upon
a straight piece of philosophy taken from the still fashionable Flask
tavern in Hampstead (pt. 2, p. 24) or lowly bits of pious folk wisdom
(pt. 2, p. 10). More often, however, he would uncover a society in which
there was little of the generalized style that characterizes even the
most personal formal poetry of the period. Many of the writers identify
themselves and the names of the women they love or detest. In short, if
these volumes do little else, they do provide a vivid glimpse into the
personal life of the time, and to that extent an injection of some of
these inscriptions into the anthologies of the period might help in
providing a lively and piquant context for the serious artistic
production of writers like Gay and Swift.

The announced "publisher" of this olio was one Hurlothrumbo, a character
drawn from the theatrical piece of that name by Samuel Johnson of
Cheshire (1691-1773). Professor Guffey has proposed that James Roberts,
for whom the four parts were printed, "was almost certainly the
collector of the graffiti" and that the name of Hurlothrumbo was invoked
in order to attract some of the attention that Samuel Johnson of
Cheshire and his play were still receiving two years after the play's
first performance and publication.[5] But Roberts would appear an
unlikely candidate for the role of editor;[6] I would suggest, rather,
the possibility of a more direct and active connection with Samuel
Johnson of Cheshire: that he was himself likely the compiler of the
four parts of _The Merry-Thought_ and that, whatever the individual
versifiers may have intended, this infamous collection of graffiti--_as
collection_--shares very closely with Johnson's other work a spirit of
wild variety, eccentric juxtaposition, and essential anarchism that is
meant to lead, not to clever parody of polite literature, but to a new,
almost apocalyptic vision of the sublime.

[Footnote 5: See ARS 216, x, n. 12. Professor Guffey offers
parallels between _The Merry-Thought_ and _Hurlothrumbo_ in
"