NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION
[1.] Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders (New York: New American Library, 1964), pp. 71-72.
[2.] For example, E. A. Humphrey Fenn, "The Writing on the Wall," History Today, 19 (1969), 419-423, and "Graffiti," Contemporary Review, 215 (1969), 156-160; Terrance L. Stocker, Linda W. Dutcher, Stephen M. Hargrove, and Edwin A. Cook, "Social Analysis of Graffiti," Journal of American Folklore, 85 (1972), 356-366; Sylvia Spann, "The Handwriting on the Wall," English Journal, 62 (1973), 1163-1165; Robert Reisner and Lorraine Wechsler, Encyclopedia of Graffiti (New York: Macmillan, 1974); "Graffiti Helps Mental Patients," Science Digest, April, 1974, pp. 47-48; Henry Solomon and Howard Yager, "Authoritarianism and Graffiti," Journal of Social Psychology, 97 (1975), 149-150; Carl A. Bonuso, "Graffiti," Today's Education, 65 (1976), 90-91; Elizabeth Wales and Barbara Brewer, "Graffiti in the 1970's," Journal of Social Psychology, 99 (1976), 115-123; Ernest L. Abel and Barbara E. Buckley, The Handwriting on the Wall: Toward a Sociology and Psychology of Graffiti (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977); and Marina N. Haan and Richard B. Hammerstrom, Graffiti in the Ivy League(New York: Warner Books, 1981).
[3.] Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (London, 1808), IV, 133.
[4.] John Donne, The Elegies and the Songs and Sonnets, ed. Helen Gardner (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1966), p. 64.
[5.] The Spectator, No. 220, November 12, 1711.
[6.] No. CCCLXXXII, in A Collection of Epigrams. To Which Is Prefix'd, a Critical Dissertation on This Species of Poetry (London, 1727).
[7.] The Tatler, No. 24, June 4, 1709.
[8.] The Fifth Part of Miscellany Poems, ed. Jacob Tonson (London, 1716), p. 63.
[9.] A Bibliography of English Poetical Miscellanies, 1521-1750 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1935), p. 275.
[10.] Case, p. 276, points out that the second edition was advertised in the November 13, 1731, issue of Fog's Weekly Journal and that the third edition was advertised in the December 11, 1731, issue of the same journal. Three additional parts were also published within a year or so, see Case, pp. 276-277.
[11.] 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!
T. S. 1709.
John Crumb, a Bailiff, as he was carrying to his Grave, occasioned the following Piece to be written upon a Window in Fleet-Street, 1706.
Here passes the Body of John Crumb,
When living was a Baily-Bum
T'other Day he dy'd,
And the Devil he cry'd,
Come Jack, come, come.
In the Tower.
Though Guards surround me Day and Night,
Let Celia be but in my Sight,
And then they need not fear my Flight.
L. N. & G.
[12.] Roberts was almost certainly the collector of the graffiti printed in The Merry-Thought as well as the author of the dedication, but the dedication was itself signed with the name "Hurlo 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.
[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.