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The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany Parts 2, 3 and 4 By: Hurlothrumbo |
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The texts cited use a variety of long and short dashes, generally with
no relationship to the number of letters omitted. For this e text,
short dashes are shown as separated hyphens, while longer dashes are
shown as connected hyphens: D n Molley H ns for her Pride. Groups of vertical braces } represent a single brace encompassing
three in one case, four rhymed lines.]
The Augustan Reprint Society THE
MERRY THOUGHT: or, the
Glass Window and Bog House
MISCELLANY.
Parts 2, 3, and 4
(1731 ?)
Introduction by
MAXIMILLIAN E. NOVAK
Publication Number 221 222
WILLIAM ANDREWS CLARK MEMORIAL LIBRARY
University of California, Los Angeles
1983
GENERAL EDITOR David Stuart Rodes, University of California, Los Angeles
EDITORS Charles L. Batten, University of California, Los Angeles
George Robert Guffey, University of California, Los Angeles
Maximillian E. Novak, University of California, Los Angeles
Nancy M. Shea, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
Thomas Wright, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
ADVISORY EDITORS Ralph Cohen, University of Virginia
William E. Conway, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
Vinton A. Dearing, University of California, Los Angeles
Phillip Harth, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Louis A. Landa, Princeton University
Earl Miner, Princeton University
James Sutherland, University College, London
Norman J. W. Thrower, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
Robert Vosper, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
John M. Wallace, University of Chicago
PUBLICATIONS MANAGER Nancy M. Shea, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY Beverly J. Onley, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Frances Miriam Reed, University of California, Los Angeles
INTRODUCTION
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 obscene, the feminine, and the
political were by general cultural agreement usually omitted. 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.
Among the works that would never have been a source of poems for the
canon, and one mentioned by Lonsdale, was the collection of verse
published in four parts by J. Roberts beginning in 1731, The
Merry Thought: or, the Glass Window and Bog House Miscellany , commonly
known simply as The Bog House Miscellany . Its contemporary reputation
may be described as infamous. James Bramston, in his The Man of Taste
(1733), mentioned it as an example in poetry of the very opposite of
"good Taste" (ARS 171 [1975], 7). 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. Just as the compilers of a modern work, The Good Loo Guide , were
parodying a well known guide book to British restaurants, so the unknown
authors of The Merry Thought had some notion, however discontinuous,
of parodying the nation's polite literature... Continue reading book >>
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