The Merry-Thought | Page 2

medium for--as well as a subject of--their inscriptions.
The Merry-Thought, then, is not even the kind of art that Dryden
attacked in MacFlecknoe and Pope in his Dunciad--the work of bad

poets masquerading as geniuses.[1] Rather, it is a primitive form of
folk art produced as a more or less spontaneous act of play or passion,
and achieving some small degree of respectability only when practiced
by a respected poet and collected with his more serious verse.[2] Like
modern "serial" graffiti, it could function as a form of communication
since the first inscriptions often provoked those who followed to make
their own contributions.
[Footnote 1: On the other hand, the willingness of publishers to bring
out such material would have suited well enough with Pope's picture of
heir heroic games. See Alexander Pope, The Dunciad, ed. James
utherland, Twickenham Edition, 2d ed., rev. (London: Methuen, 1953),
97-306, bk 2, lines 17-220.]
[Footnote 2: See, for example, W. H. Auden's "Academic Graffiti," in
Collected Poems, ed. Edward Mendelsohn (London: Faber and Faber,
976), 510-18. Such a verse as the following is more clever than most
raffiti, but like ordinary graffiti it remains essentially "unpoetic": Lord
Byron / Once succumbed to a Siren. / His flesh was weak, / Hers
reek."]
Indeed, one of the more interesting aspects of graffiti is that in an
impermanent form it testifies to the continuance over the centuries of
certain human concerns. Recent studies of graffiti have often focused
on particular modern conflicts between races or nations, on drug
problems, and on specific political commentary.[3] But such local
matters aside, the content of modern graffiti is surprisingly like that of
earlier periods: scatological observations, laments of lovers,
accusations against women for their sexual promiscuity, the repetition
of "trite" poems and sayings, and messages attributed to various men
and women suggesting their sexual availability and proficiency. And if
the political targets have changed over the years, many of the political
attitudes have remained consistent. Graffiti is an irreverent form, with
strong popular and anti-establishment elements. As actions common to
all classes, eating, drinking, defecation, and fornication find their lowly
record in graffiti-like form.
[Footnote 3: See, for example, Elizabeth Wales and Barbara Brewer,

"Graffiti in the 1970's," Journal of Social Psychology 99 (1976):
115-23.]
On the most basic level, a writer will observe that the excrement of the
rich differs in no way from that of the poor. Thus one poem, taken
supposedly from a "Person of Quality's Boghouse," has the following
sentiment:
Good Lord! who could think, That such fine Folks should stink? (Pt. 2,
p. 25)
There is nothing very polite about such observations, and no pretension
to art. These verses belong strictly to folklore and the sociology of
literature, but they suggest some continuing rumbles of discontent
against the class system, the existence among the lower orders of some
of the egalitarian attitudes that survived the passing of the Lollards and
the Levellers. Who were the writers of these pieces? Were they indeed
laborers? Or were they from the lower part of what was called the
"middle orders"? Is there some evidence to be found in the very fact
that they could write?
Graffiti may, indeed, tell us something about degrees of literacy. One
wit remarked that whatever the ability to read or write may have been
at the time, almost everyone seemed to have been literate when
presented with a bog-house wall: "Since all who come to Bog-house
write" (pt. 2, p. 26). The traditional connection between defecation and
writing was another comparison apparent to the commentators. One
wrote:
There's Nothing foul that we commit, But what we write, and what we
sh - - t. (Pt. 2, p. 13)
And the lack of some paper or material to clean the rear end provoked
the following sentiment in the form of a litany:
From costive Stools, and hide-bound Wit, From Bawdy Rhymes, and
Hole besh - - t. From Walls besmear'd with stinking Ordure, By Swine
who nee'r provide Bumfodder Libera Nos---- (Pt. 4, p. 7)

Other types of graffiti, however, vary from the very earnest expression
of affection to the nonexcrementally satiric. One of the more unusual is
a poem in praise of a faithful and loving wife:
I kiss'd her standing, Kiss'd her lying, Kiss'd her in Health, And kiss'd
her dying; And when she mounts the Skies, I'll kiss her flying. (Pt. 3, p.
5)
Underneath this poem, The Merry-Thought records a favorable
comment on the sentiment. Even more earnest is the complaint of a
woman about her fate in love:
Since cruel Fate has robb'd me of the Youth, For whom my Heart had
hoarded all its Truth, I'll ne'er love more, dispairing e'er to find, Such
Constancy and Truth amongst Mankind. Feb. 18, 1725. (Pt. 2, p. 12)
We will never