The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany

some of the _Spectator's_ Works in a Bog-house, Companions with Pocky-Bills and Fortune-telling Advertisements...._

[Footnote 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