SOURCE: Day, Cyrus L. “Pills to Purge Melancholy.” Review of English Studies VIII, no. 30 (April 1932): 177-84.

In the following excerpt, Day lists the publication dates of various editions of Pills to Purge Melancholy, traces the beginning of Durfey's editorial work on the series to a relatively late edition, and describes how the title of this popular collection of songs evolved over the years.

One of the most entertaining of eighteenth-century poetical miscellanies is the six-volume collection of songs and ballads entitled Wit and Mirth: Or Pills To Purge Melancholy. The first volume of this well-known series was published in 1698 and the last in 1720, and its popularity during the intervening years would be difficult to exaggerate. The Princess Caroline of Anspach owned a set;¹ Addison referred to its success and admired its facetious title;² and Gay drew from it over half the tunes in The Beggar's Opera.³ More recently...