Wit and Mirth: Or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 6 of 6

This is rowdy, irreverent, and utterly alive. Compiled by Thomas D'Urfey in the final years of the 17th century, "Wit and Mirth" gathers the songs that Restoration England sang in taverns, at court, and in private chambers. These are not polite verses. They're bawdy, satirical, sharp-tongued, and often very funny. Love songs sit beside drinking tunes, political lampoons beside tender elegies. The collection captures a world loosening its Puritan restraints and discovering that laughter, wine, and clever wordplay are excellent medicines for the soul. The title promises "Pills to Purge Melancholy," and the book delivers exactly that: a shot of 17th-century wit, undiluted. For readers who want to hear the actual voice of the past, not the sanitized version, but the laughing, arguing, drinking voice, this is irreplaceable. It's a time capsule you can hold in your hand, and unlike many historical compilations, it makes no apologies for being of its moment. That rawness is precisely what makes it endure.