"Lampoons of the kind collected in this volume represented a relatively novel literary form in Restoration England, but they were to prove enormously popular among the coterie of fashionable folk who frequented the Court, strolled in the galleries of Whitehall and St. James, drove in Hyde Park, gambled in the Groom Porter's lodgings, and thronged the playhouses of London. And to judge by contemporary gossip as it was recorded in the private letters, diaries, and memoirs of the day, the satirical Court poets were remarkably well informed about the lecheries of members of the Court and those literary and theatrical figures who, as the chief actors notorious intrigues and scandals, became the satirists' unfortunate victims..." -Publisher.