… theorists. Meier’s philosophical work sought to raise the standard of jesting, but he conceded that ‘Experience also teaches, that a set of merry people scarce ever meet together, but at last they fall into loose or smutty discourse’; he …
… dog he was’. His legacy is best described by his first biographer as the diffusion of ‘a desire of society’, the teaching of a ‘familiar intercourse among strangers’ and the transfer of sociable manners from the spa to the …