Sir John Harington's A New Discourse of a Stale Subject Called the Metamorphosis of Ajax

"The Metamorphosis of Ajax" (first published in 1596), was written by Sir John Harington (1561 – 1612) a prominent member of Queen Elizabeth I's court, and inventor of the flush toilet. The book was ostensibly a hommage to his new invention, but in reality it was a thinly veiled political allegory attacking 'the "stercus" or excrement that was poisoning society with torture and state-sponsored "libels" against his relatives,' and its publication caused Harington to be banished from Court. A book with an atrocious punning title in which he honestly advocated the introduction of a simple mechanical device, since universally adopted, but in which he set forth his argument in terms so ingeniously gross, if at times perversely learned, that he has deserved the consequent neglect, if not altogether the obloquy, into which his name has fallen.