[420] Nobody who reads this play can doubt that it is much older than 1662, the date borne by the earliest known edition of it. It has every indication of antiquity, and the title not the least of these. "Grim, the Collier of Croydon," is a person who plays a prominent character in the humorous portion of Edwards's "Damon and Pithias," which was printed in 1571, and acted several years earlier. The Grim of the present play is obviously the same person as the Grim of "Damon and Pithias," and in both he is said to be "Collier for the king's own Majesty's mouth." Chetwood may therefore be right when he states that it was printed in 1599; but perhaps that was not the first edition, and the play was probably acted before "Damon and Pithias" had gone quite out of memory. In the office-book of the Master of the Revels, under date of 1576, we find a dramatic entertainment entered, called "The Historie of the Colyer," acted by the Earl of Leicester's men; but it was doubtless Ulpian Fulwell's "Like will to Like, quod the Devil to the Colier," printed in 1568. The structure, phraseology, versification, and language of "Grim, the Collier of Croydon," are sufficient to show that it was written before 1600: another instance to prove how much the arrangement of the plays made by Mr Reed was calculated to mislead. Some slight separate proofs of the age of this piece are pointed out in the new notes; but the general evidence is much more convincing. The versification is interlarded with rhymes like nearly all our earlier plays, and the blank verse is such as was written before Marlowe's improvements had generally been adopted. When the play was reprinted in 1662, some parts of it were perhaps a little modernised. The introduction of Malbecco and Paridell into it, from Spenser's "Faerie Queene," may be some guide as to the period when the comedy was first produced.--_Collier_. [The play has now, for the first time, been placed in its true chronological rank.] [421] See note to "Gammer Gurton's Needle" [iii. 245]. [422] The story of this play is taken in part from Machiavel's "Belphegor."--_Pegge_. The excellent translation of this humorous old story by Mr T. Roscoe ("Italian Novelists," ii. 272) will enable the reader to compare the play with it. He will find that in many parts the original has been abandoned, and the catastrophe, if not entirely different, is brought about by different means. The "Biographia Dramatica" informs us that Dekker's "If it be not Good the Devil is in it" is also chiefly taken from the same novel; but this is an error arising out of a hint by Langbaine. Dekker's play is the famous history of Friar Rush in many of its incidents.--_Collier_. [423] [He was _born_ at or near Glastonbury in 925. See Wright's "Biog. Brit. Lit.," Anglo-Saxon period, p. 443, et seq.] [424] "Legenda Aurea, or the Golden Legend," translated out of the French, and printed by Caxton in folio, 1483.