Whatever may be the date of the first edition of Greene’s Menaphon, we have here only to do with Nash’s Preface to that work, and, though Sir E. Brydges, in his reprint of it in 1814, mentions 1587, in which he is followed by the Rev. A. Dyce in 1831, [Greene’s Works, II. c. iii], by Mr. Collier above, in the same year, and again in 1842, all agreeing to fix the date of Nash’s Preface in 1587; yet there is, if I mistake not, internal evidence that it could not have been written before the date of the first known edition, which is in 1589. Of the accuracy of the extraordinary facts which Nash relates in the Introduction to the Almond for a Parrot [pp. 5, 6], I had expected to find confirmation in some book of travels of the time, but in this have not succeeded. Nash, in his Preface to Menaphon, addressed “To the Gentlemen Students of both Universities,” evidently referring to the Puritans, mentions, “the most poisonous Pasquils any dirty-mouthed _Martin_ or Momus ever composed;” of their “spitting _ergo_ in the mouth of every one they meet;” and, unless I am mistaken, the following refers to Penry: “But when the irregular idiot, that was up to the ears in divinity before ever he met with _probabile_ in the university, shall leave _pro et contra_ before he can scarcely pronounce it, and come to correct commonweals that never heard of the name of magistrate before he came to Cambridge, it is no marvel if every alehouse vaunt the table of the world turned upside down, since the child beateth his father, and the ass whippeth his master.” [Reprint of Menaphon, in Archaica, Pref. xiii., 4to, 1814.] The allusions in the whole sentence can only be explained by referring them to Martin Mar-Prelate’s “Epistle,” “Epitome,” &c., which were printed in 1588. Secondly, Nash says, “It may be my _Anatomy of Absurdities_ may acquaint you _ere long_ with my skill in surgery.” Now, the Anatomy of Absurdities came out in 1589, and the expression “ere long” would scarcely apply had this been written in 1587. Thirdly, he says, “If I please, I will think my ignorance indebted unto you that applaud it, if not, what rests but that I be excluded from your courtesy, like Apocrypha from your Bibles?” This passage appears to refer to a fact which Martin Mar-Prelate states in his Epistle to the Terrible Priests. [Reprint, p. 4.] “The last lent [he is writing in 1588] there came a commaundement from his grace into Paules Church Yard, that no Byble should be bounde without the Apocripha.” Strype, in his Life of Archbishop Whitgift, admits the order, and takes some pains to justify the Archbishop in issuing it. [See Strype’s Whitgift, i. 590.—Cooper’s Admonition, 1589.]