We believe that the mystery shrouding the personality of “N. D.” can be dispelled. The discovery helps us in more ways than one, and connects the _Antidote against Melancholy_, of 1661, in an intelligible and legitimate manner, with much jocular literature of later date. To us it seems clear that N. D. was no other than [HE]N[RY] [PLAYFOR]D. The triplets addressed in 1661 To the Reader, beginning “There’s no purge ’gainst Melancholy,” are repeated at commencement of the 1684 edition of “_Wit and Mirth; or, an Antidote to Melancholy_” (the third edition of “_Pills to Purge Melancholy_”) where they are entitled “The Stationer to the Reader,” and signed, not “N. D.,” but “H. P.;” for Henry Playford, whose name appears in full as publisher “near the Temple Church.” Thus, the repetition or alteration of the original title, “_An Antidote against Melancholy, made up in Pills_,” or, as the head-line puts it, “_Pills to Purge Melancholy_,” was, in all probability, a perfectly business-like reproduction of what Playford had himself originated. What relation Henry Playford was to John Playford, the publisher of “_Select Ayres_,” “_Choice Ayres_,” 1652, &c., we are not yet certain. Thirteen of the longest and most important poems from the 1661 _Antidote_[11] re-appear in that of 1684, beside four of the Catches. Indeed, the transmission of many of these Lyrics (by the editions of 1699, 1700, 1706, 1707) to the six volume edition, superintended by Tom D’Urfey in 1719-20, is unbroken; though we have still to find the edition published between 1661 and 1684. But even the 1661 _Antidote_ is not entitled to bear the credit of originating the phrase: _Pills to purge Melancholy_. So far as we know, by personal search, this belongs to Robert Hayman, thirty years earlier. Among his _Quodlibets_, 1628, on p. 74, we find the following epigram:— “To one of the elders of the Sanctified Parlour of Amsterdam. _Though thou maist call my merriments, my folly,_ _They are my Pills to purge my melancholy;_ _They would purge thine too, wert thou not foole-holy._” EDITORIAL POSTSCRIPT: 2.—ARTHUR O’ BRADLEY. (_Merry Drollery, Compleat_, p. 312, 395; _Antidote ag. Mel._, p. 16.) “Before we came in we heard a great shouting, And all that were in it look’d madly; But some were on Bull-back, some dancing a morris, And some singing Arthur-a-Bradley.” —(ROBIN HOOD’S BIRTH, &c. Printed by Wm. Onlen, about 1650. In _Roxburghe Collection of Black-Letter Ballads_, i., 360.)