[3] Nash repeatedly bears witness to Greene's popularity. "In a night and a day would he have yarkt up a pamphlet as well as in seven year, and glad was that printer that might be so blest to pay him dear for the very dregs of his wit" (_Strange News_). Harvey condemns him for "putting forth new, newer, and newest books of the maker" (_Four Letters_). Greene remained popular long after his death. In Sir Thomas Overbury's "Character" of _A Chambermaid_, he tells us "She reads Greene's works over and over"; and Anthony Wood informs us that since Greene's time his works "have been mostly sold on ballad-mongers' stalls." In the introduction to Rowland's _'Tis Merrie when Gossips meete_ (1602), (_Hunterian Club Publications_, vol. i.) there is a dialogue indicating that Greene's works are still in demand. Ben Jonson in _Every Man out of his Humour_ (1599) alludes to Greene's works, whence one "may steal with more security," referring undoubtedly, as does Rowland, to the great mass of Greene's published work. [4] Upon which Nash comments: "Let other men (as they please) praise the mountain that in seven years brings forth a mouse, or the Italianate pen, that of a packet of pilfries, affordeth the press a pamphlet or two in an age, and then in dignified array, vaunts Ovid's and Plutarch's plumes as their own; but give me the man, whose extemporal vein in any humour, will excel our greatest art master's deliberate thoughts; whose invention quicker than his eye, will challenge the proudest rhetorician, to the contention of like perfection, with like expedition."--(Prefatory Address to Greene's _Menaphon_.) [5] "But I thank God that he put it in my head, to lay open the most horrible cosenages of the common Conny-catchers, Coseners, and Cross-biters, which I have indifferently handled in those my several discourses already imprinted. And my trust is that these discourses will do great good, and be very beneficial to the commonwealth of England."--_The Repentance of Robert Greene._ [6] It is regretfully that one recognises that Collins does not belong at the head of this list. The surprising defects of the long-awaited definitive edition of Greene must now speak for themselves; its manifest excellences are well able to do so. [7] Writing in _Notes and Queries_, 1905. [8] _Menaphon_ was probably written a year or so earlier, but Nash's address was probably dated from the year of publication. [9] If we are to believe that _Edward III._ is Marlowe's play the reference of this passage to Marlowe is made certain, for Greene ridicules the words 'Ave Cæsar' that occur in the play. The only other play in which the words are known to occur is _Orlando Furioso_ by Greene himself. It would be too much to say that their use there is in ridicule of Marlowe, though even that is possible.