Note 9 — EDITORIAL POSTSCRIPT:
Reading edition
J. P. Collier, in his invaluable “Bibliographical and Critical Account of the Rarest Books in the English Language,” 1865, acknowledges, in reference to “An Antidote against Melancholy,” that “We are without information by whom this collection of Poems, Ballads, Songs, and Catches was made; but Thomas Durfey, about sixty years afterwards, imitated the title, when he called his six volumes ‘Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy,’ 8vo., 1719-20.” (Bibliog. & Crit. Account, vol. i. p. 26.) Again, “If N. D., whose initials are at the end of the rhyming address ‘to the Reader,’ were the person who made the selection, we are without any other clue to his name. There is no ground for imputing it to Thomas Jordan, excepting that he was accustomed to deal in productions of this class; but the songs and ballads he printed were usually of his own composition, and not the works of anterior versifyers.” (Ibid., i. 27.)