Note 728 — FATHER HUBBURD’S TALES; OR, THE ANT AND THE NIGHTINGALE.

humorous theft] At p. 317 of a copy of Ritson’s Bibliographia Poetica, Malone has appended the following MS. note to the title of Samuel Rowlands’s Letting of humours blood in the head-vaine, &c.; “Stolen from Nash’s papers after his death in 1600. So says T. Middleton.”—What the “humorous theft” was, I know not; but the expression certainly has not the meaning which Malone chose to make it bear: Nash did not die till 1604 (see note, p. 527), and The Letting of humours blood in the head-vaine, &c. was first printed in 1600.