Spenser's English Rivers. 85 



the name is obvious, but may have been suggested to him by 

 Camden : 'The river Trent, in the old English-Saxon tongue 

 Treonta (which some Antiquaries of small note and account 

 have called Triginta in Latine, for the affinity of the French 

 v^^ord Trent that signifieth that number Triginta, that is, Thirty)' 

 (Nottinghamshire, p. 547). He adds that 'pisces Trenta large 

 suppeditat' (1590, p. 436), with an old verse — 'Limpida sylva 

 [Sherwood] focum, Triginta dat mihi piscem.' 



Next these came Tyne, along whose stony bancke 

 That Romaine monarch built a brasen wall, 

 Which mote the feebled Britons strongly flancke 

 Against the Picts, that swarmed over all, 

 Which yet thereof Gualsever the}'' doe call.*^ 



The Tyne in the old authors is called the South Tyne through- 

 out its course. Camden says that, as it turns eastward from 

 Bellister Castle, near Fetherston Haugh, it 'runneth directly 

 forward with the Wall, which is in no place three miles distant' 

 (Northumberland, p. 799, cf. 646). Camden, in discussing the 

 origin of the wall, says that Severus is shown to have been the 

 builder by its 'Britannicum nomen Gual Sever' (1590, Picts 

 Wall, p. 643). Saxton's map shows the wall following the 

 Tyne, and marks it 'Pictes wal' and 'Vallum Severi.' But 

 Spenser's information may be drawn also from Holinshed : 

 'After his time [Hadrian's] Severus the emperour comming 

 againe into this He (where he had served before in repression of 

 the tumults here begun, after the death of Lucius) amongst 

 other things he made another wall (but of stone) betweene 

 eightie and a hundred miles from the first, & of thirtie two miles 

 in length, reaching on both sides also to the sea, of whome the 

 Britons called it S. Murseveri, or Gwall Severi, that is, The 

 wall of Severus, or Severus dale, which later indureth untill these 

 dales in fresh memorie, by reason of the ruines & square stones 

 there oft found, whose inscriptions declare the authors of that 

 worke' (i. 214). 'Brazen' in Spenser would not contradict 

 Harrison's statement that the wall was of stone. It is a favorite 

 word of the poet, often meaning little more than 'strong, impreg- 

 nable.' A long list of illustrations may be found in the con- 

 cordance. 



"■ St. 36. 



