Spenser's English Rivers. 75 



'Wanton Lee' is obvious. Though Holinshed does not speak 

 of its wantonness, his long description (i. 87-9) supports 

 Spenser's Hne. Saxton's, or any other map, makes his charac- 

 terization even more evident. The river first flows generally 

 southeast for some fifteen miles, then east and northeast about 

 ten, to Ware, then, by a wide bend, to the southeast and south 

 towards its mouth at Blackwall. Camden speaks of its hastening 

 'with a merry glee' to the Thames — 'Lea jam laetior ad Tamesim 

 properat' (1590, Hertfordshire, p. 313). 



Of 'still Darent' Camden says it 'runneth with a soft streame' 

 (Kent, p. 328). Its course through Kent to the Thames near 

 Dartford is fully described by Holinshed (p. 89), but neither 

 he nor Camden speaks of its fish. This and the beauty of the 

 country the poet had opportunity to observe for himself. 



The 'stately Sevenie' (st. 30) needs no comment. Holinshed 

 says that in many respects 'it commeth farre behind the Thames,' 

 though in others 'it is nothing at all inferiour,' and calls it a 

 'noble streame' (i. 117). For the Humber see the comment on 

 stanza 38. 



There was the speedy Tamar, which devides 



The Cornish and the Devonish confines ; 



Through both whose borders swiftly downe it glides, 



And meeting Plim, to Plimmouth thence declines : 



And Dart, nigh chockt with sand of tinny mines.^" 



'The river Tamara, now Tamar,' says Camden, 'shewing his 

 head heere not farre from the northern shore, taketh his course 

 with a swift running streame southward' (Cornwall, p. 196). 

 Both he and Harrison (i. 104) speak of it as the boundary 

 between Devonshire and Cornwall.-*^ Neither describes it as 

 joining the Plim ; indeed, Harrison makes clear the contrary. 

 Spenser, in a hurried glance at the map, may have confused the 

 Plim and the Tavy, which meets with the Tamar in the upper 

 reaches of Plymouth Bay, or he may have thought of the narrow 

 bay as the Plim River above Plymouth. Saxton's map favors 

 such an error. More likely, however, Spenser is here careless, 

 as in stanzas 25 and 34. 



" St. 31. 



■■"This fact and the following inaccuracy are noted by Dr. Harper, 

 pp. 12, 17. 



