226 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



Buckinghamshire, and the latter near Cirencester in Gloucester- 

 shire, meet together about Dorchester in Oxfordshire ; the issue 

 of which happy conjunction is the Thamisis, or Thames : hence 

 it flieth betwixt Berks, Buckinghamshire, Middlesex, Surrey, 

 Kent, and Essex, and so weddeth himself to the Kentish Medway 

 in the very jaws of the ocean. This glorious river feeleth the 

 violence and benefit of the sea more than any river in Europe, 

 ebbing and flowing twice a day more than sixty miles ; about 

 whose banks are so many fair towns and princely palaces, that a 

 German poet* thus truly spake : — 



Tot campos, 8fc. 



We saw so many woods and princely bowers. 

 Sweet fields, brave palaces, and stately towers, 

 So many gardens dress'd with curious care. 

 That Thames with royal Tiber may compare. 



2. The second river of note is Sabrina, or Severn : it hath its 

 beginning in Plinlimmon-Hill in Montgomeryshire, and his end 

 seven miles from Bristol ; washing in the mean space the walls 

 of Shrewsbury, Worcester, and Gloucester, and divers other 

 places and palaces of note. 



3. Trent, so called for thirty kind of fishes that are found in it, 

 or for that it receiveth thirty lesser rivers ; who having his foun- 

 tain in Staffordshire, and gliding through the counties of Notting- 

 ham, Lincoln, Leicester, and York, augmenteth the turbulent 

 current of Humber, the most violent stream of all the isle. This 

 Humber is not, to say truth, a distinct river, having a spring- 

 head of his own, but it is rather the mouth, or aestuarium, of 

 divers rivers here confluent and meeting together; namely, your 

 Derwent, and especially of Ouse and Trent ; and (as the Da- 

 now, having received into its channel the rivers Dravus, Savus, 



* Who this German poet was, has not been discovered. Heylin gives 

 three lines : — 



Tot campos, sylvas, tot regia tecta, tot hortos, 



Artifici excultos dextra, tot vidimus arces, 



Ut nunc jSuaonio Thamisis cum Tibride certet.'-^tn. Ed. 



