CHAP. XIX. THE COMPLETE ANGLEll. 217 



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 1 poet thus truly spake : 



Tot compos, 4;c. 



We saw so many uoods and princely bowers, 

 Sweet fields, hiave palaces, a.nd stately towers; 

 So many gardens drest 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 Plinilimmon-hill, in Montgomery- 

 shire ; 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. 



" Tame (sayeth Leland) springe:h out of the hilles of Hertfordshire, at a place 

 called Bulburne, a few miles from Pcolye, (the house of a family of gentlemen 

 called Verneys); it runneth from thence to Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, and 

 to Tame (a market-town in Oxfordshire, whearunto it gyveth the name,) then 

 passinge under Whrtley-biidge, it cometh to Dorchester, and hard by joyneth 

 with Isis, or Ouse, and from that place joyneth with it in name also." Diction, 

 arium Topographicum,voceTKAME. 



Unfortunately, Leland's manuscript has lost twenty-five leaves in that part 

 of it where one might expect to find this passage. But the following extract, 

 from an author of great authority, and wliohadaseat in the county of Hertford, 

 will determine the question. 



" The Thame (the most famous river of England) issues from three heads, in 

 the parish of Tring ; the first rises in an orchard, near the parsonage-house; the 

 second in a place called Dundell; and the other proceeds from a spring named 

 Bulbourne, which last stream joins the other waters at a place called New- 

 mill; whence all, gliding together in one current, through Puttenham in this 

 county, pass by Aylesbury (a fair market-town in Buckinghamshire) to Etherop, 

 (an ancient pleasant seat of that noble family of the Dormers, earls of Caernar- 

 von ;) and crossing that county, by Notley-abbey, to Thame, (a market-town in 

 Oxfordshire, which borrows its name from tins river,) hasteneth away by 

 Whateley-bridge to Dorchester, (an ancient episcopal seat,) and thence congra- 

 tulates the Is; but both emulating each other for the name, and neither 

 yielding, they are complicated by that of Thamitis." Sir Henry Chauocy's 

 Historical Antiquities of Hertfordshire, p. 2. See also the later Maps of 

 Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire. 



(I) Who this German poet was I cannot find; but the verses, in the original 

 Latin, are iu Heylin's Cosmography, page 240, and are as follow : 

 Tot compos, sylvas, tot regia tecta, tot hortos, 

 Artifici cicultoi dextra, tot vidimus arcet ; 

 Ut nunc Ausonio, Thamisis, cum Tibride certtt. 



