Among the which, the merrie Nightingale
With swete and swete (her brest again a thorne)
Ringes out all night the never ceasing laudes
Of God, the author of her Nurse and all.

He proceeds to take a survey of the fruitful fields of pleasant Hertfordshire; and particularly notices Ware Park, then the seat of Sir Henry Fanshaw, and spoken of in the Reliquie Wottoniana, as "a delicate and diligent curiosity, without parallel among foreign nations." Two cygnets are shortly after introduced, which become the king and queen of the swans upon the river Lee, and are fancifully said to have had the distinction of drawing Venus in her ivory chariot three times. But when they began to wax old, it pleased them to send throughout their realm for all their subjects of their highest blood; and forty swans were made choice of, to attend their milk-white majesties. In this pomp they hie them to the head of the river Lee; thence, tracing its course through Brook-ball Park, they pass by Bishops-Hatfield, seated not far from ancient Verolane [Verulam]. Passing Hartingfordbury and Tewing, they hasten to Digswell, and to Welwyn: thence turning back, Hertford is visited, and several places in its vicinity, with a small, nameless stream that fosters swans, and comes from Hadham, falling into the Lee at Amwell. This brings remembrance to the classic ground which honest Isaac Wal

* This is an epithet which was adopted, or, as he probably thought, first employed by our distinguished poet, Coleridge, in his address to the Nightingale, who could be little aware of so remote an authority for its usage. It has since formed a poetic crust for the critics.

ton trod, and pleasingly celebrated in his Contemplative Man's Recreation. Vallans next pays an episodic visit to the river Stort, till he follows it into the Lee; the current of which he pursues from Stansted to Walt ham, Hackney, Layton, Old Ford, and Bow, whence it passes into the Thames,

―underneath the bridge that thwarts the streame,
And parteth Middlesex and Essex both.

At the close of the poem is given 'A Commentarie or Exposition of certain proper names used in the Tale:" and this is followed by an historical disquisition, addressed by the author “ to his beloved father, John Vallans," tending to prove, that great ships or vessels had formerly passed to and fro between London, Ware, and Hertford. Scott, in his sweetly-descriptive poem of Amwell, introduces a similar notion from Smollett's History of England to that which Vallans had done from our ancient chroniclers; and relates that the vessels of the Danes were left on dry ground, near Hertford, by Alfred's having turned the river Lee into new channels. But Scott had never met with the production of Vallans, or it would have afforded further local illustration to his own ingenious poem.

Vallans, in an address to the reader, expresses a wish that he could animate or encourage those worthy poets who have written Epithalamion Thamesis, to publish the same. This seems to allude to a poem of Spenser's, under that title, which never appeared; but of which he thus spoke in 1579, in a letter to Gabriel Harvey: “I mynde shortly, at convenient leysure, to

sette forthe a booke, whyche I entitle Epithalamion Thamesis: whych booke (I dare undertake) wil be very profitable for the knowledge, and rare for the invention and manner of handling: for in setting forth the mar riage of the Thames, I shewe his first beginning and offspring, and all the country that he passeth thorough, and also describe all the rivers throughout Englande, whyche came to this wedding," &c. The recovery of this poem would be a prize. Vallans speaks of another on the same subject written in Latin verse, which was well done, but which the unnamed author still suppressed. In 1600 an English poem of a loosely descriptive kind was published under the title of Thameseiodos, by E. W. in three books or cantos; but this was a posterior production to the present. Vallans, it may be added, has commendatory lines before Wharton's Dreame, 1578.

Diana: or the excellent conceitfull Sonnets of H. C Augmented with divers Quatorzains of honorable and learned Personages. Divided into viii. Decads.

1

THIS is the production of Henry Constable, a sonnet writer of some repute in the era of Queen Elizabeth, as may be gathered from an article in Mr. Park's Supplement to the Harleian Miscellany, vol. ix. p. 491, where his genuine sonnets are inserted from a MS. copy. He is here introduced in a cursory way, for the purpose of a personal record, and for the sake of inserting a specimen, not reprinted in the above publication.

DECAD. VI.

Son. II.

To live in hell, and heaven to behold,

To welcome life, and die a living death,
To sweat with heate, and yet be freezing cold,
To grasp at starres, and lye the earth beneath;
To tread a maze that never shall have end,

To burne in sighes, and starve in daily teares,
To climb a hill, and never to descend,

Gyants to kill, and quake at childish feares:
To pyne for foode, and watch th' Hesperian tree,
To thirst for drinke, and nectar still to draw,
To live accurst, whom men hold blest to be,
And weepe those wrongs which never.creature saw :
If this be love, if love in these be founded,
My hart is love,-for these in it are grounded.

From a MS. in possession of the Rev. H. J. TODD.*

මා

What if a day, a month, or a yeare

Croune thy delights with a thousand wisht contentings

May not the chance of a night, or an howre,

Crosse those delights with as many sad tormentings?

Fortune, honoure, beautie, youth,

Are but blossomes dying;"
Wanton pleasure, doting love,
Are but shadowes flying."

All our joyes

Are but toyes,
Idle thoughts deceaving:

None hath power

Halfe an howre,

Of his lives bereaving.

The earth's but a pointe of the world, and a man
Is but a poynte of the earth's compared center:

Shall then a pointe of a pointe be so vayne,

As to delight in a sillie poynt's adventer ?

This MS. has been noticed by Mr. Todd in his edition of Milton's poetical works, vol. i. That portion, including Constable's Sonnets, was liberally imparted for the use of a late Supplement to the Harleian Miscellanu and the remainder is now with equal liberality imparted by its indulgent possessor.