Lincolnshire, rather than to
Heresbach. They are as good as they were then; and the poetry none the
worse:--

"First see that the land be clear
In title of the seller;
And that it stand in danger
Of no woman's dowrie;
See whether the tenure be bond or free,
And release of every fee of fee;
See that the seller be of age,
And that it lie not in mortgage;
Whether ataile be thereof found,
And whether it stand in statute bound;
Consider what service longeth thereto,
And what quit rent thereout must goe;
And if it become of a wedded woman,
Think thou then on covert baron;
And if thou may in any wise,
Make thy charter in warrantise,
To thee, thine heyres, assignes also;
Thus should a wise purchaser doe."

The learned Lipsius was a contemporary of Councillor Heresbach, and
although his orthodoxy was somewhat questionable, and his Calvinism
somewhat stretchy, there can be no doubt of the honest rural love which
belongs to some of his letters, and especially to this smack of verse (I
dare not say poetry) with which he closes his _Eighth (Cent. I.)_

"Vitam si liceat mihi
Formare arbitriis meis:
Non fasces cupiam aut opes,
Non clarus niveis equis
Captiva agmina traxerim.
In solis habitem locis,
Hortos possideam atque agros,
Illic ad strepitus aquae
Musarum studiis fruar.
Sic cum fata mihi ultima
Pernerit Lachesis mea;
Tranquillus moriar senex."

And with this I will have done with a dead language; for I am come to a
period now when I can garnish my talk with the flowers of good old
English gardens. At the very thought of them, I seem to hear the royal
captive James pouring madrigals through the window of his Windsor
prison,--

"the hymnis consecrat
Of lovis use, now soft, now loud among,
That all the gardens and the wallis rung."

And through the "Dreme" of Chaucer I seem to see the great plain of
Woodstock stretching away under my view, all white and green, "green
y-powdered with daisy." Upon the half-ploughed land, lying yonder veiled
so tenderly with the mist and the rain, I could take oath to the very
spot where five hundred years ago the plowman of Chaucer, all "forswat,"

"plucked up his plowe
Whan midsomer mone was comen in
And shoke off shear, and coulter off drowe,
And honged his harnis on a pinne,
And said his beasts should ete enowe
And