Or if on some of them we roughness find,
It's tawny heath, badge of the barren rinde.
"In midst of these stands Croydon cloath'd in black,
In a low bottom sink of all these hills;
And is receipt of all the dirty wracke,
Which from their tops still in abundance trills,
The unpav'd lanes with muddy mire it fills
If one shower fall; or, if that blessing stay,
You may well smell, but never see your way.">[
"Gesmas et Desmas."—What is the meaning of two terms, Gesmas and Desmas, in the following couplet, which I transcribe from MS. entries in an old and rare volume lately bought, of date 1564, and the handwriting would seem coeval with the printing of the book? The lines evidently relate to the crucifixion of our Lord between the thieves; but I have never seen any appellations given to these last, and cannot fix a meaning for the terms with any certainty: they may have reference to the penitence of one, and the hardened state of the other still "tied and bound in the chain of his sins," but I know not to what language to refer them: