Heralds.—­“Heralds new mould men’s names—­taking from them, adding to them, melting out all the liquid letters, torturing mutes to make them speak, and making vowels dumb,—­to bring it to a fallacious homonomy at the last, that their names may be the same with those noble houses they pretend to.”

Antiquarian Diligence.—­“It is most worthy observation, with what diligence he [Camden] inquired after ancient places, making hue and cry after many a city which was run away, and by certain marks and tokens pursuing to find it; as by the situation on the Roman highways, by just distance from other ancient cities, by some affinity of name, by tradition of the inhabitants, by Roman coins digged up, and by some appearance of ruins.  A broken urn is a whole evidence; or an old gate still surviving, out of which the city is run out.  Besides, commonly some new spruce town not far off is grown out of the ashes thereof, which yet hath so much natural affection as dutifully to own those reverend ruins for her mother.”

Henry de Essex.—­“He is too well known in our English Chronicles, being Baron of Raleigh, in Essex, and Hereditary Standard Bearer of England.  It happened in the reign of this king [Henry II.] there was a fierce battle fought in Flintshire, at Coleshall, between the English and Welsh, wherein this Henry de Essex animum et signum simul abjecit, betwixt traitor and coward, cast away both his courage and banner together, occasioning a great overthrow of English.  But he that had the baseness to do, had the boldness to deny the doing of so foul a fact; until he was challenged in combat by Robert de Momford, a knight, eye-witness thereof, and by him overcome in a duel.  Whereupon his large inheritance was confiscated to the king, and he himself, partly thrust, partly going into a convent, hid his head in a cowl, under which, betwixt shame and sanctity, he blushed out the remainder of his life."[1]—­Worthies, article Bedfordshire.

[Footnote 1:  The fine imagination of Fuller has done what might have been pronounced impossible.  It has given an interest, and a holy character to coward infamy.  Nothing can be more beautiful than the concluding account of the last days, and expiatory retirement, of poor Henry de Essex.  The address with which the whole of this little story is told is most consummate; the charm of it seems to consist in a perpetual balance of antithesis not too violently opposed, and the consequent activity of mind in which the reader is kept:—­“Betwixt traitor and coward”—­“baseness to do, boldness to deny”—­“partly thrust, partly going, into a convent”—­“betwixt shame and sanctity.”  The reader by this artifice is taken into a kind of partnership with the writer,—­his judgment is exercised in settling the preponderance,—­he feels as if he were consulted as to the issue.  But the modern historian flings at once the dead weight of his own judgment into the scale, and settles the matter.]