[These words occur in a conversation between Eurybiades and Themistocles, and will be found in Plutarch's _Life of Themistocles_, cap. xi.] _Fever at Croydon._--In Camden's _Britannia_ before me, with date on (written) title-page 1610, {238} Londini, Georgii Bishop, Joannes Norton, p. 320., under county Svthrey, and against the marginal "Croidon," it is thus stated: "As for that sudden swelling water or bourne, which the common people reports to breake foorth heere out of the ground, presaging, I wote not how, either dearth of corne or the pestilence, may seeme not worthy once the naming, and yet the euentes sometime ensuing hath procured it credit." I have heard it stated, without reference to the above, that the aforesaid stream had risen during the last few months, and, if such be the case, the fever that has been so prevalent in the town seems to bear out the above statement. Can any of your correspondents inform me whether the above fact is mentioned in any other account of the place, and if so, where? R. W. H. [It appears that our early ballad writers do not give a very favourable account of the locality of Croydon. Listen to Patrick Hannay, Gent., in 1662:-- "It seems of starved Sterilitie the seat, Where barren downs do it environ round; Whose parched tops in summer are not wet, And only are with snow in winter crown'd, Only with bareness they do still abound; 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: "Disparibus meritis pendit tria Corpora lignis _Gesmas_ et _Desmas_, medius Divina Potestas." A. B. R.