In the conversation which ensues between these august personages, great knowledge of Scripture is displayed; and the queen, speaking of the "sapient prince," passionately exclaims

I setè nat of all the vilanie

That he of women wrote a boterflie;

I am a woman nedès moste I speke,

Or swell unto that time min hertè breke.

Some might suspect a mystery in the queen's thus emphatically styling herself a woman, but we lay no stress upon it, as Faire Damoselle Pertelote, the hen, who was certainly less entitled to it, does the same.

In the Man of Lawes Tale the word Elfe is employed, but whether as equivalent to witch or fairy is doubtful.

This lettre spake, the quene delivered was

Of so horrible a fendliche creätúre,

That in the castle, non so hardy was,
That any whilè dorste therein endure.
The mother was an elfe by áventure,
Y come, by charmès or by sorcerie,
And everich man hateth hire compagnie.*

The Rime of Sir Thopas has been already considered as belonging to romance.

It thus appears that the works of manners-painting Chaucer give very little information respecting the popular belief in Fairies of his day. Were it not for the sly satire of the passage, we might be apt to suspect that, like one who lived away from the common people, he was willing to represent the superstition as extinct-"But now can no man see non elves mo." The only trait that he gives really characteristic of the popular elves is their love of dancing.

In the poets that intervene between Chaucer and the Maiden Reign, we do not recollect to have noticed anything of importance respecting Fairies, except the employment, already adverted to, of that term, and that of Elves, by

*This wife which is of faërie,

Of such a childe delivered is,
Fro kindè which stante all amis.

GOWER, Legende of Constance.

translators in rendering the Latin Nymphe. Of the size of these beings, the passages in question give no information.

But in Elizabeth's days, "Fairies," as Johnson observes, were much in fashion; common tradition had made them familiar, and Spenser's poem had made them great." A just remark, no doubt, though Johnson fell into the common error of identifying Spenser's Fairies with the popular ones.

The three first books of the Faerie Queene were published in 1590, and, as Warton remarks, Fairies became a familiar and fashionable machinery with the poets and poetasters. Shakspeare, well acquainted, from the rural habits of his early life, with the notions of the peasantry respecting these beings, and highly gifted with the prescient power of genius, saw clearly how capable they were of being applied to the production of a species of the wonderful, as pleasing, or perhaps even more so, than the classic gods; and in the Midsummer-Night's Dream he presented them in combination with the heroes and heroines of the mythic age of Greece. But what cannot the magic wand of genius effect? We view with undisturbed delight the Elves of Gothic mythology sporting in the groves of Attica, the legitimate haunts of Nymphs and Satyrs.

Shakspeare, having the Faerie Queene before his eyes, seems to have attempted a blending of the Elves of the village with the Fays of romance. His Fairies agree with the former in their diminutive stature,-diminished, indeed, to dimensions inappreciable by village gossips,-in their fondness for dancing, their love of cleanliness, and their child-abstracting propensities. Like the Fays, they form a community, ruled over by the princely Oberon and the fair Titania.* There is a court and chivalry: Oberon would have the queen's sweet changeling to be a "Knight of his

* The derivation of Oberon has been already given (p. 208). The Shakspearean commentators have not thought fit to inform us why the poet designates the Fairy-queen, Titania. It, however, presents no difficulty. It was the belief of those days that the Fairies were the same as the classic Nymphs, the attendants of Diana: "That fourth kind of spritis," says King James, "quhilk be the gentilis was called Diana, and her wandering court, and amongst us called the Phairie." The Fairy-queen was therefore the same as Diana, whom Ovid (Met. iii. 173) styles Titania; Chaucer, as we have seen, calls her Proserpina.

train to trace the forest wild." Like earthly monarchs, he has his jester, "the shrewd and knavish sprite, called Robin Good-fellow."

The luxuriant imagination of the poet seemed to exult in pouring forth its wealth in the production of these new actors on the mimic scene, and a profusion of poetic imagery always appears in their train. Such lovely and truly British poetry cannot be too often brought to view; we will therefore insert in this part of our work several of these gems of our Parnassus, distinguishing by a different character such acts and attributes as appear properly to belong to the Fairy of popular belief.

MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.

ACT II.-SCENE I.

Puck and a Fairy.

Puck. How now, spirit! whither wander you?
Fai. Over hill, over dale,

Thorough bush, thorough briar,
Over park, over pale,

Thorough flood, thorough fire.
I do wander every where,
Swifter than the moonès sphere,
And I serve the Fairy-queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green.
The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coats spots you see.
Those be rubies, fairy favours,

In those freckles live their savours.
I must go seek some dew-drops here,

And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.*

Farewell, thou lob of spirits! I'll be gone;

Our queen and all her elves come here anon.

Puck. The king doth keep his revels here to-night.

Take heed the queen come not within his sight;

For Oberon is passing fell and wroth,

Because that she, as her attendant, hath

A lovely boy stolen from an Indian king,—
She never had so sweet a changeling;

'Twas I that led you through the painted meads,
Where the light Fairies danced upon the flowers,
Hanging on every leaf an orient pearl.

Wisdom of Dr. Dodypoll, 1600. Steevens.

Men of fashion, in that age, wore earrings.

And jealous Oberon would have the child
Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild;
But she, perforce, withholds the loved boy,
Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy;
And now they never meet in grove or green,
By fountain clear, or spangled star-light sheen,
But they do square; that all their elves, for fear,
Creep into acorn cups, and hide them there.

Fai. Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Call'd Robin Good-fellow. Are you not he
That frights the maidens of the villagery,
Skims milk, and sometimes labours in the quern,
And bootless makes the breathless housewife churn;
And sometimes makes the drink to bear no barm;
Misleads night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hob-goblin call you, and sweet Puck,
You do their work, and they shall have good luck,
Are not you he?

Puck.
Thou speakest aright,
I am that merry wanderer of the night.
I jest to Oberon, and make him smile,
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly-foal;
And sometimes lurk I in a gossip's bowl,
In
very likeness of a roasted crab,

And when she drinks, against her lips I bob,
And on her withered dewlap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometimes for three-foot stool mistaketh me:

Then slip I from her bum,-down topples she,

And tailor cries, and falls into a cough;

And then the whole quire hold their hips and loffe,

And waxen in their mirth, and neeze, and swear

A merrier hour was never wasted there.

The haunts of the Fairies on earth are the most rural and romantic that can be selected. They meet

On hill, in dale, forest or mead,

By paved fountain, or by rushy brook,

Or on the beached margent of the sea,
To dance their ringlets to the whistling wind.

And the place of Titania's repose is

A bank whereon the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with lush woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine.

There sleeps Titania, some time of the night
Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the snake throws her enamell'd skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in.

The powers of the poet are exerted to the utmost, to convey an idea of their minute dimensions; and time, with them, moves on lazy pinions, Come," cries the queen,

66

Come now, a roundel and a fairy song,

Then for the third part of a minute hence :
Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds;

Some war with rear-mice for their leathern wings,
To make my small elves coats.

And when enamoured of Bottom, she directs her Elves that they should

Puck

Hop in his walks and gambol in his eyes;
Feed him with apricocks and dewberries,
With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries.
The honey-bags steal from the humble-bees,
And for night-tapers crop their waxen thighs,
And light them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes;
To have my love to bed, and to arise

And pluck the wings from painted butterflies,
To fan the moon-beams from his sleeping eyes.

goes "swifter than arrow from the Tartar's bow;" he says, "he'll put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes;" and "We," says Oberon

We the globe can compass soon,
Swifter than the wandering moon.

They are either not mortal, or their date of life is indeterminately long; they are of a nature superior to man, and speak with contempt of human follies. By night they revel beneath the light of the moon and stars, retiring at the approach of "Aurora's harbinger," but not compulsively like ghosts and "damned spirits."

* And the yellow-skirted Fayes

Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved maze.
MILTON, Ode on the Nativity, 235.