West of England, it may be observed, is a great Fairy country, though even the miners and their natural darkness have not been able to obscure the sunnier notions of Fairy-land, now prevailing in that quarter as much as any. The Devonshire Pixies or Pucksies are the reigning elves, and are among the gayest and most good-humored to be met with. Mr. Coleridge, in his juvenile poems, has put some verses into their mouths, not among his best, but such as he may have been reasonably loth to part with. The sea-air which he breathed at a distance, and “the Pixies' Parlour" (a grotto of the roots of trees, in which he found his name carved by the hands of his childhood), were proper nurseries for the author of the "Ancient Mariner."

Chaucer's notion of Fairies was a confused mixture of elves and romance-ladies, and Ovid, and the Catholic diablerie. We had taken his fairies for the regular little dancers on the green (induced by a line of his to that effect in the following passage); but the author of the "Fairy Mythology" has led us to form a different opinion. The truth is, that a book in Chaucer's time was a book, and everything to be found in those rare authorities became a sort of equal religion in the eyes of the student. Chaucer, in one of his verses, has brought together three such names as never met, perhaps, before or since, "Samson, Turnus, and Socrates." He calls Ovid's Epistles "The Saint's Legends of Cupid." Seneca and St. Paul are the same grave authorities in his eyes; in short, whatever was written was a scripture: something clerkly, and what

says Prior, speaking of William the 3d, and rebuking, at the same time, Boileau's deifications of Louis. So Frederick or Napoleon, or both, were called by their soldiers "the Little Corporal."

a monk ought to have written if he could. His Lady Abbess wears a brooch exhibiting a motto out of Virgil. Elves, therefore, and Provençal Enchantresses, and the nymphs of the Metamorphoses, and the very devils of the Pope and St. Anthony, were all fellows well met, all supernatural beings, living in the same remote regions of fancy, and exciting the gratitude of the poet. He is angry with the friars for making more solemn distinctions, and displacing the little elves in their walks; and he runs a capital jest upon them, which has become famous.

"In olde dayes of the kinge Artour,

Of which that Britons speke gret honour,
All was this land full filled of faerie;
The Elf-quene, with hire joly compagnie,
Danced ful oft in many a grene mede.
This was the old opinion as I rede;
I speke of many hundred yeres ago;
But now can no man see non elves mo,
For now the grete charitee and prayeres
Of limitoures and other holy freres,

That serchen every land and every streme,
As thikke as motes in the sonne-beme,
Blissing halles, chambres, kichenes, and boures,
Citees and burghes, castles highe and toures,
Thropes and bernes, shepeness and dairies,
This maketh that ther ben no faeries;

For ther as wont to walken was an elf,

Ther walketh now the limitour himself,

In undermeles and in morwenings,

And sayth his matines and his holy thinges,
As he goth in his limitation.

Women may now go safely up and doun;
In every bush and under every tree,

Ther is non other incubus but he."

In another poem, we meet with Pluto and Proserpine as the King and Queen of Faerie; where they sing and dance about a well, enjoying themselves in a garden, and quot

ing Solomon. The "ladies" that wait upon them are the damsels that accompanied Proserpine in the vale of Enna, when she was taken away by his Majesty in his "griesly cart." This is a very different cart from a chariot made of the gristle of grasshoppers.

The national intellect, which had been maturing like an oak, from the time of Wickliffe, drawing up nutriment from every ground, and silently making the weakest things contribute to its strength, burst forth at last into flowers and fruit together, in the noonday of Shakespeare. A shower of fairy blossoms was the ornament of its might. Spenser's fairies are those of Romance, varied with the usual readings of his own fancy; but Shakespeare, the popular poet of the world, took the little elfin globe in his hand, as he had done the great one, and made it a thing of joy and prettiness for ever. Since then the fairies have become part of a poet's belief, and happy ideas of them have almost superseded what remains of a darker creed in the minds of the people. The profound playfulness of Shakespeare's wisdom, which humanized every thing it touched, and made it know its own value, found out the soul of an activity, convertible into good, in the restlessness of mischief; and Puck, or the elf malicious, became jester in the court of Oberon the Good Fairy, — his servant and his help. The "Elves" in the Tempest are rather the elemental spirits of the Rosicrucians, confounded both with classical and popular mythology. It is in the 66 Midsummer Night's Dream" that the true fairies are found, as they ought to be; and there amidst bowers and moonlight, will we indulge ourselves awhile with their company. We make no apology to the reader for our large quotations. They have been repeated many times and lately on the present subject; yet we should

rather have to apologize for the omission, considering how excellent they are. To add what novelty we could, or rather to make our quotations as peculiar to our work as possible, we had made up our minds to bring together all the passages in question out of Shakespeare's drama, as far as they could be separated from other matter, and present them to our readers under the title of a Fairy Play; but we began to fear that the profane might have some color of reason for complaining of us, and accusing us of an intention to swell our pages. We have, therefore, confined ourselves to selections which are put under distinct heads, so as to form a kind of gallery of Fairy pictures. We shall take the liberty of commenting as we go, even if our remarks are called forth on points not immediately belonging to the subject. It is not easy to read a great poet, and not indulge in exclamations of fondness. Besides, there is something fairy-like in having one's way.

EMPLOYMENT OF A DAMSEL OF THE FAIRY COURT.

Fairy. Over hill, over dale,

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

Thorough flood, thorough fire,
I do wander every where,
Swifter than the moon's 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.

Flowers, in the proper fairy spirit, which plays betwixt sport and wisdom with the profoundest mysteries of na

ture, are here made alive, and turned into fantastic servants.

In fairy-land, whatever may be, is. We may gather from this and another passage in Cymbeline, that Shakespeare was fond of cowslips, and had observed their graces with delight. It is a delicate fancy to suppose that those ruby spots contain the essence of the flower's odor, and were presents from their ruling sprite. And the hanging a pearl in every cowslip's ear (besides the beauty of the line) seems to pull the head of the tall pensioner sideways, and make him quaintly conscious of his new favor.

BOWER OF QUEEN TITANIA.

I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows,
Where ox-lips 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

What beautiful lines are these? Observe in the next the goggle-eyed owl, who is nightly astonished at the fairies, as if amazement were his business; and also the childlike warning to the snails and daddy longlegs to keep aloof.

THE QUEEN IN HER BOWER.
Tita. 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 some keep back
The clamorous owl, that nightly hoots and wonders
At our quaint spirits: sing me now asleep;
Then to your offices, and let me rest.

SONG.

1st Fairy. You spotted snakes, with double tongue, Thorny hedge-hogs, be not seen;