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THE GREAT FAIR OF OBERONOPOLIS AND FRAUDS OF THE FAIRIES. BY THE AUTHOR OF "MY UNCLE THE CURATE,” ETC.

"We are arrant knaves all; believe none of us."-Hamlet.

THE Great Fair of Faeryland is held at Oberonopolis, the capital of that country, which I need not say is the most romantic on the face of the earth; resembling indeed much more a land of the imagination than a region of reality. The fair is held in a gorgeous building, not made of glass, like our Palace of Industry at Sydenham, but of the same material as the baseless fabrics of Prospero, which, we all know, was infinitely finer than glass,-"air, thin air." Air of the very finest and thinnest description is as abundant in Faeryland as marble in Italy or glass in England; there are vast mines or quarries of it in some provinces; and it is consequent ly used almost universally for building purposes. The castles of the Faery noblesse are constructed with it; and the cottages of the elfin peasantry are airy edifices also, though made of the coarsest descriptions, sometimes not much thinner than the purest English atmosphere. Indeed, in one of the poor suburbs of Oberonopolis, (which I was told was the quarter of the Irish fairies) I saw a hut which seemed built of air of the consistency of a London fog. It was in fact a cabin, built of what in this aerial country corresponds to what is called mud with us. The inhabitants, however, appeared to me, notwithstanding the poverty of their abode, to be among the merriest and pleasantest elves in the commonwealth; for in Faeryland as elsewhere it is not always the most agreeable people who live in the finest and richest houses.

The Great Fair, as it is called, is held at the feast of Nevercometide (nearly coincident with the Greek Kalends); and besides an extraordinary concourse of fairies, elves, sprites, fays, sylphs, and various other tiny tribes and nations under the sway of Oberon and Titania, it is attended also by crowds of loungers, saunterers, idlers, poets, pedlars, and nobodies, from this matter-of-fact world, led thither either by motives of curiosity, or to purchase the various wares and fanciful commodities for which the artificers and manufacturers of the

faery dominions have been renowned from time immemorial.

For myself, I was one of those who had no better excuse than Horatio's,

a truant spirit,"-for mingling in the throng; but after all a man may spend a few sunny holidays as well in Oberonopolis as in Paris; and there is something worth seeing and taking note of everywhere, if we only have our eyes open, and have cultivated the talent of observation.

Of the vast and brilliant aerial structure where the metropolitan fair is held, I can give no more accurate idea than what you may frame for yourself by imagining a crystal palace like our own; only, as I have said, of infinitely finer materials, and of infinitely more delicate and beautiful architecture. The fairy architects are as much superior to ours as the materials they employ are to our most splended mineral or metallic substances, gold, or silver, malachite or alabaster. If a fairy builder were to erect such an enormity as the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, he would be sentenced to hard labour for life in the air-mines, or at least to a thousand years' solitary confinement in the flower of a snap-dragon. The consequence is that Oberonopolis resembles Paris more than London, and of all the public buildings the most superb is that which we are now entering.

I never before had a conception where the inexhaustible variety of objects with which we decorate our works of fancy came from, until I visited this great emporium of wares of that description, and actually saw them exposed there for sale, like the goods in the shops of Regent-Street, or in the booths of our rural fairs and markets.

The first fairy booth that drew my attention had "Moth and Peasblossom" inscribed over it in radiant characters; it belonged of course to two fairy partners of those celebrated names, with which Shakspeare has made the world so well acquainted. Here were displayed for sale all sorts of flowers such as poets have so great a demand for; and I observed several

1856.] The Great Fair of Obercnopolis and Frauds of the Fairies. 741

members of the rhyming fraternity laying in their annual stock at Moth and Peasblossom's, not, however, without the usual complaints that purchasers make of high prices; and in truth the most of the flowers did appear to me exorbitantly dear, not with respect to what the poets actually paid for them (which was a mere nothing) but with respect to the intrinsic value of the commodities. I stood by while one bard in particular bought a great basket-full for half a Mab, (not four-pence of English money,) and I could perceive no perfume from them whatever, except indeed a general smell of poppies; the things seemed to me so faded and scentless that I cannot but suspect the Oberonopolitan flower-merchants of buying back the flowers of former years, after they have been quite used up, and reselling them to new customers who are either not very nice in their selection, or perhaps intend to impose upon their customers or readers in turn.

The adjoining compartment was allotted to Figures and Images, of which the assortment was prodigious; and here too I saw the poets very busy making their bargains, and not a few prose-writers also. Good figures, I remarked, were extremely dear; so much so as to be quite out of the reach of many of the purchasers ; but, on the other hand, there was a commoner sort of which you might have any quantity for the merest trifle. My friend Bavius, who had just bought one of the largest cases, assured me it contained images enough for a long epic poem which he meditated; and though he affirmed he had paid a gold Oberon for it, I heard, upon more trustworthy authority than his, that it had not cost him sixpence, and was dear for the money.

A word in passing on the coinage of Faeryland. The gold Oberon, (if indeed it is not made of a still finer metal,) is about the size of a Queen Anne's farthing. There are also half Oberons, something like spangles. The silver Mab resembles one of our silver pennies. There are also Pucks and demi-Pucks. There is a great deal of false money current, and there is no law to restrain the issue or circulation of it. You receive a gift, or a payment, for instance, in Oberons, and put them up in your purse, which

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What I remarked on the prices of Figures and Images, I had occasion to remark again in the simile department; an original simile was very expensive, a good simile expensive also, but for one that was both good and original the price demanded by Spangle, Pippin, and Co., of Elfinburgh, Simile-Makers to the Royal Family, was so high as to place it out of the reach of nine out of ten of our modern poets. Trumpery similes, however, were as plenty and cheap as blackberries. Bavius showed me a packet containing a thousand, the price marked on which was only a quarterMab; and I heard Pippin himself offer Mævius a bundle containing a thousand lions, the same number of swans, eight-hundred dew-drops, sixhundred rainbows, and five-hundred butterflies, (some from Cashmere,) for a still smaller coin. Mævius seemed to think it a good speculation, and was just about to jump at it, when Dot and Jot, who kept the opposite booth in the same line, offered him for the same money a parcel containing exactly the same articles, with a handful of fire-flies into the bargain.

From all I observed of the way in which this curious trade is carried on, I could not help coming to the conclusion that the fairy tradesmen are not much more upright in their dealings than the Chinese. As the people of the Celestial Empire adulterate their teas for the English market, in some instances actually painting them, as they notoriously do, so I apprehend King Oberon's manufacturers are in the habit of producing counterfeit similes, images, metaphors, and spurious poetical materials and fancy goods of all descriptions, which they palm upon respectable poets and writers of fiction as the genuine produce of Faeryland, and are thus really the responsible parties for a large proportion of the indifferent poetry and bad writing of the day.

I have my suspicions, moreover, that these roguish fairy tradesmen use opium in some form or another in their daring adulterations of fancy

wares. The same smell which I noticed in the flower booths was perceptible wherever I went; and if I am right in my conjecture as to the drug employed, the true cause of the drowsy influences and soporific effects of a multitude of modern works, both in prose and rhyme, is apparent; and the world is in the habit of unjustly accusing many writers of dullness, who ought to be pitied instead of blamed as the innocent victims of fairy tricks and impostures.

I am mistaken, too, if we cannot also trace to the systematic commercial frauds of Faeryland, another sin continually laid to the doors of literary men; I mean the sin of plagiarism, or filching from one another. The fact is, that there is a low set of itinerant fairy traders, who travel like pedlars about the commonwealth of letters, and buy up quantities of old images, figures, similes, allusions, quotations, illustrations; in short all sorts of second-hand literary wares; these they carry back with them to Oberonopolis, where they are furbished up afresh, by various processes akin to gilding or electrotyping, and then sold again as new at the Great Fair, whence in the natural course of things they find their way back again to London or Paris, where there is of course a cry of "stop thief," or voleur," raised at the expense of the unfortunate dupes who purchased them.

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Some genuine articles, however, were cheap enough; a phial of moonbeams costs no more than a box of lucifer matches: nightingales (old birds certainly, and the most of them more melancholy than musical) are not more expensive than sparrows; and if you contract by the year with Messrs. Moth and Seedling, a celebrated house in Mabville, I was told you may have for a mere song more blushes, dimples, glow-worms, and common smiles and frowns than you could possibly make use of in a twelvemonth.

They will also undertake to furnish at a very short notice, and at a most reasonable figure, a complete Allegory, as good, they state in their card, as has been brought into the literary market for many a long day. I had some conversation with Seedling, whom I found not only a most intelligent trades-fairy, and a capital fairy

of business, but very much to be commended also for his sincerity and candour. He frankly admitted that there was very little genuine now in the figure and image trade, or indeed in the poetical line generally.

"Some thirty or forty years since," he said, "there were many substantial good articles in the market, but they were secured by Scott, Byron, Moore, Campbell, and one or two more disdistinguished customers of ours, who knew what a good article was when they saw it, and were not to be imposed on by counterfeits. Since their time," added Seedling, "while the stock of genuine wares has diminished, the demand has increased to such a degree as to tempt the cupidity of some of my countrymen who are more inventive than honest; and the result is that several fairy firms in this city, and elsewhere in Faeryland, have made large fortunes by the manufacture and sale of rubbish, a thousand pounds worth of which would not produce a good stanza or a tolerable sentence."

Upon this I remarked that a reform of fairy morality would be very important to the interests of literature, and I hoped King Oberon would issue some edict to restrain the rogueries of his subjects. Seedling laughed, and replied that his Majesty was not very likely to fetter one of the most lucrative branches of commerce in his dominions. "Your best remedy," added he, "is either to improve the taste of your writers, or your readers; if your writers had any discrimination, they would not take our counterfeits off our hands; and if their readers had any judgment, they would buy very few of the books that are manufactured from the materials sold by Messrs. Spangle and Pippin, or even from those which I sell myself."

Rhymes are sold at this fair made up in little bundles like matches, cut and dry, warranted to jingle in any climate, and ready for immediate use. I bought a few bundles merely as curiosities. One was a bunch of "blisses, kisses, misses, and abysses;" another was a packet of "doves, loves, and gloves;" and a third, which cost a fraction more than the others because the rhymes were double, consisted of "gleamings, beamings, streamings, dreamings, and seemings, &c."

Seeing a booth on the point of

1856.] The Great Fair of Oberonopolis and Frauds of the Fairies.

being closed, though containing an immense supply of goods in the emblem line, I asked the cause of the impending crash, and was told that the booth belonged to a fairy house which had during the war carried on a vast business in eagles, tridents, British lions, trumps of discord, thunderbolts, &c. ; but the peace had taken them by surprise; not only were they left with a glut of poetical artillery on their little hands, but more than one poet, who, (reckoning on a scale of victories commensurate with the renown of England and the zeal of her people) had made imprudent investments in warlike imagery, had unceremoniously returned their superfluous thunderbolts and spare tridents, and thus reduced the unfortunate fairy firm to bankruptcy.

Over another booth in the same declining business, I saw inscribed in huge letters, nearly the tenth of an inch long, "Tremendous Sacrifice:" and you could there have had lions and eagles enough for an Iliad, almost for the trouble of carrying them off. Bavius made a considerable purchase with a view to the possible contingency of an American war.

On the other hand the little merchants in the Peace-Emblem line were full of business and full of glee. Large orders were arriving every moment for doves, lambs, olivebranches, cornu-copias, sickles made out of old swords, and flasks of fairy oil to pour upon the troubled waters. I saw many bales of these commodities lying packed up, directed to several minor minstrels of the day; so that a deluge may soon be expected of odes to Peace and stanzas to Astræa Redux. The bales, by the bye, had in general a very heavy odour, proceeding (as I ascertained) from the flasks of oil I have just mentioned, which was evidently rancid; and no wonder, since the most of it was what remained on hand after the peace of 1815, and probably was not very fresh upon that occasion.

I was pleased with the alacrity of the fairy artificers in taking hints from all quarters for the production of anything new in the emblematic line. In the booth of Hark and Spark I was struck by two very ingenious novelties; one was an eagle with an olive-branch in his beak, and the other was a dove bearing a thunder

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bolt. Spark informed me that they had taken the idea of the eagle and olive-branch from the whimsical employment of the quill of the imperial bird to sign the treaty of Paris; and Hark added that it was only fair the dove should take the eagle's office, since the eagle had usurped that of the dove.

In another part of the fair I saw a trade carried on, which afforded a multiplication of Artemisias, Corinnas, clear explanation of the recent rapid and Rosa-Matildas in every branch department, in which several sections of literature. This was the hosiery stockings of the peculiar colour of were devoted exclusively to the sale of Minerva's eyes. I asked the price of the bluest; it was such a mere trifle that I could only wonder there was a lady anywhere to be met with, unprovided with at least one pair. You may guess how great a crowd of ambitious maids and matrons surrounded a booth so attractive to the sex as this. I saw Azurina there, Studiosa Brunetta, and Clara Cærulea, all so intent upon this one article of dress as to neglect almost every other. Azurina's shoe-strings were dangling about her heels; Cærulea looked an impersonation of one of her own novels after six months' wear and tear of a circulating library; and it seemed to me that Brunetta might have been laying out her money more properly at one of the booths where soaps and cosmetics of all kinds were exposed for sale.

I have already mentioned the inexhaustible supply of air of all degrees of fineness in Faeryland; they not only build with it, but use it in the and pretty things. A department in fabrication of a thousand ingenious the fair was assigned to air manufactures. I saw exhibited judicial wigs made of air for aspiring barristers; air-mitres for sanguine country clergymen; air-frigates for veteran lieutenants in the navy; and the most charmexquisite stuff for young ladies begining wedding dresses made of the same ning to dream of settlements for life. Under a gas-case, also, I observed a regalia, wrought of very fine air, few diadems, sceptres, and other indeed, but rather dim, as it appeared to me; upon enquiry I found the articles had been made expressly for the wandering princes of the House

of Bourbon; but the manufacturer, to prove his impartiality, exhibited simultaneously a cap of liberty for modern French wear, made of the self-same vapoury material, the very thinnest that ever passed through an air-loom. I was assured and have reason to believe that this is the only cap of the kind worn at present by our fanciful French neighbours.

The Bubble booth, in the same quarter, was one of the most attractive. There I saw bubbles of all sizes, forms, and colours, for there is air in Faeryland of every tint, and the great art of bubble-making struck me to consist in dexterously mingling sober colours with brilliant ones, so as to fascinate the grave as well as the gay, and impose on the solemnest greybeard as well as on the most sanguine young enthusiast. bubbles that seemed most attractive, judging by the crowds that stood admiring them, were in the form of Railway Companies and Provincial Banks. But there were not a few political and religious bubbles also, which I deliberately abstain from describing, lest I should be suspected of being a fairy-agent, and indirectly puffing their most objectionable wares.

The

Often as I had heard of poetic licences, it was now for the first time I discovered where and by whom they were granted. Observing a mob of odd-featured people of both sexes, their eyes rolling about in a frenzied manner, their attire loose and neglected, and many of them looking as if dinners were not matters of routine in their daily lives;-observing them, I say, flocking into a place like an office, and coming out of it again with papers in their hands like writs or warrants, I enquired what all this meant, and was told that this was the Poetic-Licence-Office, and that the gentlemen and ladies going in and out were poets and poetesses from every

part of the world, (numbers from the United States) who had come to Faeryland to provide themselves with instruments so important in their vocation. King Oberon must make a handsome revenue in this way, as handsome perhaps as the Popes sometimes make by the sale of indulgences, to which indeed these licences to commit all sorts of poetical crimes bear a strong family resemblance. Unfortunately, too, the fees payable are so ridiculously small, as to place these dangerous privileges within the reach of the poorest creatures that ever stationed themselves on the Muses' Hill to beg an obolus from a passing bookseller, or at the door of Genius to catch the crumbs that fall from his rich table.

Nor (to make the matter worse) is there any power of revocation exercised. No matter how execrably the privilege may be abused, it continues in full force; the only check consisting in the liberty which the public happily enjoys of discouraging versemongers and song-writers by steadily refusing to read them; just as we get rid of another member of the same fraternity, the organ-grinder, from before our doors, by firmly declining to give him a doit.

The most fascinating booth of the next department was that of Messrs. Spy and Pry, the celebrated fairy opticians; inventors and patentees, among other things, of the admirable Rosy Spectacles; an instrument not only highly curious, but eminently beneficial to the mental vision even more than to the physical; and confidently recommended for its success in curing one of the most unpleasant maladies to which the mind's eye is subject. The properties and uses, however, of these spectacles will be more suitably treated of in a short separate paper which I propose to devote to them.

MOONLIGHT.

1.

It was a satyr sung under a vine,

Shaking the grapes in the light of the moon ; Wet was his beard with a rare juicy wine.

Hark to the cymbal clash! Hark to its tune!

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