In an exquisite and well-known passage of the Tempest, higher and more awful powers are ascribed to the Elves: Prospero declares that by their aid he has "bedimmed the noon-tide sun;" called forth the winds and thunder; set roaring war "'twixt the green sea and the azured vault;" shaken promontories, and plucked up pines and cedars. He thus invokes them:—

The other dramas of Shakspeare present a few more characteristic traits of the Fairies, which should not be omitted.

King Henry IV. wishes it could be proved,

The old shepherd in the Winter's Tale, when he finds Perdita, exclaims,

It was told me, I should be rich, by the fairies: this is some changeling.

And when his son tells him it is gold that is within the "bearing-cloth," he says,

This is fairy-gold, boy, and 'twill prove so. We are lucky, boy, and to be so still requires nothing but secresy.[400]

In Cymbeline, the innocent Imogen commits herself to sleep with these words:—

And when the two brothers see her in their cave, one cries—

And thinking her to be dead, Guiderius declares—

The Maydes Metamorphosis of Lylie was acted in 1600, the year the oldest edition we possess of the Midsummer Night's Dream was printed. In Act II. of this piece, Mopso, Joculo, and Frisio are on the stage, and "Enter the Fairies singing and dancing."

Jo. What mawmets are these?

Fris. O they be the faieries that haunt these woods.

Mop. O we shall be pinched most cruelly!

1st Fai. Will you have any music, sir?

2d Fai. Will you have any fine music?

3d Fai. Most dainty music?

Mop. We must set a face on it now; there is no flying.
No, sir, we very much thank you.

1st Fai. O but you shall, sir.

Fris. No, I pray you, save your labour.

2d Fai. O, sir! it shall not cost you a penny.

Jo. Where be your fiddles?

3d Fai. You shall have most dainty instruments, sir?

Mop. I pray you, what might I call you?

1st Fai. My name is Penny.

Mop. I am sorry I cannot purse you.

Fris. I pray you, sir, what might I call you?

2d Fai. My name is Cricket.

Fris. I would I were a chimney for your sake.

Jo. I pray you, you pretty little fellow, what's your name?

3d Fai. My name is little little Prick.

Jo. Little little Prick? O you are a dangerous faierie!
I care not whose hand I were in, so I were out of yours.

1st Fai. I do come about the coppes.
Leaping upon flowers' toppes;
Then I get upon a fly,
She carries me about the sky,
And trip and go.

2d Fai.  When a dew-drop falleth down,
And doth light upon my crown.
Then I shake my head and skip,
And about I trip.

3d Fai.  When I feel a girl asleep,
Underneath her frock I peep,
There to sport, and there I play,
Then I bite her like a flea,
And about I skip.

Jo.      I thought where I should have you.

1st Fai. Will't please you dance, sir?

Jo.      Indeed, sir, I cannot handle my legs.

2d Fai.  O you must needs dance and sing,
Which if you refuse to do,
We will pinch you black and blue;
And about we go.

They all dance in a ring, and sing as followeth:—

The next poet, in point of time, who employs the Fairies, is worthy, long-slandered, and maligned Ben Jonson. His beautiful entertainment of the Satyr was presented in 1603, to Anne, queen of James I. and prince Henry, at Althorpe, the seat of Lord Spenser, on their way from Edinburgh to London. As the queen and prince entered the park, a Satyr came forth from a "little spinet" or copse, and having gazed the "Queen and the Prince in the face" with admiration, again retired into the thicket; then "there came tripping up the lawn a bevy of Fairies attending on Mab, their queen, who, falling into an artificial ring, began to dance a round while their mistress spake as followeth:"

Mab. Hail and welcome, worthiest queen!
Joy had never perfect been,
To the nymphs that haunt this green,
Had they not this evening seen.
Now they print it on the ground
With their feet, in figures round;
Marks that will be ever found
To remember this glad stound.

Satyr (peeping out of the bush).
Trust her not, you bonnibell,
She will forty leasings tell;
I do know her pranks right well.

Mab. Satyr, we must have a spell,
For your tongue it runs too fleet.

Sat. Not so nimbly as your feet,
When about the cream-bowls sweet
You and all your elves do meet.

(Here he came hopping forth, and mixing himself with the Fairies, skipped in, out, and about their circle, while they made many offers to catch him.)

This is Mab, the mistress Fairy,
That doth nightly rob the dairy;
And can hurt or help the churning
As she please, without discerning.

1st Fai. Pug, you will anon take warning.

Sat. She that pinches country wenches,
If they rub not clean their benches,
And, with sharper nail, remembers
When they rake not up their embers;
But if so they chance to feast her,
In a shoe she drops a tester.

2d Fai. Shall we strip the skipping jester?

Sat. This is she that empties cradles,
Takes out children, puts in ladles;
Trains forth midwives in their slumber,
With a sieve the holes to number,
And then leads them from her burrows,
Home through ponds and water-furrows.[401]

1st Fai. Shall not all this mocking stir us?

Sat. She can start our Franklin's daughters
In her sleep with shouts and laughters;
And on sweet St. Anna's[402] night
Feed them with a promised sight,
Some of husbands, some of lovers,
Which an empty dream discovers.

1st Fai. Satyr, vengeance near you hovers.

At length Mab is provoked, and she cries out,

Fairies, pinch him black and blue.
Now you have him make him rue.

Sat. O hold, mistress Mab, I sue!

Mab, when about to retire, bestows a jewel on the Queen, and concludes with,

The splendid Masque of Oberon, presented in 1610, introduces the Fays in union with the Satyrs, Sylvans, and the rural deities of classic antiquity; but the Fay is here, as one of them says, not

it is Oberon, the prince of Fairy-land, who, at the crowing of the cock, advances in a magnificent chariot drawn by white bears, attended by Knights and Fays. As the car advances, the Satyrs begin to leap and jump, and a Sylvan thus speaks:—

Another Sylvan says,

In the Sad Shepherd, Alken says,

The Masque of Love Restored presents us "Robin Good-fellow, he that sweeps the hearth and the house clean, riddles for the country maids, and does all their other drudgery, while they are at hot-cockles," and he appears therefore with his broom and his canles.

In Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess we read of

And in the Little French Lawyer (iii. 1), one says, "You walk like Robin Goodfellow all the house over, and every man afraid of you."

In Randolph's Pastoral of Amyntas, or the Impossible Dowry, a "knavish boy," called Dorylas, makes a fool of a "fantastique sheapherd," Jocastus, by pretending to be Oberon, king of Fairy. In Act i., Scene 3, Jocastus' brother, Mopsus, "a foolish augur," thus addresses him:—

Thestylis enters, and while she and Mopsus converse, Jocastus muses. At length he exclaims,

Act i.—Scene 6.

Act iii.—Scene 2.

Dorylas says,

Act iii.—Scene 4.

Dorylas with a bevy of Fairies.

Jocastus and his man Bromius come upon the Elves while plundering the orchard: the latter is for employing his cudgel on the occasion, but Jocastus is overwhelmed by the condescension of the princely Oberon in coming to his orchard, when

The Elves, by his master's permission, pinch Bromius, singing,

Finally, when the coast is clear, Oberon cries,

In the old play of Fuimus Troes are the following lines:[404]

The pastoral poets also employed the Fairy Mythology. Had they used it exclusively, giving up the Nymphs, Satyrs, and all the rural rout of antiquity, and joined with it faithful pictures of the scenery England then presented, with just delineations of the manners and character of the peasantry, the pastoral poetry of that age would have been as unrivalled as its drama. But a blind admiration of classic models, and a fondness for allegory, were the besetting sins of the poets. They have, however, left a few gems in this way.

Britannia's Pastorals furnish the following passages:[405]

In his Shepherd's Pipe, also, Brown thus speaks of the Fairies:—

But Drayton is the poet after Shakespeare for whom the Fairies had the greatest attractions. Even in the Polyolbion he does not neglect them. In Song xxi., Ringdale, in Cambridgeshire, says,

And in Song iv., he had spoken of

Nymphidia is a delicious piece of airy and fanciful invention. The description of Oberon's palace in the air, Mab's amours with the gentle Pigwiggin, the mad freaks of the jealous Oberon, the pygmy Orlando, the mutual artifices of Puck and the Fairy maids of honour, Hop, Mop, Pip, Trip, and Co., and the furious combat of Oberon and the doughty Pigwiggin, mounted on their earwig chargers—present altogether an unequalled fancy-piece, set in the very best and most appropriate frame of metre.

It contains, moreover, several traits of traditionary Fairy lore, such as in these lines:—

And in these:—

In his Poet's Elysium there is some beautiful Fairy poetry, which we do not recollect to have seen noticed any where. This work is divided into ten Nymphals, or pastoral dialogues. The Poet's Elysium is, we are told, a paradise upon earth, inhabited by Poets, Nymphs, and the Muses.

In the eighth Nymphal,

The dialogue commences between the nymphs Mertilla and Claia:—

The nymphs now proceed to describe the bridal array of Tita: her jewels are to be dew-drops; her head-dress the "yellows in the full-blown rose;" her gown

her train the "cast slough of a snake;" her canopy composed of "moons from the peacock's tail," and "feathers from the pheasant's head;"

and it shall be

Her buskins of the "dainty shell" of the lady-cow. The musicians are to be the nightingale, lark, thrush, and other songsters of the grove.

Finally, the bride-bed is to be of roses; the curtains, tester, and all, of the "flower imperial;" the fringe hung with harebells; the pillows of lilies, "with down stuft of the butterfly;"

In Nymphal iii.,

And in Nymphal vi. the forester says,

Herrick is generally regarded as the Fairy-poet, par excellence; but, in our opinion, without sufficient reason, for Drayton's Fairy pieces are much superior to his. Indeed Herrick's Fairy-poetry is by no means his best; and we doubt if he has anything to exceed in that way, or perhaps equal, the light and fanciful King Oberon's Apparel of Smith.[409]

Milton disdained not to sing

Regardless of Mr. Gifford's sneer at "those who may undertake the unprofitable drudgery of tracing out the property of every word, and phrase, and idea in Milton,"[411] we will venture to trace a little here, and beg the reader to compare this passage with one quoted above from Harsenet, and to say if the resemblance be accidental. The truth is, Milton, reared in London, probably knew the popular superstitions chiefly or altogether from books; and almost every idea in this passage may be found in books that he must have read.

In the hands of Dryden the Elves of Chaucer lose their indefiniteness. In the opening of the Wife of Bath her Tale,