Whilst Petruchio, when he is engaged in taming the shrewish Katharina, compares the task he has undertaken to that of the falconer bringing the wild bird into subjection.

My falcon now is sharp, and passing empty;
And, till she stoop, she must not be full-gorg'd,
For then she never looks upon her lure.
Another way I have to man my haggard,

To make her come, and know her keeper's call,
That is, to watch her, as we watch these kites,
That bate, and beat, and will not be obedient.*

In the Second Part of Henry VI, the nobles who have been out hawking, "flying at the brook," coming back quarrelling with each other for their ambitious aims, and the soaring flight of the falcons, and the soaring designs of these proud chieftains are compared together.t

The greenwood was resorted to by others besides the huntsmen and the village maids, and by outlaws in search of shelter; it was there the Athenian lovers oft times went, as Hermia says

And in the wood, where often you and I
Upon faint primrose-beds were wont to lie,
Emptying our bosoms of their counsel sweet;
There my Lysander and myself shall meet.

There too was enacted the quarrel between the two Athenian
maids, the handsome dwarfish Hermia, sharp and witty with
her tongue, and the blooming, graceful, amiable Helena,
" right maid for her cowardice," whose only safety was in
flight, whose early friendship has been so beautifully described
by Shakspeare. 'Tis thus Helena reproaches her companion:-

Is all the counsel that we two have shar'd,
The sisters' vows, the hours that we have spent,
When we have chid the hasty-footed time

For parting us,—O, and is all forgot?

Taming of the Shrew, Act iv, Scene 1. +2 Henry VI, Act ii, Scene 1.

Midsummer-Night's Dream, Act i, Scene 1.

All school-days' friendship, childhood innocence ?
We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,

Have with our neelds created both one flower,
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,
Both warbling of one song, both in one key;
As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds,
Had been incorporate.-So we grew together,
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted;
But yet a union in partition,

Two lovely berries moulded on one stem:

So with two seeming bodies, but one heart.*

But Shakspeare's forest had other more permanent denizens than any I have so far named,—than the mere casual visitors during the gladsome day. As soon as the sun had sunk below the horizon, and the gloom of night had settled over the glades of the woodland, the spirits of the unseen world come forth, some to add to the beauties of the sylvan realm, some to engage in acts of beneficence to man, some in tasks of mirth and merriment, and a few in those of ill-will and spite. Here I come to Shakspeare's fairy land. Out of the legends floating around the greenwood of Warwickshire, he has produced a creation so beautiful, so airy, that I doubt whether anything equal is to be found in the poetry of any other nation. One cannot but compare the beings he has described to a collection of jewels, from their purity, their diminutive size, and their graceful-one might almost say sparkling-movements. If we examine the mythology of Greece and Rome, we shall find nothing at all worthy of being compared with them; without it be "that small infantry "warr'd on by cranes." Indeed, the poet tells us, but he tells us as if it were an after-thought, that the pigmy race, after their destruction by the cranes, were turned into the little people of our woods:

Or if belief to matron tales be due,

Full oft, in the belated shepherd's view,
Their frisking forms, in gentle green array'd,
Gambol secure amid the moonlight glade.

• Midsummer-Night's Dream, Act iii, Scene 2.

Secure, for no alarming cranes molest,
And all their woes in long oblivion rest:
Down the deep vale, and narrow winding way,
They foot it featly, ranged in ringlets gay :
'Tis joy and frolic all, where'er they rove,

And fairy-people is the name they love.*

The wood-nymphs and the water-nymphs, Pan, Silenus, and their tribe, are often gross and corporeal-sometimes indeed, utterly disgusting beings.

The mythology of the Norsemen, born amid the ice-bound coasts and stormy tempests of the northern seas, differs very widely from the spirit-world of the English woods. One part of it converts the shipwright and the smith and the hardy sailor and the savage pirate chief into so many heroes and demigods; and it celebrated their feasts, their drinking and their revelry and their fights on land and on ship-board. Another part relates to the supernatural elves who haunt desolate places and, occasionally, the abodes of man, who form a connecting link between the human race and the world of spirits. It also relates wonderful stories of trolls and monsters and goblins, who sometimes exercise tyranny over man, and who sometimes are subdued by those possessed of magical arts. The legends of Scandinavia contain many stories which may be compared with the Tempest, with Ariel and the other spirits who obey the commands of Prospero; but they contain none which exhibit the exquisite beauty of the fairy land of the Midsummer-Night's Dream. Iceland,-with its marvellous physical formation, calculated to produce unearthly impressions on credulous minds, with its jagged coasts, its volcanic mountains, its plains of lava, and its plains of ice, its boiling fountains, its long night of winter and its long day of summer,-possesses a literature which is, perhaps, richer in the supernatural than that of any other country; but it is

Beattie's Pygmæo-Gerano-Machia.

rude and terrible and ghostly, and cannot fairly be compared with the charming fairy land of Shakspeare's greenwood.

The legends of the Red Indian, though in some respects very different, have in other respects a certain resemblance to the tales of the spirit land of England, because they attribute a spiritual source to the operations of nature, to the winds from the mountains, to the growth of plants, and to many of the arts of life. They connect the every-day life of man with the unseen world around him. Shakspeare ingrafts the beauties of nature on his fairy realm; in a somewhat similar manner Longfellow repeats the legends of the Red Man, which were found

In the bird's-nests of the forest,
In the lodges of the beaver,
In the hoof-prints of the bison,

In the eyry of the eagle!

For instance, we have the beautiful story of the chief who

Prayed and fasted in the forest,

For the profit of the people,
For advantage of the nations;

who then, "by struggle and by labour," overcomes a youth,

Dressed in garments green and yellow,

Plumes of green bent o'er his forehead,

and for his conflict and his conquest is rewarded by the Great Spirit-the Master of Life-with the gift of maize.

Mondamin, the friend of man, Mondamin.

This story is an instance of the manner in which the half civilized man mingles the natural and the supernatural.

There is a certain weird character about the spirit world of North Britain. Warlocks and witches dancing around unearthly lights in the ruined kirk are the types of the superstitions of Scotland; even the Queen of Elfinland, who carried away Thomas the Rhymer, is one of the same ghostly character.

The imaginative, poetical sons of Erin have constructed a spirit world which, with its banshees and phoccas, and spirit horsemen, seems to combine the legends of Scotland with those of the English greenwood.

One of the spirits of Shakspeare's woodland, and one only, is of fearful form-in fact, a ghost condemned to haunt the forest; it is that of Herne the hunter

Sometime a keeper here in Windsor forest,

Doth all the winter time, at still midnight,

Walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns;
And there he blasts the tree, and takes the cattle;

And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain
In a most hideous and dreadful manner.*

One characteristic of the fairy tribe is the marvellous extent of their powers, and the contrast between their ordinary pastimes and the tasks they can perform-the earth, the air, the seas, the tempests and the bolts of heaven, are all controlled by them; and they again are guided by the magician's still more potent art. Prospero thus addresses them:Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves; And ye, that on the sands with printless foot Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him, When he comes back; you demy-puppets, that By moon-shine do the green-sour ringlets make, Whereof the ewe not bites; and you, whose pastime Is to make midnight-mushrooms; that rejoice To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid (Weak masters though you be) I have be-dimm'd The noon-tide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds, And 'twixt the green sea and the azur'd vault Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak With his own bolt: the strong-bas'd promontory Have I made shake; and by the spurs pluck'd up

The pine, and cedar; graves, at my command,

Have wak'd their sleepers; oped, and led them forth
By my so potent art.+

The diminutive size of the fairies is always preserved

• Merry Wives of Windsor, Act iv, Scene 3.

+ Tempest, Act v, Scene 1.