indeed, it is one of the chief elements of their beauty, so different from the elves, "the eighteen-inch militia" of other lands. When Bottom finds his way to the bower of Titania, the lovesick fairy queen commands her various spirits to wait on him. One of them, Cobweb (the name shows how well he was acquainted with the wiles of the enemies of the hive), was ordered to bring him a honey-bag. The weaver tells him, "Good Monsieur, have a care the honey-bag break not; I "would be loath to have you overflown with a honey-bag, Signior." In the account of the quarrel between Titania and Oberon, we find

That all their elves, for fear,

Creep into acorn cups, and hide them there.

Again, Titania tells her love

I have a venturous fairy that shall seek

The squirrel's hoard, and fetch thee new nuts.+

It was a venturous task, evidently more than an ordinary feat for a fairy. But in every passage we shall find what tiny people they are. The first individual spirit I shall mention is Ariel, the "dainty Ariel," the delicate spirit who obeys the commands of a human master, in gratitude for his deliverance from the sorceries of the vile witch Sycorax. He has power over the winds and the breezes, even over the forked bolt of heaven and over the stormy seas, as he

says

I boarded the king's ship; now on the beak,
Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin,
I flamed amazement: Sometimes, I'd divide,

And burn in many places; on the topmast,

The yards, and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly,
Then meet, and join: Jove's lightnings, the precursors

O' the dreadful thunder-claps, more momentary

And sight-outrunning were not.

These various tasks form a curious contrast to the song in

• Midsummer-Night's Dream, Act ii, Scene 1. Tempest, Act i, Scene 2.

+ Ibid, Act iv, Scene 1.

F

which he describes his haunts and occupations. From the latter we should suppose he was no larger than a hummingbird.

Where the bee sucks, there suck I;

In a cowslip's bell I lie :

There I couch when owls do cry.

On the bat's back I do fly,

After summer merrily:

Merrily, merrily, shall I live now,

Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.*

Another of Shakspeare's spirits is Queen Mab, the inspirer of dreams. The description occurs in Romeo and Juliet; and it is curious that in that love tale of Verona, he brings in a creation of the woody glades of Warwickshire-an Italian courtier relating an English legend. She is said to

Gallop night by night

Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love :

O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees:
O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream;
And sometimes comes she with a tithe-pig's tail,
Tickling a parson's nose as 'a lies asleep,
Then dreams he of another benefice.+

But the lines describing the equipage of this queen of dreams are by far the most beautiful part of this passage :

She comes

In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies

Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep :

Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs;
The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;

The traces, of the smallest spider's web;

The collars, of the moonshine's watery beams :

Her whip, of cricket's bone: the lash, of film :
Her waggoner, a small grey-coated gnat,

Not half so big as a round little worm
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid:
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut,
Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub,
Time out of mind the fairies' coach-makers.

Tempest, Act v, Scene 1.

Romeo and Juliet, Act i, Scene 4.

+ Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 4.

But one of the most important members of the fairy world is the merry spirit Puck, Oberon's henchman, to whose mischievous pranks all the misadventures of English rustic life are attributed. I presume he has faded away before increasing population and improved agriculture, and that almost all that remains of him is to be found in Shakspeare's verses.

Fairy

Puck

You are that shrewd and knavish sprite,
Call'd Robin Goodfellow: are you not he,
That frights the maidens of the villagery;

Skim milk; and sometimes labour in the quern,
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;
And sometimes make the drink to bear no barm;
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck,
You do their work, and they shall have good luck :
Are you not he?

Thou speak'st 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 to a silly foal:
And sometime 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 wither'd dew-lap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometimes for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
Then slip I from her, and 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 sneeze, and swear
A merrier hour was never wasted there.*

Milton, in L'Allegro, devotes a few lines to fairy land, in which he makes the goblin far more prominent than the rest

:

of the tribe. The passage is as follows:

With stories told of many a feat,
How faery Mab the junkets eat;

She was pinch'd and pull'd, she sed;

And he, by friar's lantern led,

Tells how the drudging Goblin swet,

To earn his cream-bowl duly set,
When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,

• Midsummer-Night's Dream, Act ii, Scene 1.

His shadowy flail hath thresh'd the corn,
That ten day-labourers could not end;
Then lies him down the lubbar fiend,
And stretch'd out all the chimney's length,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength;

And crop-full out of doors he flings,
Ere the first cock his matin rings.

There is nothing said about Puck's size; still we may infer it was much greater than that of the rest of the fairies. But Titania, the fairy queen, is the masterpiece of Shakspeare's poem; everything around her is ethereal and graceful, except the weaver Bottom, on whom the wicked spirit Puck had played the greatest of his pranks, and who is introduced very much for sake of contrast. Nothing can be more beautiful than the account of Titania's bower

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.+

A band of small elves defend their sleeping mistress, and keep away the more odious inhabitants of the forest, singing this lullaby

You spotted snakes, with double tongue,

Thorny hedge-hogs, be not seen?
Newts, and blind-worms, do no wrong;
Come not near our fairy queen :

Weaving spiders, come not here;

Hence, you long-legg'd spinners, hence;

Beetles black, approach not near;

Worm, nor snail, do no offence.

The fairy dance, the fairy song, take up a portion of the night, but not the whole of it. They have certain duties to perform-slight, indeed, and adapted to their tiny form and

• Milton's L'Allegro.

+ Midsummer-Night's Dream, Act ii, Scene 2.

Midsummer Night's Dream, Act ii, Scene 3.

woodland dwelling. The fairy queen disperses her spirits on various errands of fairy economy.

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.

When Bottom, "the shallowest thick-skin of that barren "set," is transformed and led into the bower of the fairy queen, she crowns the hairy temples of her love

With coronet of fresh and fragrant flowers,

and summons all her band to minister to his wants.

Be kind and courteous to this gentleman;
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.+

Here, and indeed in all the passages I shall quote, we have the fairies mingled with and decking themselves with the most beautiful gems of the natural world. Another spirit, perhaps one of the more important ones, gives this account of his moonlight labours :

Over hill, over dale,

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

Thorough flood, thorough fire,
I do wander every where,
Swifter than the moones sphere;
And I serve the fairy queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green :
The cowslips tall her pensioners be;

• Midsummer-Night's Dream, Act ii, Scene 3..

+ Ibid, Act iii, Scene 1.