""Twixt sleep and wake

I do them take,

And on the key-cold floor them throw."

A respectful attention to their wants and inclinations, however, never failed to propitiate their good will, which, as a last act of favour, they displayed by conferring a blessing on the house and its inhabitants. It is with this friendly feeling that Puck proclaims of Theseus' dwelling

"not a mouse

Shall disturb this hallow'd house :

I am sent with broom, before,

To sweep the dust behind the door."

And Oberon commands,

"Through this house give glimmering light,

By the dead and drowsy fire:
Every elf, and fairy sprite,
Hop as light as bird from brier."

"With this field-dew consecrate,
Every fairy take his gait;

And each several chamber bless,

Through this palace with sweet peace:
Ever shall in safety rest,

Nor less important is to be reckoned their attendance on the night of the nuptials of their favourites, for purposes which the poet very perspicuously describes:

*Act V. sc. 2.

"To the best bride-bed will we,.

Which by us shall blessed be;
And the issue there create,
Shall be ever fortunate.

So shall all the couples three
Ever true in loving be:

And the blots of nature's hand
Shall not in their issue stand;
Never mole, hare-lip, nor scar,
Nor mark prodigious, such as are
Despised in nativity,

Shall upon their children be."*

Among other encroachments of the clergy upon the province of spiritual agents, was that of taking into their own hands this charitable deed of the fairies; and, completely to turn the tables on those whose rivals they made themselves the pretext of the priests was, that pious exorcisms were necessary to dissipate the illusions of the very spirits whose actions they emulated! No poet had ever a keener insight into these matters than Chaucer, and he is exquisitely happy in his ridicule of the clergy's absurd and ambitious substitution of themselves in the place of the fairies:

"I speke of many hundred yeres agoe,
But now can no man see non elves mo.
For now the grete Charite and Prayers
Of Limitours and other holy freres,

Act V. sc. 2.

That serchen every lond and every streme,
As thick as motes in the sunne beme."

*

"This maketh that there ben no fairies,
For there as wont to walken was an elfe,
There walketh now the Limitour himself,
And as he goeth in his Limitacioune,
Wymen may now goe safely up and downe,
In every bush and under every tree,

There nis none other Incubus but he."*

To a belief in magic, witchcraft, and the agency of spirits, was always superadded that of the power of charms both to create love, and cause infidelity and hatred. The singular tergiversations of the lovers Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia, and Helena, are all effects of such a power: the love of Titania for Bottom, with his asse's head, is a similar instance, and it was, doubtless, by the same means that the queen had led Theseus

"through the glimmering night,
From Perigenia, whom he ravished;

And made him with fair Æglé break his faith,
With Ariadne and Antiopa." +

The whole circle of poetry does not contain a passage richer in poetical beauties and of sweeter versification, than that wherein Shakspeare describes the power of the heart's-ease

*Wife of Bath's Tale. † Act IV. sc. 1. Act II. sc. 2.

to create love. Elizabeth never received a more

graceful compliment.

"Thou remember'st

Since once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back,
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song,
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
To hear the sea maid's music..

That every time I saw (but thou could'st not)
Flying between the cold moon and the earth
Cupid all arm'd: a certain aim he took
At a fair vestal, throned by the west,

And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow
As it should pierce an hundred thousand hearts.
But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft
Quencht in the chaste beams of the watery moon;
And the imperial vot'ress passed on

In maiden meditation, fancy free.

Yet, mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell;

It fell upon a little western flow'r

Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound,
And maidens call it "Love in Idleness."

Among other mischievous propensities which were attributed to fairies, was that of stealing the unbaptized infants of mortals, and leaving their own progeny in their stead. Before they put a new-born child into the cradle, the Danish women were accustomed to place either there, or over the door, garlick, salt, bread, and also steel, or some cutting instrument made of that metal, as preventives against so great an evil. The child

of a pagan was lawful game for every waggish sprite, and, in a pilfering excursion to the East, Titania found no obstructions to her success from precautions similar to those of the northern matron. She had for her attendant

"A lovely boy, stol'n from an Indian king;
She never had so sweet a changeling:
And jealous Oberon would have the child
Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild:
But she, perforce, withholds the lovely boy,

Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy."

The poet has not left it to this exploit of Titania, nor to the return of Oberon "from farthest steep of Indiat," to proclaim that celerity of motion by which the fairies were distinguished. The king boasts that they

the globe can compass soon, Swifter than the wand'ring moon.”‡

Puck undertakes to

"Put a girdle round about the earth

In forty minutes || ;"

and the following lines seem almost to invest the fairy tribe with the power of ubiquity:

"Over hill, over dale,

Thorough bush, thorough brier,

Act II. sc. 1.

+ Act II. sc. 2.

Act IV. sc. 1.

|| Act II. sc. 2.