nothing is insinuated of their size. Milton seems to have been upon the prowl here for his "Forest Side." In "A Midsummer-Night's Dream," a fairy addresses Bottom, the weaver

"Hail, mortal, hail!

which sufficiently shows she was not so herself. Puck, or Robin Good-fellow, in the same play, calls Oberon

"King of shadows,"

and in the old song just mentioned—

"The king of ghosts and shadows;"

and this mighty monarch asserts of himself, and his subjects

"But we are SPIRITS of another sort."

The fairies, as we already see, were male and female; but it is not equally clear that they procreated children.

Their government was monarchical, and Oberon, the king of Fairyland, must have been a sovereign of very extensive territory. The name of his queen was Titania. Both are mentioned by Shakespeare, being personages of no little importance in the above play, where they in an ill-humour thus encounter

"Obe. Ill met by moonlight, proud TITANIA.

Tita. What, jealous OBERON? Fairy, skip hence;
I have forsworn his bed and company.'

That the name [OBERON] was not the invention of our great dramatist is sufficiently proved. The allegorical Spenser gives it to King Henry the Eighth. Robert Greene was the author of a play entitled "The Scottishe History of James the fourthe,

intermixed with a pleasant comedie presented by

Oberon, king of the fairies."

He is, likewise, a

character in the old French romances of "Huon de Bourdeaux" and "Ogier le Danois," and there even seems to be one upon his own exploits, "Roman d'Auberon." What authority, however, Shakespeare had for the name TITANIA it does not appear, nor is she so called by any other writer. He himself, at the same time, as well as many others, gives to the queen of fairies the name of MAB, though no one, except Drayton, mentions her as the wife of OBERON

"O then, I see, Queen MAB hath been with you,
She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the forefinger 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 wat❜ry 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 fairy's coachmakers.

And in this state she gallops night by night,

Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love.
This is that very MAB,

That plats the manes of horses in the night;
And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which, once untangled, much misfortune bodes."

1

Ben Jonson, in his "Entertainment of the Queen and Prince at Althrope," in 1603, describes to come tripping up the lawn a bevy of fairies attending on MAB their queen, who, falling into an artificial ring

1 Romeo and Juliet.

that was there cut in the path, began to dance around."1

In the same masque the queen is thus characterised by a satyr

"This is MAB, the mistress fairy,

That doth nightly rob the dairy,
And can hurt or help the churning
(As she please), without discerning.

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

1 Works, v. 201.

2 Thus, too, Shakespeare, in The Merry Wives of Windsor

"Cricket, to Windsor chimneys shalt thou leap:

Where fires thou find'st unraked, and hearths unswept,

There pinch the maids as blue as bilberry

Our radiant queen hates sluts, and sluttery."

Milton likewise gives her the same name

"With stories told of many a feat,
HOW FAERY MAB the junkets eat."

So, too, Jonson, in the above entertainment

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

And in Milton's Allegro

"She was pincht, and pull'd, she said."

Again, in The Merry Wives

"Where's Pead?-Go you, and where you find a maid,
That, ere she sleep, has thrice her prayers said,

Rein up the organs of her fantasy,

Sleep she as sound as careless infancy;

But those as sleep, and think not on their sins,

Pinch them, arms, legs, backs, shoulders, sides, and shins."

And then leads them from her boroughs,
Home through ponds and water-furrows.
She can start our franklin's daughters,
In their' sleep, with shrieks and laughters,
And on sweet St Anne's night,

Feed them with a promis'd sight,
Some of husbands, some of lovers,

Which an empty dream discovers."

Fairies, they tell you, have frequently been heard and seen, nay, that there are some living who were stolen away by them, and confined seven years. According to the description they give who pretend to have seen them, they are in the shape of men, exceeding little. They are always clad in green, and frequent the woods and fields; when they make cakes (which is a work they have been often heard at), they are very noisy; and when they have done, they are full of mirth and pastime. But generally they dance in moonlight, when mortals are asleep, and not capable of seeing them, as may be observed on the following morn, their dancing-places being very distinguishable. For as they dance hand-inhand, and so make a circle in their dance, so next day there will be seen rings and circles on the grass.1 These circles are thus described by Browne, the author of "Britannia's Pastorals "

"A pleasant meade,

Where fairies often did their measures treade,
Which in the meadow made such circles greene,
As if with garlands it had crowned beene.
Within one of these rounds was to be seene

A hillock rise, where oft the fairie queene

At twy-light sate, and did command her elves,

To pinch those maids that had not swept their shelves :
And further, if by maiden's over-sight,

Within doores water were not brought at night,

1 Bourne's Antiquitates Vulgares, Newcastle, 1725, 8vo,

p. 82.

Or if they spred no table, set no bread,
They should have nips from toe unto the head;
And for the maid that had perform'd each thing,
She in the water-pail bad leave a ring."

The same poet, in his "Shepheard's Pipe," having inserted Hoccleve's tale of "Jonathas," and conceiving a strange, unnatural affection for that stupid fellow, describes him as a great favourite of the fairies, alleging that

"Many times he hath been seene
With the fairies on the greene,
And to them his pipe did sound,
While they danced in a round,
Mickle solace would they make him,
And at midnight often wake him
And convey him from his roome,
To a field of yellow broome;
Or into the medowes, where
Mints perfume the gentle aire,
And where Flora spends her treasure,
There they would begin their measure.
If it chanc'd night's sable shrowds
Muffled Cynthia up in clowds;

Safely home they then would see him,

And from brakes and quagmires free him.”

The fairies were exceedingly diminutive, but it must be confessed we shall not readily find their actual dimensions. They were small enough, however, if we may believe one of Queen Titania's maidsof-honour, to conceal themselves in acorn-shells. Speaking of a difference between the king and queen, she says

"But they do square; that all their elves for fear,
Creep into acorn cups, and hide them there."

They uniformly and constantly wore green vests, unless when they had some reason for changing their dress. Of this circumstance we meet with many proofs. Thus, in "The Merry Wives of Windsor"