66

Ashamed, however, of the public detection of his falsehood, he meanly omitted it in the next edition, without having a single word to allege in his defence though he had still the confidence to represent it as a misfortune to the commentators of Shakspeare, that so much of their [invaluable] time is obliged [for the sake of money] to be employed in explaining [by absurdity] and contradicting [by falsehood] unfounded conjectures and assertions;" which, in fact, (unfounded if they were, as is by no means true), though he was hardy enough to contradict, he was unable to explain, and did not, in reality, understand, contenting himself with an extract altogether foreign to the purpose, at second hand.

The fact, after all, is so positively proved, that no editor, or commentator, of Shakspeare, present or future, will ever have the folly or impudence to assert "that in Shakspeare's time the notion of fairies dying was generally known."

Ariosto informs us (in Haringtons translation, b. 10, s. 47) that

--"(either auncient folke believ❜d a lie, Or this is true) A FAYRIE CANNOT DIE:"

and, again (b. 43, s. 92) :

"I AM a FAYRIE, and, to make you know,

To be a fayrie what it doth import,

WE CANNOT DYE, how old so ear we grow.

Of paines and harmes of ev'rie other sort

We tast, onelie NO DEATH WE NATURE Ow."

Beaumont and Fletcher, in The faithful shepherdess, describe

"A virtuous well, about whose flow'ry banks
The nimble-footed fairies dance their rounds,
By the pale moon-shine, dipping oftentimes
Their stolen children, so TO MAKE 'EM FREE
FROM DYING FLESH, AND DULL MORTALITY."

Puck, alias Robin Good-fellow, is the most active and extraordinary fellow of a fairy that we anywhere meet with; and it is believed we find him no where but in our own country, and, peradventure also, only in the south. Spenser, it would seem, is the first that alludes to his name of Puck :

"Ne let the Pouke, nor other evill spright,

Ne let Hob-goblins, names whose sense we see not,
Fray us with things that be not*."

"In our childhood," says Reginald Scot, "" our mothers maids have so terrified us with an oughe divell, having hornes on his head, fier in his mouth, and a taile in his breech, eies like a bason, fanges like a dog, clawes like a beare, a skin like a niger, and a voice roaring like a lion, where

* Epithalamium.

by we start, and are afraid when we heare one crie Bough! and they have so fraied us with bull-beggers, spirits, witches, urchens, elves, hags, fairies, satyrs, pans, sylens, Kit with the cansticke, tritons, centaurs, dwarfes, giants, imps, calcars, conjurors, nymphes, changling, Incubus, ROBIN GOOD-FELLOW, the spoorne, the mare, the man in the oke, the hell wain, the fier drake, the puckle*, Tom Thombe, Hob gobblin †, Tom Tumbler, boneles, and such other bugs, that we are afraid of our owne shadowest." "And know you this by the waie," says, "that heretofore Robin Good-fellow, and Hob goblin, were as terrible, and also as credible to the people, as hags and witches be now... And in truth, they that mainteine walking spirits have no reason to denie Robin Good-fellow, upon whom there hath gone as manie, and as credible, tales, as upon witches; saving that it hath not pleased the translators of the bible to call spirits by the name of Robin Good-fellow §."

he

"Your grandams maides," he

66 says, were woont

* Perhaps a typographical error for Pucke.

+ Not, as mr. Tyrwhitt has supposed, Hop goblin, Hob being a well-known diminutive of Robin; and even this learned gentleman seems to have forgotten a still more notorious character of his own time,-Hob in the well.

Discoverie of witchcraft, London, 1584, 4to. p. 153. S P. 131.

to set a boll of milke before Incubus,' and his cousine Robin Good-fellow, for grinding of malt or mustard, and sweeping the house at midnight; and you have also heard that he would chafe exceedingly, if the maid or good-wife of the house, having compassion of his nakednes, laid anie clothes for him, beesides his messe of white bread and milke, which was his standing fee. For in that case he saith, What have we here?

Hemton hamten,

Here will I never more tread nor stampen

Robin is thus characterised, in the Midsummer nights dream, by a female fairy:

"Either I mistake your shape and making quite,

Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Call'd Robin Good-fellow; are you not he
That fright the maidens of the villagery,
Skim milk; and sometimes labour in the quern,
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;
And sometime make the drink to bear ne barm,
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm.
Those that Hob-goblin call you and sweet Puckt,
You do their work, and they shall have good luck."
To these questions Robin thus replies:

"Thou speak'st aright,

I am that merry wanderer of the night.

*Discoverie of witchcraft, p. 85.
+ Puck, in fact.

I jest to Oberon, and make him smile,
When I a fat, and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:
And sometimes lurk I in a gossips bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab;
And, when she drinks, against her lips I bob,
And on her wither'd dewlap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me,
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,
Andrails or' cries*, and falls into a cough,
And then the whole quire hold their hips and lough,

*This is Warburtons reading, which has, surely, more sense than the, apparently, corrupted reading of the old and new editions, "tailor cries," which doctor Johnson, miserably, attempts to defend by asserting, that "the trick of the fairy is represented as producing rather merriment than anger." Had, however, the worthy doctor ever chanced to fall by the removal from under him, of a three-foot sol, it is very doubtful whether he himself would have expressed much pleasure on feeling the pain of the fall, and finding himself the laughing-stock of the whole company. He would have been more ready, like the frogs in the fable, to exclaim "This may be sport to you, but it is death to me." The old woman had reason both to rail and cry, as she would naturally suspect the stool had been plucked from under her just as she was going to sit down; than which there cannot well be a more disagreeable accident, as the incredulous reader who doubts the fact, may be easily convinced of, by trying the experiment.