2. I want to ken, Queen Mab, if I may gae.---" As to the Fairy Queen (fays Warton, Obfervations on Spenfer, vol. i. p. 59.) considered apart from the race of fairies, the notion of fuch an imaginary perfonage was very common. Chaucer, in his rime of Sir Topaz, mentions her, to gether with fairy land.

In the old dayis of the king Arthure,

Of which the Bretons fpeken great honour,

All was this lond fulfill'd of Fayry:

The Elf Quene, with her jolly company,
Daunfid full oft in many a grene mede :
This was the old opinion as I rede.

3. Kaoru that of creatures there's a gradual seale.—It is evident that Mr Pope must have heard something of this conversation, from the circumftance of his proving, in his famous Effay, that there must in the fcale of being be fuch a creature as man, in the fame manner and almost in the fame words as Queen Mab uses in order to prove that there must be fairies.

Of fyftems poffible, if it's confest,

That wisdom infinite must form the best,
Where all muft full, or not coherent be,

And all that rises, rife in just degree;

Then in the scale of reafoning life, it's plain,

There must be somewhere fuch a rank as man.

Effay on Man, i. 48.

Bishop Warburton's commentary on this paffage is---" That as the beft fyftem cannot but be fuch a one as hath no inconnected void, fuch a one in which there is a perfect coherence and gradual fubordination in all its parts, there muft needs be, in fome part or other of the scale of life and fenfe, fuch a creature as man; which reduces the difpute to this abfurd question, Whether has God placed him wrong."

In the above paffage, instead of the word man substitute a fairy, and we shall have the testimony of one of the greatest poets, and one of the greatest prelates of England, allowing the existence of fairies.

Warburton, always too deep for his hearers, went on refining. A critic of his caft would, on the paffage of Burns about people going ftirks, viz. large calves, to college, affirm that the poet meant to pun on the word Oxford, Vadum bovum.

As learned commentators view,

In Homer, what he never knew.

4. Our dwelling's in the moon, &c.—Several of the ancient philosophers believed the moon was inhabited; and Plutarch tells us of a lion which fell from it to Peloponefus. It has been a favourite fubject of romantic defcription by poets, and by astronomical romancers, as Kircher, Cyrano de Bergerac, and others. Ariofto tells us, in his 34th

Milton in his third book, 'talking of the Paradife of Fools, fays that Vanities,

Wander here;

Not in the neighbouring moon as fome have dream'd,
Thofe argent fields more likely habitants,

Translated faints, or middle fpirits hold,

Betwixt the angelical and human kind.

-iii. 462.

There is a story of the celebrated Bishop Wilkins, which has at last got into the jest book, but which is still not a bad story. The Bishop having afferted the poffibility of a journey to the moon, the Dutchefs of Newcastle faid she would be happy to go, if she knew a place to

bait at. Why, fays the Bishop, your ladyship need be at no loss, fince you have built fo many castles in the air that you may lodge at one of them every night.

In the original sketch of the FALLS of CLYDE, formed at fixteen or feventeen years of age, the fourth act was laid in the moon, of whose scenes there are several descriptions; however I thought it would be as well to keep to unity of place.

5. A new-born infant you were fole away.-Warton, in his notes on Milton's leffer poems, p. 312, fays: "It is not yet fatisfactorily decided what Shakespeare means by calling Mab the fairies midwife, Romeo and Juliet, act 1. fc. 4. Dr Warburton would read the Fancy's Midwife, for he argues it cannot be understood that the performed the office of midwife to the fairies. Mr Steevens much more plausibly fuppofes her to be called the fairies midwife, "because it was her department to deliver the fancies of fleeping men of their dreams." But I apprehend, and with no violence of interpretation, that the poet means the midwife among the fairies, because it was her peculiar employment to steal the new-born babe in the night, and to leave another in its place. Johnson, in his entertainment at Altrope, says of Queen Mab,

This is the that empties cradles.

6. Him who gave its laws to Fairy land. This contradicts a remark of the celebrated German poet Mr Wieland, who obferves fomewhere, "The land of the fairies is fituated beyond the confines of nature. It is governed by its own laws; or, to speak more accurately, like certain republics, which I do not chufe to name, it has no laws at all.”

6. Deep in our fairy foreft there's a well-In Fletcher's Faithful Shepberdefs, Perigot defcribes to Amoret a foreft, where he wishes her to meet him to plight their troths.

For to that holy well is confecrate,

A virtuous well; about whofe flowery banks
The nimble-footed fairies dance their rounds,
By the pale moonshine; dipping oftentimes
Their stolen children, so as to make them free
From dying flesh, and dull mortality.—A 1.

To work like a Turk, is a common country saying; originating either for the fake of the metre, or perhaps from irony. We are told by Bofwell, that Johnson, three or four days before his death, lamented much his inability to read during his hours of restlessness: “ I used formerly, (he added) when fleepless in bed, to read like a Turk.”— The faying might however have been introduced when that people were exceedingly active. To fight like a Turk feems to have been the original expreffion.

8. D'ye think that our Bill-blo.---Blo is an ufual addition in Scotland to the word bill (a bull), and is very fuccessfully called by the boys fometimes to put that furly gentleman into bad humour."Haud inexpertus loquor"---Or, to use the words of the pious neas,

Quaeque ipfe miferrima vidi,

Et quorum pars magna fui.

9. SCENE III.---When Love gaed frae my heart away.---These two ftanzas are part of an early translation of Metastasio's Libertà a Nice, into the Scotish dialect.

Quando lo stral spezzai,

(Confeffo il mio roffore)

Spezzar m'intefi il core,
Mi parve di morir;

SCENE I. The gillyflower, the eglantine, an' rofe :
Aboon the cherry blushes, while below

The Spotted ftrawberries luxuriant grow.

In the notes upon one of the verses of the ballad of Clerk Saunders, which pretends to give a description of heaven, saying of women whe die in child-birth,

Their beds are made in the heavens high

Down at the foot of our good Lord's knee;

Well fet about with gillyflowers;

I wot fweet company for to fee.

Mr Scott, the ingenious editor, obferves, That, from whatever fource the popular ideas of heaven are derived, the mention of gillyflowers is not uncommon. Thus in the dead man's fong :