Up ftairs we nimbly creep, Each we pinch till loud fhe cries, But if the house be swept, We prayse the household maid, Every night before we go, We drop a tefter in her shoe. Indeed all the English poets represent neatnefs as perfectly necessary to fecure the favour or invite the refidence of fairies. We are informed by Puck, in the Midfummer Night's Dream, ac v. I am fent with broom before, To fweep the dust behind the door. Note (m) p. 16.-Those who wish to have the most fanciful picture of Fairies, in their least and most tiny state, should read the Nymphidia of Drayton, or, as Bishop Warburton calls him, " one Michael Drayton."—" It will be apparent to him (fays S. Johnson) that shall compare Drayton's poem with the Midsummer Night's Dream, that either one of the poets copied the other, or, as I rather believe, that there was some system of the fairy empire generally received, which they both represented as accurately as they could. Whether Drayton or Shakespeare wrote first, I cannot discover." When any thing appears in Shakespeare and a contemporary writer, and it is required who wrote first, it may generally, as appears from his commentators, be given against Shakespeare, who might well have faid, as Pope has done in his preface," I fairly confess I have served myself all I could by reading." It has been proved, however, by the editor of the Canterbury Tales, that the Nymphidia was written after the Midsummer Night's Dream. For in the poem of Drayton, Don Quixote is mentioned; now the work of Cervantes was not published till 1605, whereas we have an edition of the Midsummer Night's Dream in 1600. In the Nymphidia there is an account given of an assignation between Queen Mab and Pigwiggen, a favourite fairy. The poet then defcribes the rage and jealoufy of Oberon, who, in his endeavours to discover them, encounters several unfortunate accidents. At last he meets with Puck, whom he fends to trace the queen, but who is still more unlucky than his master, principally owing to the arts of a fairy called Nymphidia. At last Pigwiggen offers, by duel, to defend the honour of his queen; a combat enfues between him and Oberon, which is however made up, and the whole forgotten, by each getting a draught of the water of Lethe. Such is the outline of the piece, the detail of which is very sportive; the agitation of Oberon, his adventures, and the pranks he played, are whimfically amufing. He next upon a glow-worm light, And furiously doth her affail, For carrying fire in her tail; He thrash'd her rough coat with a flail ; Oh! quoth the glow-worm, hold thy hand, Thou puissant king of fairy land, Thy mighty ftrokes who may withstand, Together then herself doth roll, Which vext away the fairy, A new adventure him betides; And poft thereon away he rides, Which with his hafte doth stumble, And came full over on her fnout, Her heels fo threw the dirt about, For fhe by no means could get out, But over him doth tumble. During all thefe misfortunes of poor Oberon, The Queen, bound with love's powerful charm, Sat with Pigwiggen arm in arm ; Her merry maids that thought no harm, About the room were skipping: A humble bee their minstrel play'd, Upon his hautboy---every maid Fit for this revel was array'd, The hornpipe neatly tripping. These things are very trivial, but many they amuse; and indeed no objection is in general more filly than that of complaining, that one waftes his attention on a frivolous fubject, fince there are a fufficient number of writers for every variety of compofition. The Abbé Winckelman obferves, that among the Greeks every thing perfect in its kind was esteemed, whatever that kind might be-" On estima tonjours ce qui etoit parfait dans fon genre quelque fût ce genre”—And attributes to this much of the fuperiority of that wonderful people. Nothing is in itself mean or little in nature or in art; and the true philofopher views, with almost equal intereft, Maupertuis journeying to Lapland to determine the figure of the earth, and Spallanzani going to the lakes of Comacchio to investigate the propagation of eels. With regard to the fictions of poetry in particular, the following admirable remarks are made by Lord Bacon.---" As the active world is inferior to the rational foul, fo poetry gives to mankind what history denies, and in fome measure fatisfies the mind with fhadows when it cannot enjoy the fubftance, For, upon a narrow inspection, poetry ftrongly fhews that a greater variety of things, a more perfect order, a more beautiful variety, is pleafing to the mind, than can any where be found in nature. And as real history gives us not the fuccefs of things according to the deferts of vice and virtue, poetry corrects it, and presents us with the fates and fortunes of perfons rewarded or punished according to merit. And as real history disgusts us with a familiar and conftant fimilitude of things, poetry relieves us by unexpected turns and changes; and thus not only delights, but inculcates morality and nobleness of foul: Whence it may justly be esteemed of a divine nature, as it raises the mind, by accommodating the images of things to our defires; and, not like history and reason, subjecting the mind to things."- -De Augm. Scient. lib. ii. p. 13. Fontenelle feems to have had his eye on the foregoing noble paffage, when he wrote the following verses. Souvent en s'attachant à des Fantômes vaines, K NOTES NOTES ΤΟ DISSERTATION II, NOTE (a) p. 20.-Mr Horne Tooke (Diversions of Purley, 8va. 242.) fays: "And here it may be proper to observe, that Gawin Douglas' language, though written about a century after, muft yet be esteemed more ancient than Chaucer's; even at this day, the prefent English fpeech in Scotland is, in many respects, more ancient than that spoken in England so far back as the reign of Queen Elizabeth." So Mr Cafaubon (De vet. Ling. Ang.) says of his time: "Scotica lingua Anglica hodierna purior :" where, by purior, he means nearer to the AngloSaxon. So G. Hickes, in his Anglo-Saxon Grammar, c. 3. fays, "Scoti in multis Saxonizantes." There are few perfons in the prefent age to whom philosophy is fo much indebted as to H. Tooke, who has swept away a vast mass of trash, and established firm foundations on which to build the theory of language. Quæ toties animos veterum torfere Sophorum, Halley. |