“But we are spirits of another sort: I with the morning’s love have oft made sport; And, like a forester, the groves may tread, Even till the eastern gate, all fiery–red, Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams, Turns into yellow gold his salt–green streams.” Compare, likewise, what Robin himself says on this subject in the old song of his exploits. They never ate— “But that it eats our victuals, I should think, Here were a fairy,” says Belarius at the first sight of Imogen, as Fidele. They were humanely attentive to the youthful dead. Thus Guiderius at the funeral of the above lady— “With female fairies will his tomb be haunted.” Or, as in the pathetic dirge of Collins on the same occasion:— “No wither’d witch shall here be seen, No goblins lead their nightly crew; The female fays shall haunt the green, And dress the grave with pearly dew.” This amiable quality is, likewise, thus beautifully alluded to by the same poet:— “By fairy hands their knell is rung, By forms unseen their dirge is sung.” Their employment is thus charmingly represented by Shakespeare, in the address of Prospero:— “Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves; And ye, that on the sands, with printless foot Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him When he comes back; you demi–puppets, that By moonshine do the green–sour ringlets make, Whereof the ewe not bites; and you, whose pastime Is to make midnight mushrooms; that rejoice To hear the solemn curfew.” In _The Midsummer Night’s Dream_, the queen, Titania, being desirous to take a nap, says to her female attendants— “Come, now a roundel, and a fairy song; Then, for the third part of a minute hence; Some to kill cankers in the musk–rosebuds; Some, war with rear–mice for their leathern wings, To make my small elves coats; and some keep back The clamorous owl that nightly hoots, and wonders At our quaint spirits. Sing me now asleep; Then to your offices, and let me rest.” Milton gives a most beautiful and accurate description of the little green–coats of his native soil, than which nothing can be more happily or justly expressed. He had certainly seen them, in this situation, with “the poet’s eye”:— “... Fairie elves, Whose midnight revels, by a forest side Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, Or dreams he sees, while overhead the moon, Sits arbitress, and neerer to the earth Wheels her pale course, they, on thir mirth and dance Intent, with jocond music charm his ear; At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.” The impression they made upon his imagination in early life appears from his “Vacation Exercise,” at the age of nineteen:—