Milton, a prodigious reader of romance, has, likewise, given an apt idea of the ancient fays— “Fairer than famed of old, or fabled since Of fairy damsels met in forest wide, By knights of Logres, and of Liones, Lancelot or Pelleas, or Pellenore.” These ladies, in fact, are by no means unfrequent in those fabulous, it must be confessed, but, at the same time, ingenious and entertaining histories; as, for instance, _Melusine_, or _Merlusine_, the heroine of a very ancient romance in French verse, and who was occasionally turned into a serpent; _Morgan–la–faée_, the reputed half–sister of King Arthur; and _the Lady of the Lake_, so frequently noticed in Sir Thomas Malory’s old history of that monarch. Le Grand is of opinion that what is called Fairy comes to us from the Orientals, and that it is their _génies_ which have produced our _fairies_; a species of nymphs, of an order superior to those women magicians, to whom they nevertheless gave the same name. In Asia, he says, where the women imprisoned in the harems, prove still, beyond the general servitude, a particular slavery, the romancers have imagined the _Peris_, who, flying in the air, come to soften their captivity, and render them happy (_Fabliaux_, 12mo. i. 112). Whether this be so or not, it is certain that we call the _auroræ boreales_, or active clouds, in the night, _perry–dancers_. After all, Sir William Ouseley finds it impossible to give an accurate idea of what the Persian poets designed by a Perie, this aërial being not resembling our fairies. The strongest resemblance he can find is in the description of Milton in _Comus_. The sublime idea which Milton entertained of a fairy vision corresponds rather with that which the Persian poets have conceived of the Peries. “Their port was more than human as they stood; I took it for a faëry vision Of some gay creatures of the element, That in the colours of the rainbow live And play i’ th’ plighted clouds.” (D’Israeli’s _Romances_, p. 13.) It is by no means credible, however, that Milton had any knowledge of the Oriental Peries, though his enthusiastic or poetical imagination might have easily peopled the air with spirits.