[Skim milk; and sometimes labour in the quern, And bootless make the breathless huswife churn] The sense of these lines is confused. _Are not you he_, says the fairy, _that fright the country girls_. _that skim milk_, _work in the hand-mill_, _and make the tired dairy-woman churn without effect_? The mention of the mill seem out of place, for she is not now telling the good but the evil that he does. I would regulate the lines thus: _And sometimes make the breathless housewife churn Skim milk, and bootless labour in the quern._ Or by a simple transposition of the lines; _And bootless, make the breathless housewife churn Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern._ Yet there is no necessity of alteration. (see 1765, I,106,1) II.i.40 (24,6) [Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck, You do their work] To those traditionary opinions Milton has reference in L'Allegro, _Then to the spicy nut-brown ale, With stories told of many a feat. How Fairy Mab the junkets eat; She was pinch'd and pull'd she said. And he by Frier's lapthorp led; Tells how the drudging goblin sweat To earn his cream-bowl duly set, When in one night ere glimpse of morn His shadowy flail had thresh'd the corn Which ten day-labourers could not end. Then lies him down the_ lubber _fiend_. A like account of Puck is given by Drayton, _He meeteth Puck, which most men call Hobgoblin, and on him doth fall.-- This Puck seems but a dreaming dolt, Still walking like a ragged colt, And oft out of a bed doth bolt, Of purpose to deceive us; And leading us makes us to stray. Long winter's nights out of the way. And when we stick in mire and clay. He doth with laughter leave us._ It will be apparent to him that shall compare Drayton's poem with this play, that either one of the poets copied the other, or, as I rather believe, that there was then 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. II.i.42 (25,7) [_Puck_. Thou speak'st aright] I have filled up the verse which I suppose the author left complete, It seems that in the Fairy mythology Puck, or Hobgoblin, was the trusty servant of Oberon, and always employed to watch or detect the intrigues of Queen Mab, called by Shakespeare Titania. For in Drayton's Nynphidia, the same fairies are engaged in the sane business. Mab has an amour with Pigwiggen; Oberon being jealous, sends Hobgoblin to catch them, and one of Mab's nymphs opposes him by a spell. II.i.54 (26,8) [And _tailor_ cries] The custom of crying _tailor_ at a sudden fall backwards, I think I remember to have observed. He