In the hands of Dryden the Elves of Chaucer lose their indefiniteness. In the opening of the Wife of Bath her Tale, The king of elves and _little_ fairy queen Gamboled on heaths and danced on every green. And In vain the dairy now with mint is dressed, The dairy-maid expects no fairy guest To skim the bowls, and after pay the feast. She sighs, and shakes her empty shoes in vain, No silver penny to reward her pain. In the Flower and the Leaf, unauthorised by the old bard, he makes the knights and dames, the servants of the Daisy and of the Agnus Castus, Fairies, subject, like the Italian Fate, to "cruel Demogorgon." Pope took equal liberties with his original, as may be seen by a comparison of the following verses with those quoted above:-- About this spring, if ancient fame say true, The dapper elves their moonlight sports pursue: Their pigmy king and little fairy queen In circling dances gamboled on the green, While tuneful sprites a merry concert made, And airy music warbled through the shade. _January and May_, 459. It so befel, in that fair morning tide, The fairies sported on the garden's side, And in the midst their monarch and his bride. So featly tripp'd the light-foot ladies round, The knight so nimbly o'er the greensward bound, That scarce they bent the flowers or touch'd the ground. The dances ended, all the fairy train For pinks and daisies search'd the flowery plain.[412] _Ibid._, 617. With the Kensington Garden[413] of Tickell, Pope's contemporary, our Fairy-poetry may be said to have terminated.[414] Collins, Beattie, and a few other poets of the last century make occasional allusions to it, and some attempts to revive it have been made in the present century. But vain are such efforts, the belief is gone, and divested of it such poetry can produce no effect. The Fairies have shared the fate of the gods of ancient Hellas. FOOTNOTES: [317] The Anglo-Saxon Dweorg, Dworh, and the English Dwarf, do not seem ever to have had any other sense than that of the Latin _nanus_. [318] As quoted by Picart in his Notes on William of Newbridge. We could not find it in the Collection of Histories, etc., by Martène and Durand,--the only place where, to our knowledge, this chronicler's works are printed. [319] _Guilielmi Neubrigensis Historia, sive Chronica Rerum Anglicarum._ Oxon. 1719, lib. i. c. 27. [320] See above, p. 109. [321] Otia Imperialia _apud Leibnitz Scriptores rerum Brunsvicarum_, vol. i. p. 981. [322] Vice calicis. [323] Otia Imperialia _apud Leibnitz Scriptores rerum Brunsvicarum_, vol. i. p. 980.