If we look through our most
admired poets, we shall find that their minds have been impregnated by
these popular fancies, and that those have succeeded best who have
adhered closest to the simplicity of their rustic originals. Such is
the case with Shakspeare in his Midsummer-Night's Dream, which so
minutely describes the employments and amusements of fairies, and
embodies all the notions concerning them which were current among the
vulgar. It is thus that poetry in England has echoed back every rustic
note, softened into perfect melody; it is thus that it has spread its
charms over every-day life, displacing nothing, taking things as it
found them, but tinting them up with its own magical hues, until every
green hill and fountain-head, every fresh meadow, nay, every humble
flower, is full of song and story.
I am dwelling too long, perhaps, upon a threadbare subject; yet it
brings up with it a thousand delicious recollections of those happy
days of childhood, when the imperfect knowledge I have since obtained
had not yet dawned upon my mind, and when a fairy tale was true
history to me. I have often been so transported by the pleasure of
these recollections, as almost to wish that I had been born in the
days when the fictions of poetry were believed.
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