of the ancient feuds and robberies arose from ennui, and in order to fill up the irksome vacancies of an empty mind (i).

But to return from this digression. In the north, as I have said, there was supposed to exist, in the caverns of the mountains, a dwarfish race of people, skilled in mechanical arts: these had often communication with men ; stole away their children; and acted in many respects similar to the Scotish fairy.

The Scotish fairies are represented to us as diminutive old looking creatures, dressed in green, and living in green hills, or in the caverns of the rocks: in their dispositions they were capricious and resentful, but at the same time fond of an intercourse with men, from whom they sometimes borrowed, and to whom (a virtue which it is to be wished we would condescend to imitate) they not only paid back but lent in return. Most of our popular tenets concerning them are mentioned in the following Pastoral, and need not therefore be detailed here (k).

The English fairies, though far less harsh and gloomy, had many analogies with the Scotish or Gothic fairies; such as being dressed in green, dancing by moonlight in a circle, withering the grass upon which they trod, and stealing away children. They were distinguished from the Scotish elves by their love of neatness (1), and by their harmless disposition, which was rather frolicksome and useful than malicious and hurtful.

Sous la raifon les graces étouffées,
Livrent nos coeurs à l'infipidité.

Voltaire.

This more gay character seems justly attributed, by Mr Leyden, to the more cultivated state of the country, and to the less harsh character of its religious polity. "Perhaps (says he) the persecution which these sylvan deities underwent, at the instance of the stricter presbyterian clergy, had its usual effect in hardening their dispositions, or at least in rendering them more dreaded by those among whom they dwelt. The face of the country, too, might have some effect, as we should naturally attribute a less malicious disposition, or a less frightful appearance, to the Fays who glide by moonlight through the oaks of Windsor, than to those who haunt the solitary heaths and lofty mountains of the north."

But the poets of England, Shakespeare, Drayton, and others, have joined, if I may say so, the attributes of the eastern and of the Gothic fairies; and instead of a disagreeable race of beings, have made of them the most whimsical creatures of the fancy. They have given them chariots drawn by gnats, instead of horses, with harnesses of gossamour, and with covers of the wings of butterflies: And suitable to the delicacy of these tiny beings, is the nature of their employ

ment.

I must go feek fome dew-drops here and there,
And hang a pearl in every cowflips ear (m).

Midfummer Night's Dream, act 2. fc. I.

In the following Pastoral, I have adopted fairies of a sort of middle nature between the Scotish and English elves; on the one hand, I thought the public had got enough of the waggon-spokes of spinner's legs, with fly charioteers, glow worms, and bracelets of emmet's eyes; on the other hand, my fairies are not described

as malicious and disagreeable; they are such as these beings appear to a person who joins the ideas he has derived from the traditions of his own country, with those which have been furnished by the authors among our neighbours. The story is founded upon a hypothesis in which the popular tenets of most or all countries agree, I mean the stealing away of infants; for, in every system of popular belief, a fondness for the children of mortals was characteristic of those beings. At the birth of an illustrious child on the Continent, there was generally some good or bad fairy contending for the honour of taking away the infant prince or princess, for the purpose of education. In Britain these beings were not so polite, but without any ceremony flew away with the infant, and substituted a changeling in its place.

By wells and rills and meadowes green,
We nightly dance our hey-day guife;
And to our fairye king and queen,

We chant our moonlight harmonies.
When larks gin fing

Away we fling,

And babes new borne fteal as we go;

An elfe in bed

We leave inftead,

And wend us laughing, ho! ho! ho!

Percy's Reliques, vol. iii.

DISSERTATION II.

The Scotifh a purer language than the English-Causes of the deviation of the English from the original standard attributed to translations and poetry-The fuperior melody of the Scotifh language, and particularly its fitness for pastoral writing-Causes of the fuppofed vulgarity of that dialect, and objections to the use of it answeredReasons of the style of the following Pastoral approaching so nearly to the English-Of Ramfay and Burns.

Sur le ton des Français, il faut chanter en France.

Nous avons l'habitude

De rediger au long de point en point,

Voltaire.

Ce qu'on pensa; mais nous ne pensons point.

Id.

I

PROCEED now to the second object of this introductory essay, which is to justify my adoption of the Scotish dialect in the following Drama: And this apology will rest on two propositions which, as they may be repugnant to the opinions of the English reader, I shall be at some pains to establish. The first is, that the Scoto-Saxon dialect is superior to the Anglo-Saxon in point of purity; and the second is, that it surpasses the latter in melody or sweetness of sound.