itania, and Robin
Goodfellow were made familiar by the surviving relics of Gothic and
Druidical mythology; as were also many particulars in their habits,
mode of life, and influence in human affairs. Hints and allusions
scattered through many preceding writers might be produced, showing
that the old superstition had been grafted into the body of
Christianity, where it had shaped itself into a regular system, so as
to mingle in the lore of the nursery, and hold an influential place in
the popular belief. Some reports of this ancient Fairydom are choicely
translated into poetry by Chaucer in _The Wife of Bath's Tale_.

But, though Chaucer and others had spoken about the fairy nation, it
was for Shakespeare to let them speak for themselves: until he clothed
their life in apt forms, their thoughts in fitting words, they but
floated unseen and unheard in the mental atmosphere of his fatherland.
So that on this point there need be no scruple about receiving
Hallam's statement of the matter: "_A Midsummer-Night's Dream_ is, I
believe, altogether original in one of the most beautiful conceptions
that ever visited the mind of a poet,--the fairy machinery. A few
before him had dealt in a vulgar and clumsy manner with popular
superstitions; but the sportive, beneficent, invisible population of
the air and earth, long since established in the creed of childhood,
and of those simple as children, had never for a moment been blended
with 'human mortals' among the personages of the drama." How much
Shakespeare did as the friend and saviour of those sweet airy
frolickers of the past from the relentless mowings of Time, has been
charmingly set forth in our day in Hood's _Plea of the Midsummer
Fairies_.

What, then, are the leading qualities which the Poet ascribes to
these ideal or fanciful beings? Coleridge says he is "convinced that
Shakespeare availed himself of the title of this play in his own mind,
and worked upon it as a dream throughout." This remark no doubt
rightly hits the true genius of the piece; and on no other ground can
its merits be duly estimated. The whole play is indeed a sort of ideal
dream; and it is from the fairy personages that its character as such
mainly proceeds. All the materials of the piece are ordered and
assimilated to that central and governing idea. This it is that
explains and justifies the distinctive features of the work, such as
the constant preponderance of the lyrical over the dramatic, and the