destiny who administer in her works, acting in darkness and obfcurity? The whole paffage runs thus In the Merry Wives of Windfor, A& V. "Fairies, black, gray, green and white, "You moon-fhine revellers, and shades of night, "You Orphan-heirs of fixed deftiny, "Attend your office and your quality." 7 Had the poet written ouphen-beirs, he would have repeated the fame thing. These ouphs I find in modern editions have routed the owls out of their old poffeffions: but I fhall beg leave to reinstate them again, in the Comedy of Errours, A& II. 12 "This is the fairy land: oh fpight of spights! "Wetalk with goblins, owls and elvish sprights! "If we obey them not, this will enfue, "They'll fuck our breath, and pinch us black "and blue." Thefe 12 Fairy land.] Plautus lays the scene at Epidamnum, a town of Macedon, lying upon the Adriatic; whofe unfor tunate found made the Romans change it to Dyrrachium : the Roman comedian has fome allufions and witticisms on the name. Shakespeare removes the scene to Ephesus ; which he calls the land of conjurors and witches. He had his eye chiefly on that paffage in Acts xix, 19. The cafe Y 2 feems The news which the Latins called friges, acpraing ʼn valgu fuperftition had power to bcs maldren's breath and blood. Ovid. Faft. •Večavolant, querique petunt nutricis egentes, • Event cinis corpora rapta fuis. Carpere firmar lactantia vifcera roftris, En plenam poto ingline guttur habent.” Plin. there were a Ephefas feveral impoftors E p Eers the common people called them) wowy me of uns, periapts, amulets, &c. artan magical wores, or aperticious characters and figures, rem mener teates, or to give them LIES 2 EY JUSg Recus has preferved fome I IN TEXT 7 ihme vol; and of this kind are ready; fuch as Abracadabra, ga & Garg, St. Saarge, to cure the sana, a zgistare, mencon 4 by Scoc in his discovery of vent, Res J CZ&e. Withald, &c. in K, Dan dè00 with many chers ely to be picked up.— Now nee, or ne ise, were ze curious arts; (tà' wigligla, i ingerenent pre ng and quicveneis into things which contading us, it re heve as: The file accusation hd ayant Scres in rispeäz;] and 'twas auching but a pared of his rungery of periapts, amulets and charms, vrgether with some atological books, that is mention I so se burnt ut Ephes. —And they counted the pruz 1o tren, and "vand un to be in thou and pieces of filver : not that the books, in which this ridiculous stuff was writ ten, Plin. XI, 39. "Fabulofum puto de ftrigibus, ubera infan"tium eas labris immulgere. NOR is Shakespeare's peculiarity in ufing words to be paffed over. In Richard II. A& II. Why have those banish'd and forbidden legs, "Dar'd once to touch a duft of England's "ground?" i. e. interdicted. As the pope's legate told K. John, "He [the pope] hath wholly interdicted " and ten, were really worth fo much, but the fuperftitious people of this and the neighbouring countries bought them up at a high price; and the conjurors had provided a great stock. This fhort account of these Ephefian Letters will give a new light not only to this place of the Acts, but will likewife explain a paffage in Ovid's Met. XIV. 57. where Circe is introduced muttering her unintelligible jargon, like those myftical words mention'd in Hefychius. Ovid calls them Verba nova. -obfcurum VERBORUM ambage NOVORUM Ter novies carmen magico demurmurat ore. Which is expreffed most elegantly, and agreeably to ancient fuperftition. So too Shakespeare in King Lear, A& II. MUMBLING of wicked charms. Y 3 T'a "and curfed you, for the wrongs you have "done unto the holy church." Fox. Vol. I. p. 285. So in Macbeth, A&t I. "He shall live a man forbid." In Macbeth, A&t III. "And put a barren scepter in my gripe, "Thence to be wrench'd with an unlineal hand." i. e. not of my line, or defcent. In Macbeth, A& V. "For their dear caufes "Would to the bleeding and the grim alarm "Excite the mortified man." dear caufes, i. e. dreadful. So To this land of conjurors Shakespeare removes the scene, as I faid above, and calls it the Fairy land. This Fairy land ran in Dromio's head fo much that Adriana afking him where his master is, he replies, "A Devil in an everlasting garment hath him, I find the editors have changed this Fairy into a Fury; notwithstanding Ephefus is here called a Fairy land: and befide Fairy fometimes answered to the latin Strix or lamia : [Horman's -So in Hamlet. "Would I had met my dearest foe in heav'n." Perhaps from the Latin dirus, dire, dear. In the translation of Virgil by Douglas 'tis fpelt Dere, which the Gloffary thus explains, "Dere, [Horman's vulgaria, printed An. 1519. Fol. 21. STRIX vel LAMIA pro meo fuum parvulum fuppofuit: The FAYRE hath chaunged my childe.] And fo the word is used in Cymbeline, A&t II. "Guard me, beseech ye, "From Fairies, and the tempters of the night." These Fairies I find in our old poets fometimes to have been mischievous bugs and furies, at other times fair and benign beings of a fuperior race. They were Farefolkis as Douglas, in his verfion of Virgil, calls them, from their fairness; or if of a lower kind, and employ'd in fervile offices, Brownis, from their swarthy countenance: fometimes again they were Satyrs and Fawns, or Centaurs, OHPEΣ as Homer [II. d, 268.] and Euripides in his Cyclops [. 620.] names them. In fhort their characters were as various, as the characters of us mortals. And this account here given will explain many paffages in Spencer, and our old poets, particularly Chaucer in the Merchant's tale, 1259. where he plainly alludes to the fame etymology, as afterwards Douglas "That her to behold it seemed a Feirie." And Shakespeare in Antony and Cleopatra, Act IV. "To this great Faiery I'll commend thy acts." 66 to |