THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

2 14 THE FAIRIES OF SHAKESPEARE
Of Satan and his peers ...
. . . . . . . . . . . .
In bigness to surpass Earth's giant sons,
Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room
Throng numberless - like ...
. . . . . . . . faery elves,
Whose midnight revels, by a forest-side
Or fountain, some belated peasant sees,
Or dreams he sees, ...
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Thus incorporeal Spirits to smallest forms
Reduced their shapes immense, ... 173
The early part of the I 8th century continued to regard
the excesses of the fairies' diminution, their infinitesimal
banquets, and minute quarrels, as their only claim to lit-
erary fame, as may be seen in William King's poem,
Orpheus and Euridice, 1704, in which, in contradistinc-
tion to the powerful and fearful fairies of the Romance
of King Orfeo several centuries before, the fairies were
pictured as small enough to dance around a mortal hat,
and as giving banquets of " Things to be Eat by Micro-
scopes "; 174 and in the Kensington Garden of Thomas
Tickell whose concern with the fairies' diminutive figures
led him into a description of the dietary measures taken
to secure their inches:
Each supple Limb she swath'd, and tender Bone,
And to the Elfin Standard kept him down;
She robb'd Dwarf-elders of their fragrant Fruit,
And fed him early with the Daisy's Root,
Whence through his Veins the powerful Juices ran,
And form'd in beauteous Miniature the Man.lT6
Cambridge ed., 1899, Book First, 11. 757, 778-784, 789-790.
17* Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, 1704, pp. 380 and 383.
176The Works of Celebrated Authors, Vol. 11, 1750, 11. 113-118.