During the sixteenth century the study of classical literature, which opened a new field to imagination, and gave it a new impulse, was eagerly and vigorously pursued. A classic ardour was widely and extensively diffused. The compositions of that age incessantly imitate and allude to the beauties and incidents of the writings of ancient Greece and Rome.

Yet amid this diffusion of classic taste and knowledge, romance had by no means lost its influence. The black-letter pages of Lancelot du Lac, Perceforest, Mort d'Arthur, and the other romances of chivalry, were still listened to with solemn attention, when on winter-evenings the family of the good old knight or baron 'crowded round the ample fire,' to hear them made vocal, and probably no small degree of credence was given to the wonders they recorded. The passion for allegory, too, remained unabated. Fine moral webs were woven from the fragile threads of the Innamorato and the Furioso; and even Tasso was obliged, in compliance with the reigning taste, to extract an allegory from his divine poem; which Fairfax, when translating the Jerusalem, was careful to preserve. Spenser, therefore, when desirous of consecrating his genius to the celebration of the glories of the maiden reign, and the valiant warriors and grave statesmen who adorned it, had his materials ready prepared. Fairy-land, as described by the romancers, gave him a scene; the knights and dames with whom it was peopled, actors; and its court, its manners, and usages, a facility of transferring thither whatever real events might suit his design.

It is not easy to say positively to what romance the poet was chiefly indebted for his Faery-land. We might, perhaps, venture to conjecture that his principal authority was Huon de Bordeaux, which had been translated some time before by Lord Berners, and from which it is most likely that Shakespeare took his Oberon, who was thus removed from the realms of romance, and brought back among his real kindred, the dwarfs or elves. Spenser, it is evident, was acquainted with this romance, for he says of Sir Guyon,

And here, if such a thing were to be heeded, the poet commits an anachronism in making Sir Huon, who slew the son of Charlemagne, a contemporary of Arthur.

Where "this delightful land of Faery" lies, it were as idle to seek as for Oberon's realm of Mommur, the island of Calypso, or the kingdom of Lilliput. Though it shadow forth England, it is distinct from it; for Cleopolis excels Troynovant in greatness and splendour, and Elfin, the first Fairy king, ruled over India and America. To the curious the poet says,

The idea of making a queen sole regnante of Fairy-land was the necessary result of the plan of making "the fayrest princesse under sky" view her "owne realmes in lond of faery." Yet there may have been sage authority for this settlement of the fairy throne. Some old romancers may have spoken only of a queen; and the gallant Sir Thopas does not seem to apprehend that he is in pursuit of the wedded wife of another. This doughty champion's dream was evidently the original of Arthur's.

The names given by Spenser to these beings are Fays (FeÉs), Farys or Fairies, Elfes and Elfins, of which last words the former had been already employed by Chaucer, and in one passage it is difficult to say what class of beings is intended. Spenser's account of the origin of his Fairies is evidently mere invention, as nothing in the least resembling it is to be found in any preceding writer. It bears, indeed, some slight and distant analogy to that of the origin of the inhabitants of JinnestÂn, as narrated by the Orientals. According to the usual practice of Spenser, it is mixed up with the fables of antiquity.

Sir Walter Scott remarks with justice (though his memory played him somewhat false on the occasion), that "the stealing of the Red Cross Knight while a child, is the only incident in the poem which approaches to the popular character of the Fairy." It is not exactly the only incident; but the only other, that of Arthegal, is a precisely parallel one:—

Sir Walter has been duly animadverted on for this dangerous error by the erudite Mr. Todd. It would be as little becoming as politic in us, treading, as we do, on ground where error ever hovers around us, to make any remark. Freedom from misconception and mistake, unfortunately, forms no privilege of our nature.

We must here observe, that Spenser was extremely injudicious in his selection of the circumstances by which he endeavoured to confound the two classes of Fairies. It was quite incongruous to style the progeny of the subjects of Gloriane a "base elfin brood," or themselves "false Fairies," especially when we recollect that such a being as Belphoebe whose

was born of a Fairie.

Our poet seems to have forgotten himself also in the Legend of Sir Calidore; for though the knight is a Faerie himself, and though such we are to suppose were all the native inhabitants of Faerie-land, yet to the "gentle flood" that tumbled down from Mount Acidale,

And a little farther, when Calidore gazes on the "hundred naked maidens lily white," that danced around the Graces, he wist not

The popular Elves, who dance their circlets on the green, were evidently here in Spenser's mind.[88]

It is now, we think, if not certain, at least highly probable, that the Fairy-land and the Fairies of Spenser are those of romance, to which the term Fairy properly belongs, and that it is without just reason that the title of his poem has been styled a misnomer.[89] After the appearance of his Faerie Queene, all distinction between the different species was rapidly lost, and Fairies became the established name of the popular Elves.

Here, then, we will take our leave of the potent ladies of romance, and join the Elves of the popular creed, tracing their descent from the Duergar of northern mythology, till we meet them enlivening the cottage fireside with the tales of their pranks and gambols.