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“Be kind and courteous to this gentleman;

Hop in his walks, and gambol in his eyes;

Feed him with apricocks and dewberries;

With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries

The honey-bags steal from the humble-bees,

And for night-tapers crop their waxen thighs,

And light them at the fiery glow-worm’s eyes,

To have my love to bed and to arise:

And pluck the wings from painted butterflies,

To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes:

Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies.”

Have we not here the adjuration of the fairy fortune to all her ministering delights and pleasures of the world, to render service and to do homage to the dull-brained creature of her passion? Extract the poetry, the delicious fancy, from the injunction of the Queen of Fairies, and what is it but the command of worldly luck to her many servitors, to seek all imaginable delights for the sordid lump of earth, the mere animal with an “ass’s head” her diseased and wayward affections have made an idol of? Is not the world thronged with these Bottoms? In shape, in lineament, in every moral feature, are they not the veritable descendants of the swaggering homespun Athenian? They are the very nurslings of fortune, the monstrous and uncouth objects of her blind and fickle passion; yet do they submit to her endearments with no distrust, no passing suspicion of their own worthiness. They receive her blandishments as nothing more than a just and rightful reward for excellence. They cannot conceive how it could have been otherwise. Their imagination, vassal to their self-complacency, will not allow them to change places for an instant with their less prosperous fellow. No; Fortune dotes upon them, and how can she help it? Her extravagant fondness is not excused, but justified, made inevitable by the excelling worthiness of their parts. Hence, with what serenity they issue mandates to the retainers of their fond mistress—with what lordly self-conviction of their own merits they accept their service! How they order Cobweb, Peaseblossom, and Mustardseed to do their fantastic bidding, as though their bondmaster, created with natural and inalienable right to their feudality. Nothing in the way of greatness surprises them—no flattery startles them.