s
greatly to be doubted whether Shakespeare ever saw a fairy, though his
age believed in fairies, but almost certain that Shelley must have
seen many, whose age did not believe. If our author is to have a
poetical guide at all it had better be Shelley.

Literature will tell him that fairies are benevolent or mischievous,
and tradition, borrowing from literature, will confirm it. The
proposition is ridiculous. It would be as wise to say that a gnat is
mischievous when it stings you, or a bee benevolent because he cannot
prevent you stealing his honey. There would be less talk of benevolent
bees if the gloves were off. That is the pathetic fallacy again; and
that is man all over. Will nothing, I wonder, convince him that he is
not the centre of the Universe? If Darwin, Newton, Galileo, Copernicus
and Sir Norman Lockyer have failed, is it my turn to try? Modesty
forbids. Besides, I am prejudiced. I think man, in the conduct of his
business, inferior to any vegetable. I am a tainted source. But such
talk is idle, and so is that which cries havoc upon fairy morality.
Heaven knows that it differs from our own; but Heaven also knows that
our own differs _inter nos_; and that to discuss the customs and
habits of the Japanese in British parlours is a vain thing. _The
Forsaken Merman_ is a beautiful poem, but not a safe guide to those
who would relate the ways of the spirits of the sea. But all this is
leading me too far from my present affair, which is to relate how the
knowledge of these things--of these beings and of their laws--came
upon me, and how their nature influenced mine. I have said enough, I
think, to establish the necessity of a good book upon the subject, and
I take leave to flatter myself that these pages of my own will be
indispensable Prolegomena to any such work, or to any research tending
to its compilation.

In the absence of books, in the situation in which I found myself of
reticence, I could do nothing but brood upon the things I had seen.
Insensibly my imagination (latent while I had been occupied with
observation) began to work. I did not write, but I pictured, and my
waking dreams became so vivid that I was in a fair way to treat them
as the only reality, and might have discarded the workaday world
altogether. Luckily for me, my disposition was tractable and
law-abiding. I fulfilled by habit the duties of the day; I toiled at
my dreary work, ate and slept, wrote to my parents, visited them,
having go