The fairies have already called themselves spirits, ghosts, or shadows, and, consequently, they never died; a position, at the same time, of which there is every kind of proof that a fact can require. The reviser of Johnson and Steevens's edition of Shakspeare, in 1785, crows not a little, upon his dunghill, at having been able to turn the tables upon his adversary, by a ridiculous reference to the allegories of Spenser, and a palpably false one to Tickells "Kensington-gardens," which he affirms, will shew that the opinion of Fairies dying prevailed in the present century,' whereas, in fact, it is found, on the slightest glance into the poem, to maintain the direct reverse:
Cornelius van Kempen assures us, that, in the reign of the emperor Lotharius, about the year 830, there appeared in Friesland a great number of fairies, who took up their residence in caves, or on the tops of hills, and mountains, whence they descended in the night, to steal away the shepherds from their flocks, snatch away children out of their cradles, and carry both away to their caves: referring to Bekkers World bewitched, p. 1, 290. These fairies only agree with ours in their fondness for children.
