Whose midnight revels by a forest side, Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, Or dreams he sees; while over-head the moon Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth Wheels her pale course. They, on their mirth and dance Intent, with jocund music charm his ear; At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds. Paradise Lost, 1. 781. EDINBURGH: PRINTED FOR WILLIAM CREECH, AND LONGMAN, HURST, REES, AND ORME, AND J. MURRAY, FLEET STREET, LONDON. A. SMELLIE, Printer, 1806. INTRODUCTION, CONSISTING OF THREE DISSERTATIONS, I. ON FAIRIES. II. ON THE SCOTISH LANGUAGE. III. ON PASTORAL POETRY. DISSERTATION I. The propriety of the subject of the following Pastoral shown by the example of Poets and the opinion of Critics-The peculiar right a Scotchman has to adopt the fairy way of writing-Remarks on local poetry—Three kinds of Fairies, Continental, English, and Scotish. The native legends of thy land rehearse. Collins. IT may seem to require explanation why, in the following Pastoral Drama, I have assumed a hypothesis which, though once generally prevalent, has now lost its credit, except in the nursery, and why I have written it in a dialect which is decaying daily. This dialect, too, can already boast of the finest poem of the pastoral kind that perhaps has ever been written, and which (by raising high the standard of this sort of composition) has rendered success extremely difficult. |