THE PLEA OF THE MIDSUMMER FAIRIES.[8]

[Footnote 8: The opening Poem in the volume published by Hood in 1827,
under the same title. The Poem was prefaced by the following letter to
Charles Lamb:--

"My dear Friend, I thank my literary fortune that I am not reduced
like many better wits to barter dedications, for the hope or
promise of patronage, with some nominally great man; but that where
true affection points, and honest respect, I am free to gratify my
head and heart by a sincere inscription. An intimacy and dearness,
worthy of a much earlier date than our acquaintance can refer to,
direct me at once to your name; and with this acknowledgment of
your ever kind feeling towards me, I desire to record a respect and
admiration for you as a writer, which no one acquainted with our
literature, save Elia himself, will think disproportionate or
misplaced. If I had not these better reasons to govern me, I should
be guided to the same selection by your intense yet critical relish
for the works of the great Dramatist, and for that favorite play in
particular which has furnished the subject of my verses.

It is my design in the following poem to celebrate by an allegory
that immortality which Shakspeare has conferred on the fairy
mythology by his Midsummer Night's Dream. But for him, those pretty
children of our childhood would leave barely their names to our
maturer years; they belong, as the mites upon the plumb, to the
bloom of fancy, a thing generally too frail and beautiful to
withstand the rude handling of time: but the Poet has made this
most perishable part of the mind's creation equal to the most
enduring; he has so intertwined the Elfins with human sympathies,