Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 3 1885.djvu/146

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We are informed that in Rockingham's delightful bowers—

Ryedale, I may note in passing, is the subject of an on dit: amongst her groves of old "some say that elves did keep."

Not much more than the few passages just indicated had Drayton written about the "small folk" before the appearance of Nymphidia, which was the natural outcome of a poetic mind, impressed with the revelations of Shakespeare and Jonson concerning faerie, and encouraged to speak out by the prevailing taste which they and others had excited and maintained. One only wonders that Drayton had kept so long silent, for he was a sexagenarian before he became the confident of Nymphidia; and yet after a little apologetic exordium touching his condescension to so trifling a theme he proceeds with a lilt and with a fire for which we may well thank "the active Muse" (whom, by dint of diligent exercise and strange experiments he had kept so buxom and so sprightly), and the other lady-help aforesaid, whom he thus apostrophizes—

"And thou, Nymphidia, gentle fay, Which meeting me upon the way, These secrets did to me bewray.
 * Which now I am in telling.