More discontents I never had
Since I was born than here,
Where I have been and still am sad,
In this dull Devonshire.
Yet justly too I must confess;
I ne’er invented such
Ennobled numbers for the Press
Than where I loathed so much.
It has been remarked that, even when he writes of fairies, he has in mind, not the fairies of the West Country, but the fairies he brought with him from Ben Jonson’s London. He is rich in the fancies of the town-poet. For him Oberon walks through a grove “tinselled with twilight,” and is led by the shine of snails. As for the cave in which the Fairy King seeks Queen Mab:
To pave