(Heywood’s Hierarchie of Angells, 1635, fo. p. 574.)
Milton, a prodigious reader of romance, has, likewise, given an apt idea of the ancient fays—
“Fairer than famed of old, or fabled since
Of fairy damsels met in forest wide,
By knights of Logres, and of Liones,
Lancelot or Pelleas, or Pellenore.”
These ladies, in fact, are by no means unfrequent in those fabulous, it must be confessed, but, at the same time, ingenious and entertaining histories; as, for instance, Melusine, or Merlusine, the heroine of a very ancient romance in French verse, and who was occasionally turned into a serpent; Morgan-la-faée, the reputed half-sister of King Arthur; and the Lady of the Lake, so frequently noticed in Sir Thomas Malory’s old history of that monarch.
Le Grand is of opinion that what is called Fairy comes to us from the Orientals, and that it is their génies which have produced our fairies; a species of nymphs, of an order superior to those women magicians, to whom they nevertheless gave the same name. In Asia, he says, where the women imprisoned in the harems, prove still, beyond the general servitude, a particular slavery, the romancers have imagined the Peris, who, flying in the air, come to soften their captivity, and render them happy (Fabliaux, 12mo. i. 112). Whether this be so or not, it is certain that we call the auroræ boreales, or active clouds, in the night, perry-dancers.
After all, Sir William Ouseley finds it impossible to give an accurate idea of what the Persian poets designed by a Perie, this aërial being not resembling our fairies. The strongest resemblance he can find is in the description of Milton in Comus. The sublime idea which Milton entertained of a fairy vision corresponds rather with that which the Persian poets have conceived of the Peries.
“Their port was more than human as they stood;
I took it for a faëry vision
Of some gay creatures of the element,
That in the colours of the rainbow live
And play i’ th’ plighted clouds.”
(D’Israeli’s Romances, p. 13.)
It is by no means credible, however, that Milton had any knowledge of the Oriental Peries, though his enthusiastic or poetical imagination might have easily peopled the air with spirits.