And give it way; choose.

I know thou can'st not

(MIRANDA fleeps.

Come away, servant, come: I am ready now;

Approach, my Ariel; come.

• Enter ARIEL.

ARI. All hail, great master! grave sir, hail! I

come

To answer thy best pleasure; be't to fly,"

To fwim, to dive into the fire, to ride

On the curl'd clouds; to thy strong bidding, task

Ariel, and all his quality.

PRO.

3

Haft thou, spirit.

Perform'd to point the tempest that I bade thee?
ARI. To every article.

All hail, great master! grave fir, hail! I come

To answer thy best pleasure; be't to fly, &c.) Imitated by

Fletcher in The Faithful Shepherdess:

tell me sweetest,

"What new service now is meevest

" For the fatyre; shall I ftray

" In the middle ayre, and stay.

The failing racke, or nimbly take

" Hold by the moone, and gently make

" Suit to the pale queene of night,

" For a beame to give me light?

« Shall I dive into the fea,

" And bring thee coral, making way

" Through the rifing waves," &c.

2 On the curl'd clouds ;) So, in Timon

3

HENLEY.

Crisp heaven. STEEVENS.

and all his quality.) i. e. all his confederates, all who are of the fame profeffion. So, in Hamlet:

" Come, give us a taste of your quality." See notes on this passage. STÉEVENS.

• Perform'd to point -) i. e. to the minutest article.

So, in the Chances, by Beaumont and Fletcher:

2

I boarded the king's ship; now on the beak,'
Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin,
I flam'd amazement: Sometimes, I'd divide,
And burn in many places;" on the top-mast,
The yards and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly,
Then meet, and join: Jove's lightnings, the

precurfors

O' the dreadful thunder-claps, more momentary And fight-out-running were not: The fire, and

cracks

Of fulphurous roaring, the most mighty Neptune Seem'd to besiege, and make his bold waves tremble, Yea, his dread trident shake.

PRO.

9

My brave spirit!

now on the beak, ) The beak was a strong pointed body at the head of the ancient gallies; it is used here for the forecastle, or the boltsprit. JOHNSON.

6 Now in the waist,) The part between the quarter-deck and the forecastle. JOHNSON.

7 Sometimes, I'd divide,

And burn in many places;) Perhaps our author, when he wrote these lines, remembered the following passage in Hackluyt's Voyages, 1598: "I do remember that in the great and boysterous storme of this foule weather, in the night there came upon " the toppe of our maine yard and maine-mast a certaine little « light, much like unto the light of a little candle, which the " Spaniards call the Cuerpo Santo. This light continued aboord our .. ship about three houres, flying from maste to maste, and from " top to top; and sometimes it would be in two or three places at once." MALONE.

Burton says, that the Spirits of fire, in form of fire-drakes and blazing stars, " oftentimes sit on ship-mafts," &c. Melanch. P. I. § 2. p. 30. edit. 1632. T. WARTON.

8

- precursors.

O' the dreadful thunder-claps,) So, in King Lear:

،، 'Vant couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts." STEEVENS. Yea, his dread trident shake.) Left the metre should appear defective, it is necessary to apprize the reader, that in Warwickshire and other midland counties, shake is till pronounced by the common people as if it was written shaake, a difyllable. FARMER,

Who was fo firm, so constant, that this coil
Would not infect his reason?

ARI.

Not a foul

But felt a fever of the mad, and play'd
Some tricks of desperation: All, but mariners,
Plung'd in the foaming brine, and quit the

veffel,

Then all a-fire with me: the king's fon, Ferdinand, With hair up-staring (then like reeds, not hair) Was the first man that leap'd; cried, Hell is empty,

And all the devils are here.

PRO.

Why, that's my spirit!

But was not this nigh shore?
ARI.

Close by, my master.

PRO, But are they, Ariel, safe?
ARI.

A

Not a hair perish'd; On their sustaining garments not a blemish, But fresher than before: and as thou bad'st me, In troops I have difpers'd them 'bout the ifle:

2 But felt a fever of the mad,) If it be at all necessary to explain the meaning, it is this: Not a foul but felt such a fever as madmen fee', when the frantick fit is upon them. STEEVENS.

3

So, in K. Lear :

and quit the vessel,) Quit is, I think, here used for quitted, 'Twas he inform'd against him,

" And quit the house on purpose, that their punishment " Might have the freer course."

So, in King Henry VI. P. I. lift, for lifted:

4

" He ne'er lift up his hand, but conquered." MALONE.

Sustaining) i. e. their garments that bore them up and

supported them. So, in K. Lear, Act IV. fc. iv:

" In our fustaining corn."

Again, in Hamlet :

Her clothes spread wide,

« And, mermaid-like, a while they bore her up."

Mr. M. Mason, however, observes that the word sustaining in this place does not mean supporting, but enduring; and by their Sustaining garments, Ariel means their garments which bore, without being injured, the drenching of the fea." STEEVENS.

4

The king's fon have I landed by himself;
Whom I left cooling of the air with fighs,
In an odd angle of the ifle, and fitting,
His arms in this fad knot.

PRO.
Of the kings ship,
The mariners, say, how thou haft dispos'd,
And all the rest o' the fleet?

ARI.
Safely in harbour
Is the king's ship; in the deep nook, where once
Thou call'dft me up at midnight to fetch dew
From the still-vex'd Bermoothes, there she's hid:

$ From the still-vex'd Bermoothes,) Fletcher, in his Women Pleased, fays, "The devil should think of purchasing that egg-shell to victual out a witch for the Bermoothes." Smith, in his account of these iflands, p. 172, lays, that the Bermudas were fo fearful to the world, that many called them The Isle of Devils. — P. 174. — to all feamen no less terrible than an inchanted den of furies." And no wonder, for the clime was extremely subject to storms and hurricanes; and the iflands were furrounded with scattered rocks lying shallowly hid under the furface of the water. WARBURTON.

The epithet here applied to the Bermudas, will be best underftood by those who have seen the chafing of the sea quer the rugged rocks by which they are furrounded, and which render access to them so dangerous. It was in our poet's time the current opinion, that Bermudas was inhabited by monsters, and devils. - Setebos, the god of Caliban's dam, was an American devil, worshipped by the giants of Patagonia. HENLEY.

Again, in Decker's If this be not a good Play, the Devil is in it, 1612: " Sir, if you have made me tell a lye, they'll send me on a voyage to the island of Hogs and Devils, the Bermudas."

STEEVENS.

The opinion that Bermudas was haunted with evil spitits continued so late as the civil wars. In a little piece of Sir John Berkinghead's, intitled, Two Centuries of Paul's Church-yard, una cum indice expurgatorio, &c. 12o, in page 62, under the title Cafes of Conscience, is this:

" 34. Whether Bermudas and the parliament-house lie under one planet, seeing both are haunted with devils." PERCY.

Bermudas was on this account the cant name for some privileged place, in which the cheats and riotous bullies of Shakspeare's time assembled. So, in The Devil is an Afs, by Ben Jonfon:

1

4

The mariners all under hatches stow'd;
Whom, with a charm join'd to their suffer'd labour,
I have left afleep: and for the rest o' the fleet,
Which I dispers'd, they all have met again;
And are upon the Mediterranean flote,

Bound sadly home for Naples;
Supposing that they saw the king's ship wreck'd,

And his great person perish.

PRO.

Ariel, thy charge

Exactly is perform'd; but there's more work : What is the time o' the day??

ARI.

1

Paft the mid season.

PRO. At least two glasses: The time 'twixt fix

and now,

Must by us both be spent most preciously.

ARI. Is there more toil? Since thou dost give

me pains,

Let me remember thee what thou hast promis'd, Which is not yet perform'd me.

keeps he still your quarter

" In the Bermudas?"

Again, in one of his Epistles:

« Have their Bermudas, and their straights i' th' Strand."

Again, in The Devil is an Afs:

" For one that's run away to the Bermudas." STEEVENS.

6- the Mediterranean flote,) Flote is wave.

Flot. Fr.

STEEVENS.

7 What is the time o' the day?) This passage needs not be difturbed, it being common to ask a question, which the next moment enables us to answer: he that thinks it faulty, may easily adjust it thus:

Pro. What is the time o' the day? Past the mid Season?

Mr. Upton proposes to regulate this paffage differently:

Ariel. Past the mid season, at least two glaffes.

Prof. The time, &c. MALONE.