"Caliban. As wicked dew as e'er my mother brush'd With raven's feather from unwholesome fen,

Drop on you both: a south-west blow on ye,

And blister you all o'er !

Prospero. For this, be sure, to-night thou shalt have

cramps,

Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up; urchins
Shall for that vast of night that they may work,
All exercise on thee: thou shalt be pinched

As thick as honey-combs, each pinch more stinging
Than bees that made them.

Caliban. I must eat my dinner.

This island's mine by Sycorax my mother,

Which thou tak'st from me. When thou camest first,

Thou stroak'dst me, and mad'st much of me; would'st

give me

Water with berries in't; and teach me how

To name the bigger light and how the less

That burn by day and night; and then I lov'd thee,

And shew'd thee all the qualities o' th' isle,

The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile :
Curs'd be I that I did so! All the charms

Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you!

For I am all the subjects that you have,

Who first was mine own king; and here you sty me
In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me
The rest o' th' island.

And again, he promises Trinculo his services thus, if he will free him from his drudgery.

"I'll shew thee the best springs; I'll pluck thee berries, I'll fish for thee, and get thee wood enough.

And I with my long nails will dig thee pig-nuts:
Shew thee a jay's nest, and instruct thee how
To snare the nimble marmozet: I'll bring thee
To clust❜ring filberds; and sometimes I'll get thee
Young sea-mells from the rock."

In conducting Stephano and Trinculo to Prospero's cell, Caliban shews the superiority of natural capacity over greater knowledge and greater folly; and in a former scene, when Ariel frightens them with his music, Caliban to encourage them accounts for it in the eloquent poetry of the senses.

"Be not afraid, the isle is full of noises,

Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twanging instruments

Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices,

That if I then had waked after long sleep,

Would make me sleep again; and then in dreaming,

The clouds methought would open, and shew riches
Ready to drop upon me: when I wak'd,

I cried to dream again."

This is not more beautiful than it is true. The poet here shews us the savage with the simplicity of a child, and makes the strange monster amiable. Shakespear had to paint the human animal rude and without choice in 'its pleasures, but not without the sense of pleasure or some germ of the affections. Master Bar

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civilized life, is an admirable philosophical counterpart to Caliban.

Shakespear has, as it were by design, drawn off from Caliban the elements of whatever is ethereal and refined, to compound them in the unearthly mould of Ariel. Nothing was ever more finely conceived than this contrast between the material and the spiritual, the gross and delicate. Ariel is imaginary power, the swiftness of thought personified. When told to make good speed by Prospero, he says, "I drink the air before me." This is something like Puck's boast on a similar occasion, "I'll put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes." But Ariel differs from Puck in having a fellow feeling in the interests of those he is employed about. How exquisite is the following dialogue between him and Prospero !

"Ariel. Your charm so strongly works them,
That if you now beheld them, your affections
Would become tender.

Prospero. Dost thou think so, spirit?
Ariel. Mine would, sir, were I human.
Prospero. And mine shall.

Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling

Of their afflictions, and shall not myself,

One of their kind, that relish all as sharply,

Passion'd as they, be kindlier moved than thou art?"

It has been observed that there is a peculiar

which, without conveying any distinct images, seem to recall all the feelings connected with them, like snatches of half-forgotten music heard indistinctly and at intervals. There is this effect produced by Ariel's songs, which (as we are told) seem to sound in the air, and as if the person playing them were invisible. We shall give one instance out of many of this general power.

"Enter FERDINAND; and ARIEL invisible, playing and singing.

ARIEL'S SONG.

Come unto these yellow sands,

And then take hands;

Curt'sied when you have, and kiss'd,

(The wild waves whist ;)

Foot it featly here and there;

And sweet sprites the burden bear.

[Burden dispersedly.

Hark, hark! bowgh-wowgh: the watch-dogs bark,

Bowgh-wowgh.

Ariel. Hark, hark! I hear

The strain of strutting chanticleer

Cry cock-a-doodle-doo.

Ferdinand. Where should this music be? i' the air or the

earth?

It sounds no more and sure it waits upon
Some god o' th' island. Sitting on a bank
Weeping against the king my father's wreck,
This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury and my passion

Or it hath drawn me rather:-but 'tis gone.

No, it begins again.

ARIEL'S SONG.

Full fathom five thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made:
Those are pearls that were his eyes,
Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea change,

Into something rich and strange.

Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell—

Hark! now I hear them, ding-dong bell.

[Burden ding-dong.

Ferdinand. The ditty does remember my drown'd father. This is no mortal business, nor no sound

That the earth owes: I hear it now above me.".

The courtship between Ferdinand and Miranda is one of the chief beauties of this play. It is the very purity of love. The pretended interference of Prospero with it heightens its interest, and is in character with the magician, whose sense of preternatural power makes him arbitrary, tetchy, and impatient of opposition.

The TEMPEST is a finer play than the Midsummer Night's Dream, which has sometimes been compared with it; but it is not so fine a poem. There are a greater number of beautiful passages in the latter. Two of the most striking in the TEMPEST are spoken by Prospero. The one is that admirable one when the vision which