assistance Prospero has bedimmed the sun at noon-tide,

And 'twixt the green sea and the azur'd vault,

Set roaring war;

has a set of ideas and images peculiar to his station and office; a beauty of the same kind with that which is so justly admired in the Adam of Milton, whose manners and sentiments are all paradisaical. How delightfully, and how suitably to his character, are the habitations and pastimes of this invisible being pointed out in the following exquisite song!

Where the bee sucks, there lurk I:
In a cowslip's bell I lie;

There I couch when owls do cry.

On the bat's back I do fly,

After sun-set, merrily.

Merrily merrily shall I live now,

Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

Mr. Pope, whose imagination has been thought by some the least of his excellences, has, doubtless, conceived and carried on the machinery in his 'Rape of the Lock,' with vast exuberance of fancy. The images, customs, and employments of his sylphs, are exactly adapted to their natures, are peculiar and appropriated, are all, if I may be allowed the expression, sylphish. The enumeration of the punishments they were to undergo, if they neglected their charge, would, on account of its poetry and propriety, and especially the

mixture of oblique satire, be superior to any circumstances in Shakspeare's Ariel, if we could suppose Pope to have been unacquainted with the Tempest when he wrote this part of his accomplished poem.

She did confine thee

Into a cloven pine; within which rift
Imprisoned, thou did'st painfully remain

A dozen years; within which space she dy'd,

And left thee there; where thou did'st vent thy groans,
As fast as mill-wheels strike.

If thou more murmur'st, I will rend an oak,
And peg thee in his knotty entrails, 'till
Thou'st howl'd away twelve winters.

For this, besure, to-night thou shalt have cramps,
Side-stiches that shall pen thy breath up: urchins
Shall, for that vast of night that they may work,
All exercise on thee; thou shalt be pinch'd

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

If thou neglect'st or dost unwillingly

What I command, I'll rack thee with old cramps;

Fill all thy bones with aches: make thee roar,
That beasts shall tremble at thy din.

Whatever spirit, careless of his charge,

SHAKSPEARE.

Forsakes his post, or leaves the fair at large,
Shall feel sharp vengeance soon o'ertake his sins,
Be stopp'd in vials, or transfix'd with pins;
Or plung'd in lakes of bitter washes lie,
Or wedg'd whole ages in a bodkin's eye:
Gums and pomatums shall his flight restrain,
While clog'd he beats his silken wings in vain;
Or alum styptics with contracting pow'r,

Shrink his thin essence like a shrivell'd flower:

Or as Ixion fix'd, the wretch shall feel

The giddy motion of the whirling wheel;

In fumes of burning chocolate shall glow,

And tremble at the sea that froths below.-POPE.

The method which is taken to induce Ferdinand to believe that his father was drowned in the late tempest, is exceedingly solemn and striking. He is sitting upon a solitary rock, and weeping overagainst the place where he imagined his father was wrecked, when he suddenly hears with astonishment aerial music creep by him upon the waters, and the spirit gives him the following information in words not proper for any but a spirit

to utter.

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.

And then follows a most lively circumstance;

Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell.

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

This is so truly poetical, that one can scarce forbear exclaiming with Ferdinand,

This is no mortal business, nor no sound

That the earth owns!

The happy versatility of Shakspeare's genius. enables him to excel in lyric as well as in dramatic poesy.

But the poet rises still higher in his management of this character of Ariel, by making a moral use of it, that is, I think, incomparable, and the greatest effort of his art. Ariel informs Prospero that he has fulfilled his orders, and punished his brother and companions so severely, that if he himself was now to behold their sufferings, he would greatly compassionate them. To which Prospero

answers,

Dost thou think so, Spirit?

ARIEL. Mine would, sir, were I human.
PROSPERO. And mine shall.

He then takes occasion, with wonderful dexterity and humanity, to draw an argument from the incorporeality of Ariel, for the justice and necessity of pity and forgiveness:

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 mov'd than thou art?

The poet is a more powerful magician than his own Prospero: we are transported into fairy land; we are wrapped in a delicious dream, from which it is misery to be disturbed; all around is enchantment!

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 wak'd after long sleep,

Will make me sleep again: and then in dreaming,

U

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

I cry'd to dream again!

JOSEPH WARTON.'

Adventurer, No. 93, September 25th, 1753. These observations on the Tempest, written about seventy-five years ago, and in a work of great popular acceptation, contributed not a little to refix the attention of all classes on our admirable poet; nor, though occasionally insisting somewhat too much on a strict adherence to the rules of the classical drama, have they been on the whole superseded or surpassed by any subsequent critique on the same play.