A noife of hunters heard. Enter divers Spirits in shape of bounds, bunting them about; Profpero and Ariel fetting. them on. Calib. Steph. and Trinc. driven out, roaring. Pro. Hey, Mountain, hey.

Ari. Silver; there it goes,

Silver.

Pro. Fury, Fury; there, Tyrant, there; hark, hark; Go, charge my goblins that they grind their joints With dry convulfions; fhorten up their finews

With aged cramps; and more pinch-fpotted make them, Than pard, or cat o' mountain.

Ari. Hark, they roar.

At this hour

Pro. Let them be hunted foundly.
Lie at my mercy all mine enemies:
Shortly shall all my labours end, and thou
Shalt have the air at freedom; for a little,
Follow, and do me fervice.

[Exeunt.

A C T V.

SCENE, before the Cell.

Enter Profpero in his magick robes, and Ariel.

PROSPERO

TOW does my project gather to a head;

My charms crack not; my spirits obey, and time Goes upright with his carriage: how's the day? Ari. On the fixth hour, at which time, my Lord, You faid, our work fhould cease.

Pro. I did fay fo,

When first I rais'd the tempeft; fay, my spirit,
How fares the King and's followers?

Ari. Confin'd

In the fame fashion as you gave in charge;
Just as you left them, all your prifoners, Sir,
In the Lime-grove which weather-fends your cell.
They cannot budge, 'till you release. The King,

His

His brother, and yours, abide all three diftracted;
And the remainder mourning over them,
Brim-full of forrow and difmay; but, chiefly,
Him that you term'd the good old Lord Gonzalo.
His tears run down his beard, like winter drops
From caves of reeds; your charm fo ftrongly works 'em
That if you now beheld them, your affections.
Would become tender.

Pro. Doft thou think fo, fpirit?

Ari. Mine would, Sir, were I human..
Pro. And mine fhall.

Haft thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling
Of their afflictions, and fhall not myself,

One of their kind, that relish all as sharply,

Paffion'd as they, be kindlier mov'd than thou art? (28); Tho' with their high wrongs I am ftruck to th' quick, Yet, with my nobler reafon, 'gainst my fury

Do I take part; the rarer action is

In virtue than in vengeance; they being penitent,.
The fole drift of my purpose doth extend

Not a frown further; go, release them, Ariel ;;
My charms I'll break, their fenfes I'll restore,
And they fhall be themselves..

Ari. I'll fetch them, Sir..

[Exit.

Pro. Ye elves of hills, brooks, ftanding lakes and groves,

And ye, that on the fands with printlefs foot

Do chase the ebbing Neptune; and do fly him,

(28) Paffion'd as they,) Thus Mr. Pope in both his editions. But all the authentick copies read;

Paffion as they

i. e. feel the force of paffion; am mov'd with it. So again Julias in the Two Gentlemen of Verona ;

Madam, 'twas Ariadne paffioning

For Thefeus' perjury, and unjuft flight.

So, in Titus Andronicus, he makes a verb of passionate, fignifying, të exprefs the paffion, the diftrefs of, &c.

Thy niece and I, poor creatures, want our hands,

And cannot paffionate our tenfold grief

With folded arms.

And in his poem, call'd, Venus and Adonis, our Author ufes paffionas a verb, meaning, to grieve:

Dumbly the pallions, frantickly fhe doateth,

When

When he comes back; you demy-puppets, that
By moon-fhine do the green four ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites; and you, whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice
To hear the folemn curfew; by whofe aid
(Weak mafters tho' ye be) I have be-dimm'd
The noon-tide fun, call'd forth the mutinous winds,
And 'twixt the green fea and the azur'd vault
Set roaring war; to the dread ratling thunder
Have I giv'n fire, and rifted Jove's flout oak
With his own bolt: the ftrong-bas'd promontory
Have I made shake, and by the fpurs pluckt up
The pine and cedar: graves at my command (29)
Have wak'd their fleepers; op'd, and let them forth
By my fo potent art. But this rough magick
I here abjure; and when I have requir'd
Some heav'nly mufick, which even now I do,
(To work mine end upon their fenfes, that
This airy charm is for ;) I'll break my staff;
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth;
And, deeper than did ever plummet found,
I'll drown my book.

37760a J

[Solemn mufick.

Here enters Ariel before; then Alonso with a frantick gef: T ture, attended by Gonzalo. Sebaftian and Anthonio in like manner, attended by Adrian and Francifco. They all enter the circle which Profpero had made, and there ftand charm'd; which Profpero obferving, Speaks.

A folemn air, and the best comforter

To an unfettled fancy, cure thy brains

(29)

Graves at my command

Have wak'd their fleepers;] As odd, as this expreffion is, of graves waking their dead, instead of, the dead waking in their c graves, I believe, it may be juftified by the usage of Poets. Beau ment and Fletcher, in their Banduca, speaking of the power of Fame, make it wake graves,

Wakens the ruin'd monuments, and there,

Where nothing but eternal death and sleep is,
Informs again the dead bones.

And Virgil, Speaking of Rome as a city, fays, it furrounded its feven

kills with a wall.

Scilicet & rerum facta eft pulcherrima Roma,
Septemque una fibi muro circumdedit arces,

Now

Now ufelefs, boil'd within thy skull! There stand,
For you are fpell-ftopt.-

Holy Gonzalo, honourable man,

Mine eyes, ev'n fociable to th' fhew of thine,
Fall fellow-drops. -The charm diffolves apace;
And as the morning fteals upon the night,
Melting the darkness; fo their rifing fenfes
Begin to chafe the ign'rant fumes, that mantle
Their clearer reafon. O my good Gonzalo,
My true preferver, and a loyal Sir

To him thou follow'ft; I will pay thy graces
Home both in word and deed.- Moft cruelly
Didft thou, Alonfo, ufe me and my daughter:

Thy brother was a furtherer in the act;

Thou'rt pinch'd for't now, Sebaftian, flesh and blood. (30)
You brother mine, that entertain'd ambition,

Expell'd remorfe and nature; who with Sebaftian
(Whofe inward pinches therefore are moft ftrong)
Would here have kill'd your King; I do forgive thee,
Unnat'ral though thou art. Their understanding
Begins to fwell, and the approaching tide
Will fhortly fill the reasonable shore,

That now lies foul and muddy. Not one of them,
That yet looks on me, or would know me.-. Ariel
Fetch me the hat and rapier in my cell;

I will dif-cafe me, and myfelf prefent,

[Exit Ariel, and returns immediately. As I was fometime Milan: quickly, spirit; Thou shalt ere long be free.

(30) Thou'rt pinch'd for't now, Sebaftian. Flesh and blood,] I by no means think, this was our Author's pointing; or that it gives us his meaning. He would fay, that Sebaftian now was pinch'd thro' and thro' for his trefpafs; felt the punishment of it all over his body; a like manner of expreffion we meet with in King Lear

wipe thine eye;

The good-jers fhall devour them, flesh and fell,

E'er they fhall make us weep.

And so our CHAUCER, in the first book of his Troilus and Cressida.

that he and all his kinne at ones

Were worthy to be brent, both fell and bones.

Ariel fings, and helps to attire bim.
Where the bee fucks, there lurk I; (31)
In a cowflip's bell I lie :

There I couch, when owls do cry.

On the bat's back I do fly,

After funfet, merrily. (32)

Merrily, merrily, fhall I live now,

Under the bloffom, that hangs on the bough.

Pro

(31) Where the bee fucks, there fuck ;] I have ventur'd to vary from the printed copies here. Could Ariel, a fpirit of a refin'd ætherial effence, be intended to want food? Befides the fequent lines rather countenance lurk.

(32) After fummer merrily] Why, after fummer? Unless we must fuppofe, our Author alluded to that mistaken notion of bats, fiallows, &c. eroffing the feas in purfuit of hot weather. I conjectured, in my SHAKESPEARE reftor'd, that sunset was our Author's word: And this conjecture Mr. Pope, in his last edition, thinks probably fhould be efpoufed. My reafons for the change were from the known nature of the bat. The boup fleeps during the winter, fay the Naturalifts; and fo does the bat too. (Upupa dormit hyeme, ficut

vefpertilio. Albert, Magn.) Again, flies and gnats are the favourite food of the bat, which he procures by flying about in the night. (Cibus ejus funt mufcæ & culices: quem nocte volans inquirit. Idem, e Plinio.) But this is a diet, which, I prefume, he can only come at in the fummer feafon. Another obfervation has been made, that when bats fly either earlier, or in greater number than ufual, it is a fign the next day will be bot and Jerene. (Vefpertiliones, fi vefperi citius&plures folito volarint, fignum eft calorem ferenitatem poftridie fore. Gratarolus apud Gefner. de avibus.) This prognoftick likewife only fuits with fummer. Again, the bat was call'd vefpertilio by the Latins, as it was vuxlepis by the Greeks, because this bird is not visible by day; but appears firft about the twilight of the evening, and fo continues to fly during the dark hours. And the Poets, whenever they mention this bird, do it without any allufion to the season of the year; but conftantly have an eye to the accuftom'd hour of its flight. In the fecond act of this play, where Gonzalo tells Anthonio and Sebaftian, that they would lift the moon out of her sphere, Sebaftian replies;

We would fo, and then go a bat-fowling.

So, in Macbeth, when the approach of the night is describ'd, in which Banquo was to be murder'd,

Ere the bat hath flown

His cloifter'd flight; ere to black Hecat's fummons
The fhard-born beetle with his drowsy hums

Hath tung night's yawning peal.

And