1635, and is interred in the chancel of the church of Stratford near his wife. He was buried on the 26th of November. MALONE.

P. 9, 1. 19. She left one child only, a daughter,] Elizabeth, our poet's grand-daughter, who appears to have been a favourite, Shakspeare having left her by his will a memorial of his affection, though she at that time was but eight years old, was born in Feb. 1607-8, as appears by an entry in the Register of Stratford. MALONE.

P. 21, 1. 1. are both concerned in the mur. der of their husbands,] It does not appear that Hamlet's mother was concerned in the death of her husband. MALONE.

P. 23, 1. 5. - of a name for which he had so great a veneration.] Mr. Betterton was born in 1635, and had many opportunities of collecting information relative to Shakspeare, but unfortunately the age in which he lived was not an age of curiosity. Had either he or Dryden or Sir William D'Avenant taken the trouble to visit our poet's youngest daughter, who lived till 1662, or his grand-daughter, who did not die till 1670, many particulars might have been preserved which are now irrecoverably lost. Shakspeare's sister, Joan Hart, who was only five years younger than him, died at Stratford in Nov. 1646, at the age of seventy-six; and from her undoubtedly his two daughters, and his grand-daughter Lady Barnard, had learned several circumstances of his early history antecedent to the year 1600. MALONE.

This Account of the Life of Shakspeare is printed from Mr. Rowe's second edition, in which it had been abridged and altered by himself after its appearance in 1709. STEEVENS.

NOTES TO THE TEMPEST.

The Tempest and The Midsummer Night's Dream are the noblest efforts of that sublime and amazing imagination peculiar to Shakspeare, which soars above the bounds of nature without forsaking sense; or, more properly, carries nature along with him beyond her established limits. Fletcher seems particularly to have admired these two plays, and hath wrote two in imitation of them, The Sea Voyage and The faithful Shepherdess. But when he presumes to break a lance with Shakspeare, and write in emulation of him, as he does in The False One, which is the rival of Antony and Cleopatra, he is not so successful. After him, Sir John Suckling and Milton catched the brightest fire of their imagination from these two plays; which shines fantastically indeed in The Goblins, but much more nobly and serenely in The Mask at Ludlow Castle. WARBURTON.

No one has hitherto been lucky enough to discover the romance on which Shakspeare may be supposed to have founded this play, the beauties of which could not secure it from the criticism of Ben Jonson, whose malignity appears to have been more than equal to his wit. In the induction to Bartholemew Fair, he says:,,If there be ,,never a servant monster in the fair, who can ,,help it, he says, nor a nest of antiques? He is ,,loth to make nature afraid in his plays, like

,,those that beget Tales, Tempests, and such like ,,drolleries." STEEVENS.

I was informed by the late Mr. Collins of Chichester, that Shakspeare's Tempest, for which no origin is yet assigned, was formed on a romance called Aurelio and Isabella, printed in Italian, Spanish, French, and English, in 1588. But though this information has not proved true on examination, an useful conclusion may be drawn from it, that Shakspeare's story is somewhere to be found in an Italian novel, at least that the story preceded Shakspeare. Mr. Collins had searched this subject with no less fidelity than judgement and industry; but his memory failing in his last calamitous indisposition, he probably gave me the name of one novel for another. I remember he added a circumstance, which may lead to a discovery, that the principal character of the ro mance, answering to Shakspeare's Frospero, was a chemical necromancer, who had bound a spirit like Ariel to obey his call, and perform his services. It was a common pretence of dealers in the occult sciences to have a demon at command. At least Aurelio, gr Orelio, was probably one of the names of this romance, the production and multiplicity of gold being the grand object of alchemy. Taken at large, the magical part of the Tempest is founded on that sort of philosophy which was practised by John Dee and his associ ates, and has been called the Rosicrucian. The name Ariel came from the Talmudistick mysteries with which the learned Jews had infected this Science. T. WARTON.

Mr. Theobald tells us, that The Tempest must have been written after 1609, because the Bermu da islands, which are mentioned in it, were un

known to the English until that year; but this is, a mistake. He might have seen in Hackluyt, 1600, folio, a description of Bermuda, by Henry May, who was shipwrecked there in 1593.

It was, however, one of our author's last works. In 1598 he played a part in the original Every Man in his Humour. Two of the charac ters are Prospero and Stephano. Here Ben Jonson taught him the pronunciation of the latter word, which is always right in The Tempest.

„Is not this Stephano, my drunken butler ?“ And always wrong in his carlier play, The Merchant of Venice, which had been on the stage at least two or three years before its publication in 1600.

,,My friend Stephano, signify, I pray you," etc.

So little did Mr. Capell know of his author, when he idly supposed his school literature might perhaps have been lost by the dissipation of youth, or the busy scene of public life! FARMER.

This play must have been written before 1614, when Jonson sneers at it in his Bartholomew Fair. In the latter plays of Shakspeare,, he has less of pun and quibble than in his early ones. In The Merchant of Venice, he expressly declares against them. This perhaps might be one criterion to discover the dates of his plays. BLACKSTONE.

See Mr. Malone's attempt to ascertain the order of Shakspeare's plays. STEEVENS.

Pag. 25, line 10. - fall to't yarely] i. e. readily, nimbly. Our author is frequent in his use of this word. STEEVENS.

Here it is applied as a sea-term, and in other parts of the scene. So he uses the adjective, Act V. sc. v. „,Our ship is tight and yare." And in one of the Henries: yare are our ships." To

this day the sailors say,,,sit yare to the helm."

P. 25, 1. 20.

T. WARTON.

Play the men.] i. e. act with

spirit, behave like men. STEEVENS.

P. 26, 1. 8. of the present,] i. e. of the present instant. STEEVENS.

P. 26, 1. 15. Gonzalo. It may be observed of Gonzalo, that, being the only good man that appears with the king, he is the only man that preserves his cheerfulness in the wreck, and his hope on the island. JOHNSON.

P. 27, 1. 2. an unstanch'd wench.] Unstanch'd, I am willing to believe, means incontinent, STEEVENS.

P. 27, 1. 3. Lay her a. -hold, a-hold;} To lay a ship a-hold, is to bring her to lie as near the wind as she can, in order to keep clear of the land, and get her out to sea. STEEVENS.

P. 27, 1. 3. set her two courses; off to sea again,] The courses are the main sail and fore sail. JOHNSON.

P. 27, 1. 12. merely In this place signifies absolutely. In which sense it is used in Hamlet, Act 1. sc. iii. STEEVENS.

P. 27, 1. 19. to glut him.] Shakspeare probably wrote, t'englut him, to swallow him; for which I know not that glut is ever used by him. In this signification englut, from engloutir, French, occurs frequently. Yet Milton writes glutted offal for swallowed, and therefore, perhaps, the present text may stand. JOHNSON.

P. 27, 1. 20. Mercy on us! etc. - Farewell, brother! etc.] All these lines have been hitherto given to Gonzalo, who has no brother in the ship. It is probable that the lines succeeding the confused noise within should be considered as spoken by no determinate characters. JOHNSON.