By my

And ye that on the sands with printless foot (41)
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him
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 whose aid,
(Weak masters tho' ye be (42)) I have bedimm'd
The noon-tide sun, call’d forth the mutinous winds,
And ’twixt the green sea and the azur’d vault
Set roaring war; to the dread rattling thunder
Have I giv'n fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak
With his own bolt; the strong-bas'd promontory
Have I made shake, and by the spurs pluckt up
The pine and cedar; graves at my command
Have wak'd their sleepers, op'd and let them forth

so
potent art.

Senses returning

The charm dissolves apace ;
And as the morning steals upon the night
Melting the darkness, so their rising senfes

Begin
(41) With printless foot, &c.] So Milton in his Masque,

Whilst from off the waters fleet,
Thus I set my printless feet.

St.
(42) Weak masters thoʻye be.] The meaning of this par-
fage may be-" Though you are but inferior masters of
thefe fupernatural powers-though you poffefs them but in
a low degree.” Spenser uses the same kind of expression,
B. 3. Cant. 8. St. 4.
Where Nie [the witch] was wont her sprights to en-

tain
The masters of her art. There was the fain
To call thein all in order to her aid. St,

Begin to chase the ign'rant fumes, that mantle
Their clearer reason

Their understanding
Begins to swell, and the approaching tide
Will shortly fill the reasonable shore,
That now lies foul and muddy.

Ariel's 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 (43) merrily;
Merrily, merrily, shall I live now,
Under the bloffom that hangs on the bough.

Patience.

Alon. Irreparable is the loss; and patience Says, it is pait her cure.

Prof. I rather think You have not fought her help; of whose soft grace, For the like lofs I have her sovereign aid, And rest myself content.

(43) Sun-fet.] The whole of this beautiful fong Thews this to be the true reading; Ariel is speaking of the pleasures which he enjoys from his liberty, the place of his repose for the day, from the heat and fatigue of the fun, when he rests among the blossoms and at the time, when fairies and aërial sprits are and ever have been supposed to enjoy their revels-after sunset he gaily travels about on the back of the bat.

General Observation. Though the Tempejt has much of the novel in it, no one has yet been able to ineet with any such novel as can

be

be supposed to have furnished S. with materials for wris ting this play : the fable of which must therefore pass entirely for his own production, till the contrary can be made appear by any future discovery. One of the poet's editors, after observing that the persons of the drama are all Italians, and the unities all regularly observed in it (a custom likewise of the Italians,) concludes his note with the mention of two of their playsIl Negromante di L. ARIOSTO, and Il Negromante Palliato di Gio. Angelo PETRUCCI; one or other of which, he seems to think, may have given rise to the Tempest : but he is mistaken in both of them, and the last must needs be out of the question, being later than S's time. Capell.

It is observed of the Tempest, says J., that its plan is regular; and that S. has made it instrumental to the

production of many characters, diversified with boundless invention, and preserved with profound skill in nature, ex-tensive knowledge of opinions, and accurate obfervation of life. In a single drama are here exhibited princes, courtiers, and sailors, all speaking in their real characters. There is the agency of airy spirits, and of an earthly gob-lin: the operations of magic, the tumults of a storm, the adventures of a desart island, the native effusion of un-taught affection, the punishment of guilt, and the final happiness of the pair for whom our passions and reason are equally interested. W. observes that the two plays the Tempest and the Midsummer Night's Dream, are the noblest efforts of that sublime and amazing imagination of S. 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 imi-tation of them, The Sea Voyage and The Faithful Shepherdefs ; but when he presumes to break a lance with S. and write in emulation of him, as he does in The False One, * which is the rival of Anthony 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 in The Goblins, but much more nobly and serenely in The Masque at Ludlows Laffle.

The

The reader will find in the Adventurer, No. 93 and 97, an ingenious criticism on The Tempeft. • A play," says Mrs. Montague, “ which alone will prove our author to have had a fertile, a fublime, and original genius.” See the Spectator, Vol. VI. No. 419.

Twelfth

Music and Love. If

Give me (1) excess of it ; that, surfeiting, The appetite may ficken and fo die.

That

(1) Give me, &c.] i. e, “ Music being the food of love, let me have excess of it, that surfeiting therewith, the appetites which called for that food, may ficken and entirely cease.” The reader will do well to observe the exact and beautiful propriety of the fimile in the last lines, Milton, as Bp. Newton justly observes, undoubtedly took the following fine passage from this of S.

Now gentle gales
Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense
Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole

Those balmy spoils. Par. Loft, B. 4. v. 156. Though, he tells us, Thyer is of opinion, that Milton rather alluded to the following lines of Ariosto's description of paradise, where speaking of the dolce aura, he says,

E quella à i fiori, à i pomi, e à la verzura,
Glî odor diversi depredando giva,
E di tutti facera una mistura,
Che di suavità à l'alma notriva.

Orl. Fur. L. 34. f. 57. « The two first of these lines express the air's stealing of the native perfumes, and the two latter, that vernal delight which they give the mind. Besides, it may be further observed, that this expression of the air’s stealing and dispers