but not after y common manner, yet he reciteth a storie of a young damoisell of Scotland which was got with child of an inchaunted divell, thinking that he had bene a fayre young man which had layen with hir, whereupon she brought foorth so deformed a monster, that he feared the beholders." He then proceeds to observe, that the spirits thus procreating are not of a "subtill Materia," " but a more grose and earthie cause, as Nymphæ, Dryades, Hobgoblins, and Fairies," adding, that two instances of such connection, "it is no straunge secret to disclose," had taken place" in fewe yeares heere in Englande.”

We find Prospero, in fact, employing these four classes of spirits in succession, but in every instance, through the immediate or remote agency of Ariel. Those of fire are thus described:

The spirits of the water are divided into sea-nymphs, or elves of brooks and standing lakes. Under the first of these characters they are most exquisitely introduced as solacing Ferdinand, after the terrors of his shipwreck :

Court'sied when you have, and kiss'd,
(The wild waves whist,)

Foot it featly here and there;

And, sweet sprites, the burden bear."

Nothing, indeed, can be more appropriately wild than the imagery of the ensuing song, which arrests the ear of Ferdinand whilst he is uttering his astonishment at the previous melody:

"Where should this musick be? i' the air, or the earth?

It sounds no more: Sitting on a bank,
Weeping again the king my father's wreck,
This musick crept by me upon the waters;
Allaying both their fury, and my passion,
With it's sweet air: thence I have follow'd it,
Or it hath drawn me rather:
But 'tis gone.
No, it begins again."

"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.” *

Well may Ferdinand exclaim, "This is no mortal business!" The spirits of earth, or goblins, were usually employed by Prospero as instruments of punishment. Thus Caliban, apprehensive of chastisement for bringing in his wood too slowly, gives us a fearful detail of their inflictions:

"His spirits hear me

For every trifle are they set upon me:
Sometime like apes, that moe and chatter at me,
And after bite me; then like hedg-hogs, which

* Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. pp. 43-46. Act i. sc. 2.-This song has been admirably imitated by Kirke White in the opening of his fine fragment, entitled "The Dance of the Consumptives."-Vol. i. p. 295. 1st edit.

Lie tumbling in my bare-foot way, and mount.
Their pricks at my foot-fall: sometime am I
All wound with adders, who, with cloven tongues,

Do hiss me into madness." *

They are afterwards commissioned, in the shape of hounds, to hunt this hag-born monster, and his friends Trinculo and Stephano, Prospero telling Ariel,

"Go, charge my goblins that they grind their joints

With dry convulsions; shorten up their sinews

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

Lastly, the spirits of air, as beings of a more delicate and refined nature, are appointed by our magician to personate, under the direction of Ariel, a "most majestic vision;" spirits," says their great task-master,

and which, on the fading of this "insubstantial pageant," melt "into air, into thin air."

It appears, also, that these etherial forms were occupied night and day in chanting the most delicious melodies, or in suggesting the most delightful dreams. The isle, says Caliban,

But of the filmy texture, the tiny dimensions, and fairy recreations of these elegant beings, we have the most exquisite description in the song which the poet puts into the mouth of Ariel on the prospect of his approaching freedom :

"Where the bee sucks, there suck I;

In a cowslip's bell I lie:

There I couch when owls do cry.

On the bat's back I do fly,

After summer merrily:

Merrily, merrily, shall I live now,

Under the blossom that hangs on the bough."

That all these elementary spirits were agents only on compulsion, and their obedience the result solely of magic power, is evident from the conduct of Ariel, and the language of Caliban; the former repeatedly asking for liberty, and the latter declaring, that they all do hate him, as rootedly as I."

It is equally clear, from various parts of this play, that each class had a period prescribed for its operations: thus Prospero threatens Caliban, that

❝ urchins

Shall for that vast of night that may work,

All exercise on thee;" †

and, in invoking the various elves, he speaks of those

a doctrine which is still more minutely expressed in other dramas of our poet. In Hamlet, for instance, we are told that, at "the crowing of the cock,"

"The extravagant and erring spirit hies
To his confine;" §

* Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 154. Act v. sc. 1. Ibid. p. 151. Act v. sc. 1.

+ Ibid. pp. 38, 39. Act i. sc. 2. § Ibid. vol. xviii. pp. 24, 25. Act i. sc. 1.

and in King Lear, that the foul" fiend Flibbertigibbet begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock." *

One principal reason for the reluctancy expressed by Ariel and his associates was, that they were driven, by the irresistible control of the magician, to perform deeds often alien to their dispositions, and to which, if left to themselves, they were either partially or totally inadequate, and, indeed, for the most part utterly averse. We accordingly find Prospero, in his celebrated invocation to these various ministers of his art, addressing them in a tone of high authority; "by your' aid," he exclaims,

"(Weak masters though ye be) I have be-dimm'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 given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak
With his own bolt: the strong bas'd promontory
Have I made shake; and by the spurs pluck'd up
The pine and cedar: graves, at my command,
Have wak'd their sleepers; oped, and let them forth
By my so potent art."+

This is a passage, in which, with its immediately preceding context, Shakspeare has been indebted, as Dr. Farmer observes, to Golding's translation of the Medea of Ovid; having evidently, in many parts, adopted the very language of that version. But it is also strictly conformable to the powers with which the magicians of his own day were invested. "These," says Scot, "deale with no inferiour causes: these fetch divels out of hell, and angels out of heaven; these raise up what bodies they list, though they were dead, buried, and rotten long before; and fetch soules out of heaven or hell. These, I saie, take upon them also the raising of tempests, and earthquakes, and to doo as much as God himselfe can doo. These are no small fooles, they go not to worke with a baggage tode, or a

Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xvii. p. 471. Act iii. sc. 4.. + Ibid. vol. iv. pp. 151, 152. Act v. sc. 1.