Are like invulnerable:9 if

you could hurt,
Your swords are now too masly for your strengths,
And will not be uplifted : But, remember,
(For that's my business to you, ) that you three
From Milan did supplant good Prospero ;
Expos'd unto the sea, which hath requit it,
Him, and his innocent child : for which foul deed
The powers, delaying, not forgetting, have

Incens'd the feas and shores, yea, all the creatures, | Against your peace : Thee, ofthy son, Alonso,

we were long indebted for our only English Dictionary. In a small book, entitled Humane indufiry: or, A History of most Manual Arts, printed in 1661, page 93, is the following pailage : « The woolbearing trees in Æthiopia, which Virgil speaks of, and the Eriophori Arbores in Theophrasius, are not such trees as have a certain wool or Dowl upon the outGde of them, as the small cotton; but short trees that bear a ball upon the top, pregnant with wool, which the Syrians call Cott, the Græcians Goffypium, the Italians Bombagio, and we Bombafe. 6 There is a certain shell-fish in the sea, called Pinna, that bears a moffy DOWL, or wool, whereof cloth was fpun and made.

-Again, page 95: “ Trichitis, or the hayric ftone, by some Greek authors, and Alumen plumaceum, or downy alum, by the Latinifts : this hair or Dowl is fpun into thread, and weaved into cloth." I have fince discovered the same word in The Ploughman's Tale, erroneously attributed to Chaucer; v. 3202 ;

" And swore by cock' is herte and blode,

" He would tere him every doule." STEEVENS.
Cole in his Latin Dicionary 1679, interprets "young dowle."
by lanugo. MALONE.

the elements
Of whom your swords are temper'd, may as well
Wound the loud winds, or with bemock'd-at slabs
Kill the Mili-closing waters, as diminish
One dowle that's in my plume; my fellow ministers
Are like in vulnerable:] So, in Phaer's Virgil, 1573:

“ Their swords by them they laid --
" And on the filthy birds they beat--
" But fethers none do from them fal, nor wound for strok

doth bleed,
* Nor force of weapons hurt them can.” Ritson,

9

They have bereft; and do pronounce by me,
Ling’ring perdition ( worse than any death
Can be at once,) shall step by step attend
You, and your ways; whose wraths to guard you

from (Which here, in this most desolate isle, else falls Upon your heads,) is nothing, but heart's forrow, And a clear life 2 ensuing. 3 He vanishes in thunder: then, to soft musick, enter the

Shapes again, and dance with mops and mowes 4 and carry out the table. Pro. (Afide.) Bravely the figure of this harpy

hast thou Perform'd, my Ariel ; a grace it had, devouring: Of my instruction haft thou nothing 'bated, In what thou hadft to say: so, with good life,

2 -clear life) Pure, blameless, innocent. JOHNSON. So, in limon: --roots you clear heavens. » STEEVENS. 3 – is nothing, but reart's sorrow,

And a clear life ensuing.) The meaning, which is somewhat obscured by the expression, is, a miserable fate, which nothing but contrition and amendment of life can avert. MALONE,

- with mops and mowes— So, in K. Lear :
-and Flibbertigibbet of mopping and mowing.

STEEVENS. The old copy, by a manifest error of the press, reads--with 110cks. So afterwards :--- Will be here with mop and mowe. »

MALONE. To mock and to mowe, seem to have had a meaning somewhat fimilar ; i. e. to insult, by making mouths, or wry faces. STEEVENS.

--with good life, ) With good life may mean, with exact presentation of their feveral characters, with obfervation strange of their particular and diftin& parts. So we lay, he acted to the life.

Johnson. Thus in the 6th Canto of the Barons' Wars, by Drayton :

- Done for the last with such exceeding life,

As art therein with nature seem'd at strife. » Good life, however, in Twelfth Vight, seems to be used for innocent jollity, as we now lay a bon vivant: 1 Would you (says

4

66

6

And observation strange, my meaner ministers
Their several kinds have done :

my high charms
work,
And these, mine enemics, are all knit up
In their distractions : they now are in my power;
And in these fits I leave them, whilst I visit
Young Ferdinand (whom they suppose is drown'd,)
And his and my lov'd darling.

(Exit PROSPERO from above. Gon. I' the name of something holy, fir, why

stand you

In this llrange stare ?
ALON.

O, it is monstrous ! monstrous!
Methought, the billows spoke, and told me of it;
The winds did fing it to me; and the thunder,
That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounc'd
The name of Prosper; it did bass my trespass.?

(

the Clown) have a love song, or a song of good life", Sir Toby answers, « A love song, a love song ;». Ay, ay, (replies Sir Andrew) I care not for good life. It is plain, from the chara&er of the laft speaker, that he was meant to inistake the senfe in which good life is used by the Clown. It may therefore, in the present instance, mean, honest alacrity, or cheerfulness.

Life seems to be used in the chorus to the fifth ac of K. Henry V. with some meaning like that wanted to explain the approbation of Prospero :

in which cannot in their huge and proper life
" Be here presented.

STEEVENS.
To do any thing with good life, is still a provincial expression in
the West of England, and signifies, to do it with the full bent and
energy of mind: --- and observation strange, is with such minuti
attention to the orders given, as to excite admiration. Henley.

6 Tlcir several kinds have done : ) i. e. have discharged the fe: veral funcions allotted to their different natures. Thus in Antony and Cleopatra, Ad V. fc. ii, the Clown fays -

- You must think this, look you, that the worm will do his kind. STEEVENS.

bass my trespass.) The deep pipe toll it me in a rough bafs found. JOHNSON.

7

Therefore my son i’the ooze is bedded; and I'll feek him deeper than e'er plummet sounded, And with him there lie muddéd.?

[Exit. SEB.

But one fiend at a time, I'll fight their legions o’er. ANT:

I'll be thy second.

(Exeunt SEB. and Ant. Gon. All three of thein are desperate ; their great

guilt, Like poison given to work a great time after, Now gins to bite the spirits :-I do beseech you That are of suppler joints, follow them swiftly, And hinder them from what this ecstacy' May now provoke them to. ADRI.

Follow, I pray you.

[Exeunt.

So, in Spenser's Fairy Queen, B. II. c. 12:

the rolling fea resounding soft • In his big base them filly answered." STEEVENS. 7 And with him there lie mudded.

But one fiend | As these hemisichs, taken together, exceed the proportion of a verse, I cannot help regarding the words with him, and but, as playhouse interpolations.

The Tempest was evidently one of the last works of Shakspeare ; and it is therefore natural to suppose the metre of it must have been exa& and regular. Dr. Farmer concurs with me in this supposition.

STEEVENS. : Like poison given, &c.] The natives of Africa have been supposed to be possessed of the secret how to temper poisons with such art as not to operate till several years after they were administered. Their drugs were then as certain in their effe&, as fubtle in their preparation. So, in the celebrated libel called - Leicester's Commonwealth :" " I heard hiin once myselfe in publique ad at Oxford, and that in presence of my lord of Leicester, maintain that poyson might be fo tempered and given as it should not appear presently, and yet should kill the party afterwards at what time should be appointed." STEEVENS.

- this ecitacy-- Ecstacy meant not anciently, as at present, rapturous pleasure, but alienation of mind, Mr. Locke has not inelegantly styled it dreaming with our eyes open. STEEVENS. VOL. IV.

I

9

A C T IV.

SCENE I.

Before Profpero's cell.

Enter PROSPERO, FERDINAND, and MIRANDA,

Pro. If I have too austerely punish'd you,
Your compensation makes amends ; for I
Have given you here a thread of mine own life, a

2

- thread of mine own life, ) The old copy reads—thirds, The word thread was formerly so spelt, as appears from the fol. lowing passage :

Long maist thou live, and when the fisters shall decrec - To cut in twaine the twisted third of life,

6. Then let him die, » &c. See comedy of Mucedorus, 1619, signat. C. 3. HAWKINS.

A third of mine own life » is a fibre or a part of my own life, Prospero confiders himself as the stock or parent-tree, and his daughter as a fibre or portion of himself, and for whose benefit he himself lives. In this feuse the word is used in Markham's English Hufhandman, edit. 1635, p. 146: 6. Cut of all the inaine rootes, within half a foot of the tree, only the small thriddes or twist rootes you shall not cut at all.” Again, ibid. Every branch and third of the root." This is evidently the same word as thread, which is likewise spelt third by lord Bacon. Tollet.

So, in Lingua, &c. 1607 i and I could furnish many more ine fances :

66 For as a subtle spider closely fitting
os In center of her web that fpreadeth round,
" If the least fy but touch the smallest third,

" She feels it instantly.
The following quotation, however, should seem to place the
meaning beyond all dispute. In Acolastus, a comedy, 1540, is
this pailage :

com-one of wordly shame's children, of his countenance, and THRIDE of his body. STEEVENS.

Again, in Tancred and Gifmund, a tragedy, 1592, Tancred,
Speaking of his intention to kill his daughier, says,

Againit all law of kinde, to shred in twaine
- The golden threede that doth us both maintain,'

MALONE.

1

66