Some tricks of desperation : All, but mariners, Plung’d in the foaming brine, and quit the veffel, Then all a-fire with me : the king's son, Ferdinand, With hair up-staring (then like reeds, not hair) Was the firêt man that leap'd; cried, Hell is empty, And all the devils are here.

Pro. Why, that's my spirit!
But was not this nigh fhore?

Ari. Close by, my master.
Pro. But are they, Ariel, safe?

Ari. Not a hair perish'd ;
On their ' sustaining garments not a blemish,

If it be at all necessary to explain the meaning, it is this: Not a foul but felt such a fever as madmen feel, when the frantic fir is upon them. STEEVENS.

-fuftaining) i. e. Their garments that bore them up and supported them. So K. Lear, ačt IV. sc. iv.

“ In our sustaining corn.” Mr. Edwards was of opinion that we should read sea-stained garments; for (says he) it was not the floating of their cloaths

, but the magic of Prospero which preserved, as it it had wrecked them. Nor was the miracle, that their garments had not been at first discoloured by the fea-water, which even that sustaining would not have prevented, unless it had been on the air, not on the water; but, as Gonzalo says, “ that their garments “ being (as they were) drenched in the sea, held notwithstanding “ their freshness and gloss, being rather new-dyed than stained 66 with salt-water."

For this, and all such notes as are taken from the MSS. of the late Mr. Edwards, I am indebted to the friendship of Benjamin Way, Efq; who very obligingly procured them froin the executors of that gentleman, with leave for their publication. Such of them as are omitted in this edition had been sometimes forestalled by the remarks of others, and sometimes by my own. The reader, however, might have been justly offended, had any other reasons prevented me from communicating the unpublished fentiments of that sprightly critick and most amiable mân, as entire as I received them. Steevens.

This note of Mr. Edwards, with which I suppose no reader is fatisfied, shews with how much greater ease critical emendations are destroyed than made, and how willingly every man would be changing the text, if his imagination would furnith alterations. JOHNSON.

But

But fresher than before: and, as thou bad'ft me,
In troops I have dispers'd them 'bout the ifle :
The king's son have I landed by himself;
Whom I left cooling of the air with fighs,
In an odd angle of the ille, and fitting,
His arms in this sad knot.

Pro. Of the king's ship,
The mariners, say how thou hast dispos’d,
And all the rest o' the fleet ?

Ari. Safely in harbour
Is the king's ship; in the deep nook, where once
Thou call aft me up at midnight to fetch dew
From the still-vex'd Bermoothes, there she's hid :

The

2 From the Aill-vex'd Bermoothes.] Theobald fays Ber. moothes is printed by mistake for Bermudas. No. That was the name by which the islands then went, as we may see by the voyages

of that time; and by our author's contemporary poets. Fletcher, in his Women Plcafed, fays, The devil hould think of purchafing that egg-fhell to victual out a witch for the Bermoothes. Smith, in his account of these islands, p. 172. says, that the Bermudas were so fearful to the world, that many called them The Isle of Devils.-P. 174.-to all seamen no lej's terrible than an inchanted den of furies. And no wonder, for the clime was extremely subject to storms and hurricanes ; and the islands were surrounded with scattered rocks lying shallowly hid under the surface of the water. WARBURTON.

Again in Decker's If this be pot a good Play, the Devil is in it, 1612.

“ Sir, if you have made me tell a lye, they'll send me on a voyage to the island of Hogs and Devils, the Bermudas."

STEEVENS. The opinion that Bermudas was haunted with evil spirits continued fo late as the civil wars, In a little piece of sir John Berkinhead's, intitled, Two Centuries of Paul's Church-yard, una cum indice expurgatorio, &c. 12°, in page 62, under the title of Cafes of Confiience, is this. 34.

Whether Bermudas and the parliament-house lie under “ one planet, feeing both are haunted with devils.” PERCY.

Bermudas was on this account the cant name for some privileged place, in which the cheats and riotous bullies of Shakespeare's time assembled. So in The Devil is an Ass, by Ben. Jonson,

keeps he still your quarter
66 In the Bermudas?"
C 3

Again

1

The mariners all under hatches stow'd;
Whom, with a charm join’d to their suffer'd labour,
I have left asleep: and for the rest o'the fleet,
Which I difpers’d, they all have met again;
And are upon 3 the Mediterranean flote,
Bound sadly home for Naples ;
Supposing that they saw the king's ship wreck’d,
And his great person perish.

Pro. Ariel, thy charge
Exactly is perform’d; but there's more work:
+ What is the time o’the day?

Ari. Past the mid season.
Pro. At least two glafles : The time 'twixt six and

now, Must by us both be spent most preciously. Ari. Is there more toil? Since thou dost give me

pains, Let me remember thee what thou hast promis’d, Which is not yet perform’d me.

Pro. How now? moody?
What is't thou can'at demand?

Ari. My liberty.
Pro. Before the time be out? no more.

Ari. I pray thee:
Remember, I have done thee worthy service;
Told thee no lies, made thee no mistakings, fero'd

gave my word

3

Again in one of his Epistles,

“ Have their Bermudas, and their straights i'th' Strand." Again in The Devil is an A/s,

I " For one that's run away to the Bermudas." STEEVENS. the Mediterranean flote.] Flote is wave.

Flot. Fr.

STEEVENS. 4 What is the time o' the day?] This passage needs not be disturbed, it being common to ask a question, which the next moment enables us to answer ; be that thinks it faulty may eafily adjuft it thus: Pro. What is the time othe day? Past the mid season? Ari. At least two glasses. Pro. The time 'twixt fix and now JOHNSON.

Without

Τ Ε Μ Ρ Ε S T.

23
Without or grudge, or grumblings : thou didst pro-

mise
To bate me a full year.

Pro. 5 Dost thou forget
From what a torment I did free thee?

Ari. No.
Pro. Thou doft; and think'st it much, to tread

the ooze

5 Doft thou forget] That the character and conduct of Prospero
may be underitood, something must be known of the system of
enchantment, which supplied all the marvellous found in the ro-
mances of the middle ages. This system seems to be founded on
the opinion that the fallen spirits, having different degrees of
guilt, had different habitations allotted them at their expulfion,
fome being confined in hell, fome (as Hooker, who delivers the
opinion of our poet's age, expresses it) dispersed in air, some ox
carth, fome in water, others in caves, dens, or minerals under the
earth. Of these, some were more malignant and mischievous
than others. The earthy spirits seem to have been thought the
most depraved, and the aerial the least vitiated. Thus Prospero
observes of Ariel:

Thou waft a spirit too delicate
To act her earthy and abhorr'd commands.
Over these spirits a power might be obtained by certain rites per-
formed or charms learned. This power was called The Black
Art, or Knowledge of Enchantment. The enchanter being (as
king James observes in his Demonology) one who commands the
devil, whereas the witch serves him. Those who thought best of
this art, the existence of which was, I am afraid, believed very
seriously, held, that certain sounds and characters had a physical
power over spirits, and compelled their agency; others, who con-
demned the practice, which in reality was surely never practised,
were of opinion, with more reason, that the power of charms
arose only from compact, and was no more than the spirits volun.
tary allowed them for the seduction of The art was held
by all, though not equally criminal, yet unlawful, and therefore
Casaubon, speaking of one who had commerce with spirits,
blames him, though he imagines him one of the best kind who
dealt with them by way of command. Thus Prospero repents of
his art in the loft scene. The spirits were always considered as in
some measure enslaved to the enchanter, at least for a time, and
as serving with unwillingness, therefore Ariel so often begs for
liberty ; and Caliban observes, that the spirits ferve Prospero with
no good will, but hate him rootedly. Of these trifles enough.

JOHNSON.

Of

man.

с 4

Of the salt deep;
• To run upon the sharp wind of the north;
To do me business in the veins o the earth,
When it is bak'd with frost.

Ari. I do not, fir.

Pro. Thou ly'ft, malignant thing! Haft thou forgot The foul witch Sycorax, who, with age, and envy, Was grown into a hoop? haft thou forgot her ?

Ari. No, fir.
Pro. Thou haft: Where was she born ? speak; tel!

me.

Ari. Sir, in Argier ?

Pro. Oh, was the so? I must,
Once in a month, recount what thou hast been,
Which thou forgett'st. This damn’d witch, Sycorax,
For mischiefs manifold, and sorceries terrible
To enter human hearing, from Argier,
'Thou knowst, was banish'd; for one thing she did,
They would not take her life: Is not this true ?

Ari. Ay, fir.
Pro. This blue ey'd hag was hither brought with

child,
And here was left by the sailors : Thou, my slave,
As thou report'st thyself, wast then her servant :
And, for thou wast a spirit too delicate
To act her earthy and abhorr'd commands,
Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee,
By help of her more potent ministers,
And in her most unmitigable rage,
Into a cloven pine ; within which rift
Imprison'd, thou didft painfully remain

run upon the sharp wind of the north;] Sir W. Davenant and Dryden, in their alteration of this play, have made a very wanton change in the line, and read,

To run against, &c. Steevens.

-in Argier.] Argier is the ancient English name for Algiers. See a pamphlet entitled, " A true Relation of the Travailes, &c. of William Davies, barber-surgeon, &c.” 1614. In this is a chapter“ on the description, &c. of Argier." STERVENS,

A dozen

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