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-shine 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 fun, 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 ftout 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
By my fo potent art.

Senfes returning.

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

Begin

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

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

St.

(42) Weak masters tho' ye be.] The meaning of this paffage may be " Though you are but inferior masters of these fupernatural powers-though you possess them but in a low degree." Spenser uses the fame kind of expreffion, B. 3. Cant. 8. St. 4.

Where she [the witch] was wont her sprights to en

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 fucks, there lurk I;
In a cowflip'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 blossom that hangs on the bough.

Patience.

Alon. Irreparable is the loss; and patience

Says, it is past 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 song shews 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 fat fatigue of the fun,when he rests among the bloffoms-and at the time, when fairies and aërial sprits are and ever have been supposed to enjoy their revels-after funset he gaily travels about on the back of the bat.

General Obfervation.

Though the Tempest has much of the novel in it, no

one has yet been able to meet with any such novel as can

be

be supposed to have furnished S. with materials for writing 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 likewife of the Italians,) concludes his note with the mention of two of their plays-Il 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 7., that its plan is regular; and that S. has made it instrumental to the pro--duction 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 failors, 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 defart island, the native effusion of untaught affection, the punishment of guilt, and the final happiness of the pair for whom our paffions 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 fublime and amazing imagination of S. which foars 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 prefumes 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 fo fuccessful. 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 Ludlow Cafile.

The reader will find in the Adventurer, No. 93 and 97, an ingenious criticism on The Tempest. "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

IF

F music be the food of love, play on;
Give me (1) excess of it; that, surfeiting,

The appetite may ficken and so 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 defcription of paradise, where speaking of the dolce aura, he says,

E quella à i fiori, à i pomi, e à la verzura,
Gli odor diversi depredando giva,
E di tutti facera una mistura,

Che di fuavità à l' alma notriva.

Orl. Fur. L. 34. f. 51.

"The two first of these lines express the air's ftealing of the native perfumes, and the two latter, that vernal delight which they give the mind. Besides, it may be further observed, that this expreffion of the air's stealing and difperf