Though every drop of water swear against it,
And gape at wid'st to glut him.

[A confused Noise within.] Mercy on us!—

We split, we split !-Farewell my wife and children! -Farewell, brother!-We split, we split, we split.-Ant. Let's all sink with the king.

Seb. Let's take leave of him.

[Exit. [Exit.

Gon. Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground; ling, heath, broom, furze, any thing: The wills above be done! but I would fain die a dry death. [Exit.

SCENE II. The Island: before the Cell of Prospero.

Enter PROSPERO and MIRANDA.

Mira. If by your art, my dearest father, you have
Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.
The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch,
But that the sea, mounting to the welkin's cheek,
Dashes the fire out. O! I have suffer'd

With those that I saw suffer: a brave vessel,
Who had no doubt some noble creatures in her,
Dash'd all to pieces. O! the cry did knock
Against my very heart. Poor souls! they perish'd.
Had I been any god of power, I would

Have sunk the sea within the earth, or e'er1

7 To englut, to swallow him.

8 The old copy reads, long heath, brown furze, &c. The cor "ection was made by Sir Thomas Hanmer, who, in his edition, substituted the words ling and broom.

9 The folios have stinking, probably a press error. I should prefer to read flaming, the words, as written or printed with the long fl and ft, as in the old copies, are easily confounded. The subsequent dashes the fire out may serve to confirm this conjecture.

i. e. or ever, ere ever; signifying, in modern English, sooner than at any time. Or is a contraction of ere, aen, Sax. prius, antequam, priusquam; ever, from aeƑɲe, aliquando, unquam.

It should the good ship so have swallowed, and
The fraughting souls within her.

I have done nothing but in care of thee,

No harm.

(Of thee, my dear one! thee, my daughter!) who
Art ignorant of what thou art, nought knowing
Of whence I am; nor that I am more better?
Than Prospero, master of a full poor cell,
And thy no greater father.

Mira.

More to know

'Tis time

Did never meddle3 with my thoughts.

Pro.

I should inform thee further. Lend thy hand,
And pluck my magic garment from me.—So:

[Lays down his mantle. Lie there, my art.-Wipe thou thine eyes; have comfort.

The direful spectacle of the wrack5, which touch'd The very virtue of compassion in thee,

I have with such prevision in mine art

2 The double comparative is in frequent use among our elder writers.

3 To medulle, is to mix, or interfere with.

4 Lord Burleigh, when he put off his gown at night, used to say "Lie there, Lord Treasurer."-Fuller's Holy State, p. 257.

5 Shakspeare, and most of his cotemporaries, wrote wrack for wreck, and there seems to be no reason for change, as the euphony of the verse would suffer by it. In Tarquin and Lucrece we have: O, this dread night, would'st thou one hour come back I could prevent this storm, and shun thy wrack.

I entirely coincide with Mr. Hunter in this suggestion. He has also shown that the poet wrote prevision instead of provision, in a subsequent line. Thus anticipating the correction in Mr. Collier's folio.

So safely order'd, that there is no soul-
No, not so much perdition as a hair,
Betid to any creature in the vessel

Which thou heard'st cry, which thou saw'st sink. Sit

down ;

For thou must now know further.

Mira.

You have often

Begun to tell me what I am; but stopp'd,
And left me to a bootless inquisition;
Concluding, Stay, not yet."-

Pro.

The hour's now come;

The very minute bids thee ope thine ear;
Obey, and be attentive. Can'st thou remember
A time before we came unto this cell?

I do not think thou can'st; for then thou wast not
Outб three years old.

Mira.

Certainly, sir, I can.

Pro. By what? by any other house, or person ? Of any thing the image, tell me, that

Hath kept with thy remembrance.

Mira.

'Tis far off;

And rather like a dream than an assurance
That my remembrance warrants. Had I not
Four or five women once, that tended me?

Pro. Thou had'st, and more, Miranda. But how is it, That this lives in thy mind? What seest thou else In the dark backward and abysm of time?

If thou remember'st aught ere thou cam❜st here,
How thou cam'st here, thou may'st.

But that I do not.

Mira.
Pro. Twelve year since, Miranda, twelve year

since,

6 Out is used for entirely, quite. Thus in Act iv: "And be a boy right out."

Abysm was the old mode of spelling abyss; from its French original abisme.

Thy father was the duke of Milan, and

A prince of power.

Mira.

Sir, are not you my father? Pro. Thy mother was a piece of virtue, and She said thou wast my daughter; and thy father Was duke of Milan; thou his only heir

And princess-no worse issued.

Mira.

O, the heavens !

What foul play had we, that we came from thence? Or blessed was't we did?

Pro.

Both, both, my girl:

By foul play, as thou say'st, were we heav'd thence; But blessedly holp hither.

I

Mira.

O! my heart bleeds
To think of the teen9 that I have turn'd you to,
Which is from my remembrance. Please you, farther.
Pro. My brother, and thy uncle, call'd Antonio-
pray
thee, mark me, that a brother should
Be so perfidious!-he whom, next thyself,
Of all the world I lov'd, and to him put
The manage of my state; as, at that time,
Through 10 all the seigniories it was the first,
And Prospero the prime duke; (being so reputed
In dignity,) and, for the liberal arts,

Without a parallel: those being all my study,
The government I cast upon my brother,

8 The old copy reads

and thy father

Was duke of Milan; and his only heir, &c.

Nothing is more common than for the compositor's eye to take by mistake a wrong word occurring in a preceding line; and has here been so taken instead of thou. In the second folio, in the same page and column, compassion has been so taken instead of the true word prevision. This note was written in 1851 9 Teen is grief, sorrow.

10 The second folio has, Though, which, if read as an elision for Though of, as Mr. Hunter proposes, would give better sense. Or we may suppose Throughout to be intended.

And to my state grew stranger, being transported, And rapt in secret studies. Thy false uncle— Dost thou attend me?

Mira.

Sir, most heedfully.

Pro. Being once perfected how to grant suits, How to deny them; whom to advance, and whom To trash11 for overtopping; new created

11

The creatures that were mine, I say, or chang'd them,
Or else new form'd them having both the key
Of officer and office, set all hearts i' th' state
To what tune pleas'd his ear; that now he was
The ivy, which had hid my princely trunk,
And suck'd my verdure out on't.-Thou attend'st not.
Mira. O good sir! I do.

pray thee, mark me.

11 To trash means to check the pace or progress of any one. The term is said to be still in use among sportsmen in the North, and signifies to correct a dog for misbehaviour in pursuing the game; or overtopping or outrunning the rest of the pack. Trashes are clogs strapped round the neck of a dog to prevent his overspeed. Todd has given four instances from Hammond's works of the word in this sense. "Clog and trash"-" encumber and trash"-" to trash or overslow"-and "foreslowed and trashed."

There was another word of the same kind used in Falconry (from whence Shakspeare very frequently draws his similes); "Trassing is when a hawk raises aloft any fowl, and soaring with it, at length descends therewith to the ground."-- Dictionarium Rusticum, 1704. Probably this term is used by Chapman in his address to the reader prefixed to his translation of Homer. "That whosesoever muse dares use her wing When his muse flies she will be trass't by his, And show as if a Bernacle should spring Beneath an Eagle."

There is also a passage in the Bonduca of Beaumont and Fletcher, wherein Caratach says:

"I fled too,

But not so fast; your jewel had been lost then,
Young Hengo there, he trasht me, Nennius."

i. e. checked or stopped my flight.

The Editor has thought himself justifiod in changing trace to trash in Othello. Act ii. Sc. I. See note thereon, vol. x., p. 53.