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probably, that the poet so wrote it, or, at all events, that the actor so delivered it.

In the copy of Hanmer in my possession the a is also inserted in the margin, upon the authority of one of the eminent actors above mentioned.

SCENE II.

The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch,

But that the sea, mounting to the welkin's cheek,

Dashes the fire out."

The manuscript corrector of the folio, 1632, has substituted heat for "cheek," which appears to me an alteration of no value whatever. Shakspeare was more likely to have written cheek than heat; for elsewhere he uses the expression, "Heaven's face," "the welkin's face," and, though irregular, the expression is poetical.

At Miranda's exclamation,

"A brave vessel,

Who had no doubt some noble creature in her,

Dash'd all to pieces,"

Mr. Collier does Theobald the justice to observe, that he, as well as the corrector of the folio, 1632, adds the necessary letter s to the word "creature," making the plural substantive agree with her other exclamation of, "Poor souls, they perished!"

Where Mr. Collier, upon the authority of his folio, substitutes prevision for “ provision" in the lines of Prospero,

"The direful spectacle of the wreck

I have with such provision in mine art
So safely, ordered," etc.,-

I do not agree to the value of the change. It is very true that prevision means the foresight that his art gave him, but provision implies the exercise of that foresight or prevision; it is therefore better, because more comprehensive.

Mr. Collier's folio gives as an improvement upon Malone and Steevens's reading of the passage, —

"And thy father

Was Duke of Milan; and his only heir A princess; no worse issued,"

the following:

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"And thy father Was Duke of Milan,- thou, his only heir A princess -no worse issued."

In the next passage, given as emended by the folio, we have what appears to me one bad and one decidedly good alteration from the usual reading, which, in all the editions given hitherto, has left the meaning barely perceptible through the confusion and obscurity of the expression.

"He being thus lorded,

Not only with what my revenue yielded, But what my power might else exact,like one

Who having unto truth by telling of it
Made such a sinner of his memory
To credit his own lie,- he did believe
He was indeed the Duke."

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among the puzzled commentators on this occasion, suggests, very agreeably to common sense, that " Experience proves that any violent agitation of the mind easily subsides in slumber." But Mr. Collier says, the Doctor gives this very reasonable explanation of Miranda's sleep only because he was not acquainted with the folio stage-direction about Prospero's coat, and knew no better. Now we are acquainted with this important addition to the text, and yet know no better than to agree with Doctor Johnson, that Miranda's slumbers were perfectly to be accounted for without the coat. Mr. Collier does not seem to know that a deeper and heavier desire to sleep follows upon the overstrained exercise of excited attention than on the weariness of a dull and uninteresting appeal to it.

But let us consider Shakspeare's text, rather than the corrector's additions, for a moment. Within reach of the wild wind and spray of the tempest, though sheltered from their fury, Miranda had watched the sinking ship struggling with the mad elements, and heard when "rose from sea to sky the wild farewell." Amazement and pity had thrown her into a paroxysm of grief, which is hardly allayed by her father's assurance, that "there's no harm done." After this terrible excitement follows the solemn exordium to her father's story,

"The hour's now come;

The very minute bids thee ope thine ear.
Obey and be attentive."

And pluck my magic garment from me, Lie there, my art,". the words, "Lay it down," are written over against the passage. Now this really seems a very unnecessary direction, inasmuch as the text very clearly indicates that Prospero lays down as well as plucks off his "magic garment,"— unless we are to suppose Miranda holding it over her arm till he resumes it. But still less do I agree with Mr. Collier in thinking the direction, "Put on robe again," at the passage beginning, "Now I arise," any extraordinary accession to the business, as it is technically called, of the scene: for I do not think that his resuming his magical robe was in any way necessary to account for the slumber which overcomes Miranda, "in spite of her interest in her father's story," and which Mr. Collier says the commentators have endeav--and, above all, the poignant personal inored to account for in various ways; but putting "because of her interest in her father's story," instead of "in spite of," I feel none of the difficulty which beset the commentators, and which Mr. Collier conjures by the stage-direction which makes Prospero resume his magic robe at a certain moment in order to put his daughter to sleep. Worthy Dr. Johnson, who was not

The effort she calls upon her memory to make to recover the traces of her earliest impressions of life, the strangeness of the events unfolded to her, the duration of the recital itself, which is considerable,

terest of its details, are quite sufficient to account for the sudden utter prostration of her overstrained faculties and feelings, and the profound sleep that falls on the young girl. Perhaps Shakspeare knew this, though his commentators, old and new, seem not to have done so; and without a professed faith, such as some of us moderns indulge in, in the mysteries of

magnetism, perhaps he believed enough in the magnetic force of the superior physical as well as mental power of Prospero's nature over the nervous, sensitive, irritable female organization of his child to account for the "I know thou canst not choose" with which he concludes his observation on her drowsiness, and his desire that she will not resist it. The magic gown may, indeed, have been powerful, but hardly more so, we think, than the nervous exhaustion which, combined with the authoritative will and eyes of her lord and father, bowed down the child's drooping eyelids in profoundest sleep.

The strangest of all Mr. Collier's comments upon this passage, however, is that where he represents Miranda as, up to a certain point of her father's story, remaining "standing eagerly listening by his side." This is not only gratuitous, but absolutely contrary to Shakspeare's text, a greater authority, I presume, than even that of the annotated folio. Prospero's words to his daughter, when first he begins the recital of their sea-sorrow, are,—

"Sit down!

For thou must now know further." Does Mr. Collier's folio reject this reading of the first line? or does he suppose that Miranda remained standing, in spite of her father's command? Moreover, when he interrupts his story with the words, "Now I arise,” he adds, to his daughter, "Sit still," which clearly indicates both that she was seated and that she was about to rise (naturally enough) when her father did. We say, "Sit down," to a person who is standing; and, "Sit still," to a person seated who is about to rise; and in all these minute particulars, the simple text of Shakspeare, if attentively followed, gives every necessary indication of his intention with regard to the attitudes and movements of the persons on the stage in this scene; and the highly commended stage-directions of the folio are here, therefore, perfectly superfluous.

The next alteration in the received text is a decided improvement. In

speaking of the royal fleet dispersed by the tempest, Ariel says,—

"They all have met again, And are upon the Mediterranean flote Bound sadly home for Naples ";

for which Mr. Collier's folio substitutes,"They all have met again,

And all upon the Mediterranean float,
Bound sadly back to Naples."

Mr. Collier notices, that the improvement of giving the lines,

"Abhorred slave,

Which any print of goodness will not take," to Prospero, instead of Miranda, dates as far back as Dryden and Davenant's alteration of "The Tempest," from which he says Theobald and others copied it.

The corrected folio gives its authority to the lines of the song,

"Foot it featly here and there,

And, sweet sprites, the burden bear," which stands so in Hanmer, and, indeed, is the usually received arrangement of the

song.

This is the last corrected passage in the first act, in the course of which Mr. Collier gives us no fewer than sixteen, altered, emended, and commented upon in his folio. Many of the emendations are to be found verbatim in the Oxford and

subsequent editions, and three only appear to us to be of any special value, tried by the standard of common sense, to which we agreed, on Mr. Collier's invitation, to refer them.

The line in Prospero's threat to Caliban,

"I'll rack thee with old cramps, Fill all thy bones with aches, make thee roar," occasioned one of Mr. John Kemble's characteristic differences with the public, who objected, perhaps not without reason, to hearing the word "aches" pronounced as a dissyllable, although the line imperatively demands it; and Shakspeare shows that the word was not unusually so pronounced, as he introduces it with the same quantity in the prose dialogue of "Much Ado about Nothing," and makes it the vehicle of a pun which certainly argues that it was familiar to the public

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The opening of this play is connected with my earliest recollections. In looking down the "dark backward and abysm of time," to the period when I was but six years old, my memory conjures up a vision of a stately drawing-room on the ground-floor of a house, doubtless long since swept from the face of the earth by the encroaching tide of new houses and streets that has submerged every trace of suburban beauty, picturesqueness, or rural privacy in the neighborhood of London, converting it all by a hideous process of assimilation into more London, till London seems almost more than England can

carry.

But in those years, "long enough ago," to which I refer,- somewhere between Lea and Blackheath, stood in the midst of well-kept grounds a goodly mansion, which held this pleasant room. It was always light and cheerful and warm, for the three windows down to the broad gravel-walk before it faced south; and though the lawn was darkened just in front of them by two magnificent yewtrees, the atmosphere of the room itself, in its silent, sunny loftiness, was at once gay and solemn to my small imagination and senses, much as the interior of Saint Peter's of Rome has been since to them. Wonderful, large, tall jars of precious old china stood in each window, and my nose was just on a level with the wide necks, whence issued the mellowest smell of fragrant pot-pourri. Into this room, with its great crimson curtains and deep crimson carpet, in which my feet seemed to me buried, as in woodland moss, I used to be brought for recompense of having

been " very good," and there I used to find a lovely-looking lady, who was to me the fitting divinity of this shrine of pleasant awfulness. She bore a sweet Italian diminutive for her Christian name, added to one of the noblest old ducal names of Venice, which was that of her family.

I have since known that she was attached to the person of, and warmly personally attached to, the unfortunate Caroline of Brunswick, Princess of Wales,then only unfortunate; so that I can now guess at the drift of much sad and passionate talk with indignant lips and tearful eyes, of which the meaning was then of course incomprehensible to me, but which I can now partly interpret by the subsequent history of that ill-used and ill-conducted lady.

The face of my friend with the great Venetian name was like one of Giorgione's pictures, of that soft and mellow colorlessness that recalls the poet's line,

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"E smarrisce 'l bel volto in quel colore Che non è pallidezza, ma candore," or the Englishman's version of the same thought,

"Her face, oh, call it fair, not pale!"

It seemed to me, as I remember it, creamcolored; and her eyes, like clear water over brown rocks, where the sun is shining. But though the fair visage was like one of the great Venetian master's portraits, her voice was purely English, low, distinct, full, and soft, and in this enchanting voice she used to tell me the story of the one large picture which adorned the room.

Over and over again, at my importunate beseeching, she told it,-sometimes standing before it, while I held her hand and listened with upturned face, and eyes rounding with big tears of wonder and pity, to a tale which shook my small soul with a sadness and strangeness far surpassing the interest of my beloved tragedy, "The Babes in the Wood," though at this period of my existence it has happened to me to interrupt with frantic cries of distress, and utterly refuse to hear, the end of that lamentable ballad.

But the picture. In the midst of a stormy sea, on which night seemed fast settling down, a helmless, mastless, sailless bark lay weltering giddily, and in it sat a man in the full flower of vigorous manhood. His attitude was one of miserable dejection, and, oh, how I did long to remove the hand with which his eyes were covered, to see what manner of look in them answered to the bitter sorrow which the speechless lips expressed! His other hand rested on the fair curls of a girl-baby of three years old, who clung to his knee, and, with wide, wondering blue eyes and laughing lips, looked up into the half-hidden face of her father."And that," said the sweet voice at my side, was the good Duke of Milan, Prospero, and that was his little child, Miranda."

66

There was something about the face

and figure of the Prospero that suggested to me those of my father; and this, perhaps, added to the poignancy with which the representation of his distress affected my childish imagination. But the impression made by the picture, the story, and the place where I heard the one and saw the other, is among the most vivid that my memory retains. And never, even now, do I turn the magic page that holds that marvellous history, without again seeing the lovely lady, the picture full of sad dismay, and my own sixyear-old self listening to that earliest Shakspearian lore that my mind and heart ever received. I suppose this is partly the secret of my love for this, above all other of the poet's plays; - it was my first possession in the kingdom of unbounded delight which he has since bestowed upon me.

THE GREAT ARM-CHAIR.

SHALL I not to-day, Estelle, give you the history of this great arm-chair, the only historical piece of furniture in our house? The heavy oak frame was carved by an imprisoned poet. They took away his pen, and in larger lines he carved this chair. Heavily moulded Sphinxes form its arms; the strong legs and feet of some wild beast its support; the crest, a winged figure with bandaged eyes, Fate or Fortune we might call it, that mild look not to be resisted in its gentle strength. But blind Fortune could not so master him: his prison made for him only a secure room, in which to study, to work out, the mysteries.

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The rich covering was wrought long years ago, in some ancient convent, by a saintly nun. Holy, pious tears dropped on it as she wrought. She pricked out brave bright flowers with her needle, though her own life was pale and sad. I cover

this sacred work with housewifely care; but it makes our rest there more hallowed.

This old chair we call our dreamingchair,-to borrow a name, our SleepyHollow. It is so simple and grand in workmanship, it should be the seat of honor in a king's palace; and yet it is in place in our small parlor. Perhaps some day I may tell you of the ancient dames and knights who once possessed it; but they have long since slept their last sleep, no summer-afternoon's nap, but a sleep so long to last, now their long day's work is done.

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Not quite finished is the old man's work who this afternoon sat in the chair and quietly dreamed back his youth. I saw the hardened, withered face soften, as the bright light of childhood played around it; the meagre, hard old man forgot for a little the sharp want that pinch

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