GON. Nay, good, be patient. BOATS. When the sea is. Hence! what care these roarers for the name of king? To cabin: silence! trouble us not.

GON. Good, yet remember whom thou hast aboard.

BOATS. None that I more love than myself. You are a counsellor ;-if you can command these elements to silence, and work the peace of the present, we will not hand a rope more; use your authority if you cannot, give thanks you have lived so long, and make yourself ready in your cabin for the mischance of the hour, if it so hap.Cheerly, good hearts!-Out of our way, I say.

:

[Exit.

GON. I have great comfort from this fellow; methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him; his complexion is perfect gallows. Stand fast, good Fate, to his hanging! make the rope of his destiny our cable, for our own doth little advantage! If he be not born to be hanged, our case is miserable. [Exeunt.

Re-enter Boatswain.

BOATS. Down with the topmast! yare; lower, lower! Bring her to try with main-course! [A cry within.] A plague upon this howling! they are louder than the weather or our office.

Re-enter SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, and Gonzalo.

Yet again! what do you here? shall we give o'er and drown? have you a mind to sink?

a Bring her to try with main-course!] It has been proposed to read, "Bring her to; try with the main-course; but see a passage from Hakluyt's Voyages, 1598, quoted by Malone :"and when the barke had way, we cut the hawser and so gate the sea to our friend, and tryed out al that day with our maine corse."

mounting to the welkin's cheek,-] Although we have, in "Richard II." Act III. Sc. 2,-" the cloudy cheeks of heaven," and elsewhere, "welkin's face." and "heaven's face," it may well be questioned whether "cheek," in this place, is not a misprint. Mr. Collier's annotator substitutes heat, a change characterised by Mr. Dyce as "equally tasteless and absurd." A more appropriate and expressive word, one, too, sanctioned in some measure by its occurrence in Ariel's description of the same elemental conflict, is probably, crack, or cracks,

It should the good ship so have swallow'd, and The fraughting souls within her.

PRO. Be collected; No more amazement: tell your piteous heart There's no harm done.

MIRA. PRO.

O, woe the day!

No harm.

I have done nothing but in care of thee,

the sky's ordnance, "the fire and cracks," assault the "mighty Neptune." Crack, in the emphatic sense it formerly bore of crash, discharge, or explosion, is very common in our old writers thus, in Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great," Part I. Act IV Sc. 2,

"As when a fiery exhalation,

Wrapt in the bowels of a freezing cloud Fighting for passage, makes the welkin cracke." Again, in some verses prefixed to Coryat's "Crudities,""A skewed engine mathematicall

To draw up words that make the welkin cracke."

And in Taylor's Superbia Flagellum, 1630,

"Yet every Reall heav'nly Thundercracke, This Caitife in such feare and terror strake," &c.

A prince of power.

I should inform thee further. Lend thy hand, And pluck my magic garment from me.-So; [Lays down his robe. Lie there, my art.-Wipe thou thine eyes; have

comfort. The direful spectacle of the wreck, which touch'd The very virtue of compassion in thee,

I have with such provision in mine art

So safely order'd, that there is no soul-
No, not so much perdition as an 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.

that there is no soul-] Rowe prints,

"that there is no soul lost;"

Theobald, "that there is no foyle;" and Johnson, "that there is no soil." We believe, notwithstanding Steevens' remark that "such interruptions are not uncommon to Shakspeare," that "soul" is a typographical error, and that the author wrote, as Capell reads,"that there is no loss,

No, not so much perdition as an hair
Betid to any creature," &c.

b You have often, &c.] Query, "You have oft," &c.

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; and his only heir

d

A princess, no worse issued.

I

PRO. My brother, and thy uncle, call'd An

tonio,

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 all the signiories it was the first,— And Prospero the prime duke ;-bein so reputed In dignity, and for the liberal arts Without a parallel: those being all my study, The government I cast upon my brother, And to my state grew stranger, being transported And rapt in secret studies. Thy false uncle— Dost thou attend me?

PRO. Being once perfected how to grant suits, How to deny them, who to advance, and who To trash' for over-topping,-new created The creatures that were mine, I say, or chang'd 'em, Or else new form'd 'em; having both the key Of officer and office, set all hearts i' the 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. PRO.

I pray thee, mark me. I thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated To closeness, and the bettering of my mind With that, which, but by being so retir'd, O'er-priz'd all popular rate, in my false brother Awak'd an evil nature; and my trust,

Like a good parent, did beget of him
A falsehood, in its contrary as great
As my trust was; which had indeed no limit,
A confidence sans bound. 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; out o' the substitution,
And executing the outward face of royalty,
With all prerogative:-hence his ambition grow-
ing,-

Dost thou hear?

MIRA. Your tale, sir, would cure deafness. PRO. To have no screen between this part he play'd

And him he play'd it for, he needs will be
Absolute Milan. Me, poor man! my library
Was dukedom large enough; of temporal royalties
He thinks me now incapable; confederates

(So dry he was for sway) with the king of Naples,

To give him annual tribute, do him homage;
Subject his co net to his crown, and bend
The dukedon

et unbow'd,-alas, poor Milan !—

To most ignou.e stooping. MIRA.

O the heavens !

PRO. Mark his condition, and the event; then tell me,

If this might be a brother.

I should sin

MIRA. To think but nobly of my grandmother : Good wombs have borne bad sons.

PRO.

Now the condition. This king of Naples, being an enemy To me inveterate, hearkens my brother's suit; Which was, that he, in lieu o' the premises Of homage, and I know not how much tribute, Should presently extirpate me and mine Out of the dukedom, and confer fair Milan, With all the honours, on my brother: whereon, A treacherous army levied, one midnight Fated to the purpose, did Antonio open The gates of Milan; and, i' the dead of darkness, The ministers for the purpose hurried thence Me, and thy crying self. MIRA.

So dear the love my people bore me,―nor set
A mark so bloody on the business; but
With colours fairer painted their foul ends.
In few, they hurried us aboard a bark,

Bore us some leagues to sea; where they prepar'd
A rotten carcass of a boat,* not rigg'd,
Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats
Instinctively have quit it: there they hoist us,
To cry to the sea that roar'd to us; to sigh
To the winds, whose pity, sighing back again,
Did us but loving wrong.

MIRA.

Was I then to you?

PRO.

Thou wast that did

smile,

Alack, what trouble

O, a cherubin

preserve me! Thou didst

Alack, for pity!

(*) Old text omits, the.

-like one

Who having unto truth, by telling of it,

Made such a sinner of his memory,

To credit his own lie,—]

The folios have, "into truth," which Warburton amended; but this we suspect is not the only correction needed, the passage as it stands, though intelligible,, being very hazily expressed. Mr. Collier's annotator would read,

like one

Who having to untruth, by telling of it," &c.

(*) Old text, Butt.

and this emendation is entitled to more respect than it has received.

b In lieu-] In lieu means here, in guerdon, or consideration; not as it usually signifies, instead, or in place.

c Fated to the purpose,-] Mr. Collier's annotator reads,"Fated to the practice;" and as "purpose" is repeated two lines below, the substitution is an improvement.

d In few,] To be brief; in a few words.

e Deck'd-] Decked, if not a corruption for degged, an old provincialism, probably meant the same, that is, sprinkled.