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?

Seb. A pox o' your throat! you bawling, blasphemous, uncharitable dog!

Boats. Work you, then.

Ant. Hang, cur, hang! you whoreson, insolent noise-maker, we are less afraid to be drowned than thou art.

Gon. I'll warrant him from drowning; though the ship were no stronger than a nut-shell, and as leaky as an unstanched 5 wench.

Boats. Lay her a-hold, a-hold; set her two courses; off to sea again, lay her off.

Enter Mariners, wet.

Mar. All lost! to prayers, to prayers! all lost!

Boats. What, must our mouths be cold?

[Exeunt.

Gon. The king and prince at prayers! let us as

sist them,

For our case is as theirs.

Seb. I am out of patience.

7

Ant. We are merely cheated of our lives by drunkards.

This wide-chapped rascal;—'Would, thou might'st lie drowning,

The washing of ten tides!

5 Mr. Stevens says incontinent, but the meaning is evident. In Beaumont and Fletcher's Mad Lover, Chilas says to the frightened priestess :

Down, you dog, then;

Be quiet and be staunch too, no inundations.

6 The courses are the main sail and fore sail. To lay a ship ahold, is to bring her to lie as near the wind as she can, in order to keep clear of the land and get her out to sea.

7 Merely, absolutely, entirely; Merè, Lat.

Gon.

He'll be hanged yet;

Though every drop of water swear against it,

8

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; long 9 heath, brown furze, any thing: The wills above be done! but I would fain die a dry death.

SCENE II.

The Island: before the Cell of Prospero.

Enter PROSPERO and MIRANDA.

[Exit.

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

2

8 To englut, to swallow him.

9 Instead of long heath, brown furze, &c. Sir Thomas Hanmer reads-ling, heath, broom, furze, &c. and I have no doubt rightly.

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

2 Instead of freighting the first folio reads fraughting.

I have done nothing but in care of thee,
(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 3
Than Prospero, master of a full poor cell,
And thy no greater father.

Mira.

4

More to know

"Tis time

Did never meddle with my thoughts.

Pro.

I should inform thee further. Lend thy hand,
And pluck my magick garment from me.-So:
[Lays down his mantle.
Lie there, my art 5.-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.

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.

3 The double superlative is in frequent use among our elder writers.

say

4 To meddle, is to mix, or interfere with.

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

с

Pro.

The hour's now come;

The very minute bids thee

Obey, and be attentive.

ope thine ear;

Can'st thou remember

A time before we came unto this cell?

I do not think thou can'st; for then thou wast not Out 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.

Mira.

But that I do not.

Pro. Twelve years since, Miranda, twelve years

since,

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; and his only heir

A princess; -no worse issued.

O, the heavens!

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

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

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

Pro.

Both, both, my girl:

By foul play, as thou say'st, were we heav'd thence;

But blessedly holp hither.

Mira.
O, my heart bleeds
To think o' the teen that I have turn'd you to,
Which is from my remembrance! Please you, further.
Pro. My brother, and thy uncle, call'd Antonio-
I 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; 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,

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 trash for overtopping; new created The creatures that were mine; I say, or chang'd them, Or else new form'd them: having both the key

8 Teen is grief, sorrow.

9 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.”—DictionariumRusticum, 1704.