tree of such a form as to hang clothes upon them, and to remove them easily? Had not the clowns a distinct image in their minds of an old-clothes shop?

"We know what belongs to a frippery." Here is a picture of "a frippery," from a print dated 1587, with its clothes hung in "line and level." Is not the joke "we steal by line and level" applicable only to a stretched line?-or is it meaningless? It has the highest approbation of King Stephano.

Lastly, with reference to the clothes-line, when Mr. Hunter says "Anything more remote from poetry than this can scarcely be imagined," we answer that the entire scene was intended to be the antagonist of poetry. All the scenes in which Trinculo and Stephano are tricked by Ariel are essentially ludicrous, and, to a certain extent, gross. The "pool" through which they were hunted had none of the poetical attributes about it. It was, compared with a fountain or a lake, as the hair-line to the line-tree. Hunter contends that, "if the word of the original, line-grove, had been allowed to keep

Mr.

11 SCENE I.-" Ye elves of hills." THE invocation of Medea, in Ovid's Metamorphoses,' was no doubt familiar to Shakspere when he wrote this passage, and he has used several expressions which we find in Golding's translation. We subjoin the passage from that translation, which Farmer quotes as one of his proofs that Shakspere did not know the original. The evidence in this as in every other case only goes to show that he knew the translation:

"Ye airs and winds, ye elves of hills, of brooks, of woods alone,

Of standing lakes, and of the night, approach ye every

one.

Through help of whom (the crooked banks much wondering at the thing)

I have compelled streams to run clear backward to their spring.

By charms I make the calm sea rough, and make the rough sea plain,

And cover all the sky with clouds, and chase them thence again.

Whole woods and forests I remove, I make the mountains shake,

And even the earth itself to groan and fearfully to quake.

I call up dead men from their graves, and thee, O light

some moon,

I darken oft, though beaten brass abate thy peril soon. Our sorcery dims the morning fair, and darks the sun at

noon.

The flaming breath of fiery bulls ye quenched for my sake,

And caused their unwieldy necks the bended yoke to take.

Among the earth-bred brothers you a mortal war did set, And brought asleep the dragon fell, whose eyes were never shut."

12 SCENE I." Where the bee sucks," &c. There are probably more persons familiar with this song in association with the music of Dr. Arne than as readers of Shakspere. The first line is invariably sung,

"Where the bee sucks, there lurk 1."

It is perfectly clear that lurk is not the word

And from the bowels of the earth both stones and trees

do draw.

clear that the poet meant to convey the notion of a being not wholly ethereal; who required

"Where the bee sucks, there suck I."

Theobald changed the word summer into sunset. Warburton supports the old reading very ingeniously:-"The roughness of winter is represented by Shakspeare as disagreeable to fairies, and such like delicate spirits, who, on this account, constantly follow summer. Was not this, then, the most agreeable circumstance of Ariel's new recovered liberty, that he could now avoid winter, and follow summer quite round the globe?" But here a new difficulty arises.

of summer. Steevens says that Shakspere might, through his ignorance of natural history, have supposed the bat to be a bird of passage. He inclines, however, to the opinion, not that Ariel pursues summer on a bat's wing, but that after summer is past he rides upon the warm down of a bat's back. Excellent naturalist Why, the bat is torpid after summer. If this exquisite song is to be subjected to this strict analysis, it is difficult to reduce all its images to the measure of fitness and propriety.

blemish, but fresher than before."

By this ingenious contrivance the usual stage absurdity of persons who have been immersed in either salt or fresh water appearing with their garments as bright and dry as if just out of a tailor's shop is avoided, and the remark of Gonzalo, that their "garments, being, as they were, drenched in the sea, hold, notwithstand ing, their freshness and glosses; being rather new dyed than stained with salt water," is rationally accounted for. That these garments

should also be magnificent state dresses is pointed out by the next speech of Gonzalo, who therein describes them as having been first put on "in Afric, at the marriage of the king's fair daughter" aforesaid. With these hints we leave the artist to select any Italian costume he may consider most picturesque previous to the commencement of the 17th century: but we should recommend a glance at that given in our notice prefixed to 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona.'